Maldives swimming holiday

Planet

CARBON REDUCTION
We have designed our trip operations carefully to minimize our impact on our environment. By its very nature, exploring the world via swimming – “human powered”, means our guests are not using unnecessary motorized vehicles to enjoy their holiday destination.

We try to keep our transfer times as short as possible, ensuring guests spend less time travelling and more time swimming on their swim vacation. All our trips are sold without flights so travellers have the option to use more environmentally friendly means of travel if they wish.

On this trip, we stay aboard MV Emperor Voyager, so we all share the travel aboard one boat and have a circular route around The Maldives to avoid unnecessary travel. By living on board the vessel we are all ‘lift sharing’ and reducing the carbon impact.

Vegetarian & Vegan food is available at all meals and all food is homemade and based on the finest local ingredients. The chefs are passionate about exploring nature and source ingredients locally where possible including a daily catch of fish which minimises food miles!

ENVIRONMENT & WILDLIFE
Our local partner in The Maldives are passionate about the environment and as marine life enthusiasts, the boat crew make every effort to minimise impact on ocean. On board the use of marine friendly products such as soaps and sun creams is strongly encouraged.

Emperor are members of the Green Fin project which helps to project coral through sustainable tourism. Through this project they assist with regular ocean clean ups removing plastic and debris from the ocean. The experts on board provide a number of educational talks about marine life and how it can be protected.

We continue to be reminded of the problem of plastic in our oceans. As such, we are committed to helping reduce to amount of plastic we use on our trips. We do this by:
• Encouraging guests to bring their own reusable water bottle on tour, or purchasing one of our non-plastic reusable alternatives
• Running regular guide plastic clean up sessions in our locations
• Encouraging good washing of wetsuits/swim kit between swim locations to avoid the threat of invasive species

People

LOCAL ECONOMY
Our local partners provide an invaluable wealth of local knowledge, not only on the safety front, but also by enhancing our guest’s cultural experiences – from food, to customs and hidden-away local gems. Through years of building happy, positive relationships with our local partners, we are confident in the knowledge that our guests will receive a wonderful warm welcome.

As most of our locations are small and remote, we make sure that our itineraries ‘spread the happiness’ meaning we take the guests to visit different businesses within the community. On this trip, a number of the boat crew including the captain and rib drivers are Maldivian nationals. Tips are shared equally amongst all members of the crew and dive guides.

EMPLOYMENT, INCLUSIVITY AND DIVERSITY
Emperor pride themselves on looking after their staff. Many of the staff return to Emperor each year which is a testament to their fair employment. The company encourage the respect of local customs and traditions amongst their workforce and ensure their staff can practise and religious or cultural practices.

All our trips are inclusive and everyone is welcome to join us as long as we can make suitable arrangements for any individual needs. The trip is LGBTQ+ friendly and we are happy to discuss individual needs relating to mobility, vision, hearing or cognitive issues and as long as we can put in place measures to ensure the trip remains safe for all guest we welcome everyone.