A new partnership with Green Tourism

Since we arrived here and began setting up our Casa Rural we realised there was a strong environmental story to tell. Off-grid tourist accommodation means generating our own electricity from the sun and harvesting rainwater for a start. And as we’ve been developing the accommodation and the site we’ve found more ways of reducing our footprint and making a positive impact on the local ecology.

It's been a huge learning journey for us both just to get to this stage, but we knew that to offer a truly sustainable tourist accommodation we needed to educate ourselves and go even further.

That’s why we’ve signed up with Green Tourism, a UK company that helps businesses like ours improve sustainability. By working through an accredited process and documenting our plans and achievements, we knew that we’d learn so much more about what it takes to be an eco-tourism rural accommodation in Spain.

So, what is Sustainable Tourism? It’s a phrase that is in increasing use, but one that we feel is poorly understood – certainly, we couldn’t pin down what it meant in full before we’d done more background reading. So for those who are unsure, like we were, sustainable tourism can be defined as:

"Tourism that takes full account of its current and future economic, social and environmental impacts, addressing the needs of visitors, the industry, the environment and host communities"

Source: UNWTO website

Much broader in scope than simply the environmental aspect that I think most people tend to reduce Sustainability to.  The term actually confers an economic, a social as well as an environmental responsibility on us, and working towards achieving it has really transformed both our thinking and our relationship with the local community.

As we extend our journey and head towards our first Green Tourism certification we have been looking beyond the boundaries of Casa de Olivos and out to the nearby towns, businesses and landscape. We are increasing our engagement with local providers, and looking for ways we can create guest experiences with our different goods and services. Claire is now volunteering at a local dog rescue charity, and I’m looking for a local organisation connected with the preservation of this special landscape where I can get involved and bring learning and skills back to our own site. 

This process has inspired us to deepen our relationship with the Traiguera community and beyond, and in doing so has redoubled our commitment to making Casa de Olivos a beacon of sustainable tourist accommodation in Castellon province.

The journey towards sustainability is continuous, but rewarding and valuable. You can follow our progress on these blogs and on all our social media channels.

Claire & Ed