The Maison Blanche Ecohotel in Ukraine, Green Key certified since 2012, takes tourists on a tour of local and organic farms and trains them in an informal way about sustainable and ecological food production.
The Maison Blanche Ecohotel, which has three Green Key awarded sites in Ukraine, has come up with a new idea to engage tourists in the idea of sustainable tourism. The project emerged out of the years of hosting parties from the organic movement in Ukraine. These guests were interested in visiting organic farms in the surrounding area, eating organic meals and having a look in the hotel’s organic shop. This led to the idea of setting up organic tours for all guests and other tourists visiting Ukraine.
Tours are accessible for all tourists and cost between 19-27 euro per person all included (transportation, excursion, farms, bag of participant, lunch with sweet course). Cost can be held so low thanks to the financial partner Fibl in Switzerland.
The first Organic Tour was to the organic berry farm of Tregubov Oleksiy, 14 September. Starting from the Kiev’s Natur Boutique organic shop it went to the organic berry farm in Kiev region (with unlimited strawberries, raspberries, blackberries eating and then went to the Maison Blanche Mytnitsya for the organic lunch and excursion.
The second tour in 27 September was to the organic factory Organic Milk. The route of this tour was longer: Natur Boutique organic shop in Kiev – factory of producing organic milk products Organic Milk (in Zhytomyr region) with tasting of different products, a visit of the organic milk farm and dinner and excursion in the other Maison Blanche hotel in Berezivka.
Besides, in the bus on the way to the destination points participants were trained about EcoHotels and the Green Key label and viewed a documentary “The story of stuff”, “Food Inc.” etc.