Our biggest news is that one of the founders of GO LOCAL ICELAND initiative is expecting a baby due in February and we´re all looking forward to this new chapter.

This also means that recruiting partners has been going slower than we had originally planned, neverthless we carry on in our pace and simply expect you to get in touch, if you like our philosophy and want to be involved.

Not such a long time ago, we´ve set up a connection as far as Westfjords with one unique place in Flateyri and were really glad to get a feedback on our policies.

Neil would like to see the focus mainly on waste, public transport, environmental understanding / conversation and general reduction in oil use. When it comes to tourists themselves, the message should be: respect nature, rent smaller and more economical cars and support local businesses as much as you can while in Iceland.

We´re glad for this feeback and carry on reflecting on our policies together with our current and future partners and we encourage YOU to join also.

Looking forward to hearing from you and setting up mutually beneficial cooperation.

In the meantime, we´re helping local hiking guides become more visible and are updating the 2012 offer. Should you know of professional local guides, do let us know.

Yes, we´re proud to announce that we happen to meet and get connected to great people on our journey to support Local Travel Movement in Iceland and spread the idea og GOING LOCAL in Iceland.

Now it´s time to share the overview of those, we´ve got hooked up to and we encourage you to check them all out and let us hear how you like them:

• ADVENTURE TRAVEL
  offering the most comprehensive listing of Adventure Travel Companies (ATCs) in the world, regardless of their size or influence. As they say: it’s not about companies´ flashy websites; it’s about giving you the truth and plenty of choice.
• Great Icelandic MAGAZINE
  dedicated to exploring relationship between us humans and nature and our interaction with it (how we enjoy 'her', get connected to 'her', use 'her', you name it...). We worked on a map listing handpicked places to eat and sleep together and we really love the outcome and want to carry on our mutual cooperation. If you want to know more about the map, contact us directly: lenka.uhrova@gmail.com
• CUP OF LOCAL SUGAR
  Never let another curious Traveller experience a place without meeting and learning from a Local.

And this is just a beginning, as we have some more interesting projects ahead of us, while gathering our providers, and we´ll share the details in due time. Stay tuned.

We´ve been partnering with like-minded organisations and are proud to say that

Green adventure holidays

is one of them. We´ll keep you posted about the others, we´ve been setting up our cooperation with.

I have a nice piece of news to share that I got to know yesterday:

Among the destinations which received the so-called EDEN Award this year was Stykkishólmur on Snaefellsnes peninsula in west Iceland. EDEN is the acronym for “European Destinations of Excellence”, a European Commission initiative promoting sustainable tourism development models across the 27 European Union member states and candidate countries.

I was lucky enough to be a part of a study visit as an interpreter on exchange of good practices in the environmental protection, where we also visited Stykkishólmur and can only confirm the choice :)

This is great news for Iceland and hopefully Iceland will be able to 'score' next year too, as there are truly many places here that could potentially be awarded.

Believe it or not,

Icelandic governement officially launched a project called 'Iceland - all year round'.

The first part of the project is called “Íslendingar! Bjódum heim” (“Icelanders! Let’s Open our Doors”), which is based on the idea that locals around the country invite foreign tourists to their homes or invite them to participate in their daily routines.

We, at Go Local Iceland, are extremely glad about this initiative and are curious to see the results of this campaign especially during this winter.

If you feel like getting to know more about the governmental campaign, do click here.

We´ve been busy over the summer, not only in tourism projects but also educational ones with lots of travels including experiential learning that we want our tourists to experience and enjoy more and more. Looking forward to sharing more about developements in that front soon, so stay tuned.

Now, that the summer is over and here in the North of Iceland  tops of the mountains already have snowcaps, it is obviously the right time for serious planning of the summer of 2012.

We have some great news to start with, for all those who have felt that reaching North Iceland as a tourist destination has been a challenge. There´s some big amount of work being put not only from the side of private companies but also official tourism bodies to make sure that North of Iceland (namely Akureyri) will become an easily reachable destination all year round. And from there, exploration of North Iceland will literally lie by your feet :)

One of the concrete steps is an offer that IcelandAir came up with at the end of August. Read more about it here and let us know whether you like it or not, or simply what you think.

When it comes to other developments, there was a big cluster formed with various stakeholders involved and they had their first working workshop Mastermind September 22nd. I´ll post the report and conclusions and plans as soon as I get to know them - especially the parts that directly influence GO LOCAL ICELAND.

Last but not least, we´ve been gradually enlarging the offer by getting more and more tourism providers on board with us and there are still quite some meetings ahead of us this autumn to enlarge the offer even more.

Should you have tips for more interesting tourism providers who fit our Go Local Iceland profile and apart from thinking about tourism business they also consider the sustainablity part, do let us know or let them have our contacts.

Looking forward to getting your tips and by the next time, I attach some interesting way of enjoying Iceland as a tourist if you´re ready to volunteer - check out more here.

We´ve received comments from professionals involved in sustainable tourism development and updated our original guidelines that help local tourism providers run their tourism businesses as sustainably as possible.

The questions and the content is ever evolving, so we encourage all involved to share thoughts, ideas and suggestions so that we can all continuosly contribute to make it even better.

Questions and details  are to be found in the PDF document below

Click here to download:

Enviro_guidelines_providers.pdf (615 KB)

(download)

Click here to download:

Enviro_guidelines_providers.pdf (615 KB)

Yeah, and we checked it out the other day on the Peninsula of Trolls with a great local guide Trausti and we loved it.

It has it all: a great place to stay where you feel like at home, excellent food, professional guide and beautiful nature.

The hike lasted all in all 4 hours and the first bit was spiced up by a kayak surprise with a beautiful view all the way to the sea (check the picture that says it all).  After that, we were climbing up a peak around 700 metres high (don´t forget that we start at the sea level) full of adventure and even really steep and nicely challenging top. As soon as we came down, the food was waiting for us - professionally made by Sibba - and her warm smile and warm welcome.

I truly recommend the trips with Trausti full of sagas and adventure, be it family oriented or simply peaks oriented.

Sorry for having been silent for a while, as sickness and holidays and some interesting life surprises crossed our paths. We are here and we carry on with the support of all who enjoy Going LOCAL. Keep on following and let us hear about your adventures, thoughts and experience.

Yes, we´re back from our travels in Finland and Denmark and are carrying on with connecting local tourism providers of Iceland with mindful tourists ready to explore them.

We´ll post more news later this week regarding the latest developments, and in the meantime we´re giving you update regarding the latest geo activity close to actove volcano KATLA.

Check out more here.

While we´ve been working on enlarging our list of GO LOCAL ICELAND providers, another article Lenka wrote got published on the travel portal called Your Travel Choice (uniting conservation, communities and sustainable travel).

You can read it here and please do share your thoughts, comments, ideas at lenka.uhrova@gmail.com.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

GO LOCAL ICELAND is about both, local tourism providers and travellers. We´ve already published 5 principles of local tourism to help travellers get oriented and decide.
Today, we´d like to share 5 questions, we have ready, for local tourism providers. When we select our local tourism providers, we put a lot of stress on handpicking the operations and interviewing the staff. WHY? Because we want to ensure that the chosen ones are committed to principles of sustainability and are ready to keep on working on constant improvement.

So, not only that they have already been working in that direction but have ideas and plans for the future. Naturally, during the interview, we ask them about what they are already doing, and what they are going to do next and how can we help them and support them.

By uniting them under one common brand, we help them generate more business at lower costs and save them time and money on marketing and they, in return, have more space and energy for further improvements in their sustainable operations.

The questions and the content is ever evolving, so we encourage all involved to share thoughts, ideas and suggestions so that we can all contribute to make it even better.

Questions and details  are to be found in the PDF document - do check it out.

Click here to download:

Go_local_Iceland_enviro_guidelines_providers.pdf (701 KB)

(download)

Click here to download:

Go_local_Iceland_enviro_guidelines_providers.pdf (701 KB)