About · A Journey with Purpose
Travel that leaves places stronger.
Photo Tamara Natenadze · Living Roots
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Responsible, community-centered tourism
Not a product line. The way we work.
Responsible, community-centered tourism is not a category on our website — it is how every Living Roots journey has been built since 2012.
Around 90% of our suppliers are locally owned — from village guesthouses to Georgian-owned hotels, booked directly and paid fair prices, so income reaches the villages, not just the capital. We pay above Georgia’s low average wages — to our team and to the families who host you — and our staff are insured.
Ours is a working network, not a contact list: long-term, personal relationships that run the full width of Georgian life — from shepherds and village grandmothers to winemakers, scholars, artists and former presidents. The hosts you meet are people we genuinely know. We are, deliberately, not a volume operator.
Livelihoods your journey supports
- Guides & local guides
- Drivers
- Cooks & home kitchens
- Winemakers
- Artisans & craftspeople
- Guesthouse families
- Lecturers & ethnographers
- Musicians & singers
- Farmers & foragers
Four pillars, held daily
How we practice responsible tourism
Our practice is structured around the four pillars of the GSTC criteria — the global standard for sustainable tourism.
Community first, always
Tourism can extract value or create it — we choose the latter. Locally owned hotels, family wineries, community kitchens, freelance guides, independent drivers, regional craft producers: benefit distributed into villages where it changes lives, with active support for rural tourism, youth training and women’s economic empowerment.
Cultural integrity
Culture is not a performance. You cook in family kitchens, share tables with winemakers, hike with guides whose families have lived in these mountains for generations. Where traditions such as polyphonic singing are arranged, we work directly with authentic cultural bearers — fairly compensated, presented with context rather than spectacle.
Environmental awareness
Small groups and measured growth; conservation-minded partners; journeys spread across all regions and seasons, easing pressure on over-visited sites.
- No single-use plastic
- Local, seasonal, farm-to-table food
- Digital, not printed, materials
- Locally-owned places to stay
Honesty about impact
We don’t overstate what tourism can do. Responsible travel is a long-term process involving communities, policymakers and travelers alike. Our role: thoughtful choices, the right partners, constant refinement — an evolving practice shaped by experience and accountability.
The numbers behind the promise
90%
locally-owned suppliers
Every
region · community partners in each
2012
responsible from day one
Hundreds
of families, artisans & hosts in our network
Beyond our own journeys
We build the sector — and test what we preach
Sector-building, not just selling
We help build Georgian tourism itself: through the USAID programme Empowering Women & Youth Through Adventure Tourism Professions, with the Adventure Tourism School, we co-created state-authorised guide certifications — and we run the Mta-Mta Guide Marathon, opening mountain careers to women and young people in the regions.
Our co-founder Ia Tabagari has mentored women’s tourism businesses across the regions for years, and Living Roots leads sustainable tourism product development nationwide.
A living laboratory
At Lost Ridge — our own inn, brewery and ranch in a once-abandoned village near Sighnaghi — we test what we preach: local employment led by women and youth, circular farm-to-table practice, rural regeneration you can walk through, taste — and sleep inside.
Photo Tamara Natenadze · Living Roots
Community partners
The people behind the places
Our philosophy doesn’t live in one valley — it runs from the Black Sea to the eastern badlands. A glimpse, not a directory: the full network runs to hundreds of families, artisans and hosts.
Kakheti
Lamara, the silkworm keeper
Among the last keeping small silk production alive — and teaching youth to carry it on.
Everywhere we go
Family qvevri cellars
Fourth-generation artisans keeping an 8,000-year UNESCO wine tradition alive.
Kazbegi to Ushguli
Guesthouse families
Family-run stays across the country — keeping villages living year-round.
- The Kist community, Pankisi Valley — horse riding and home-cooked meals in one of Georgia’s most misunderstood valleys, with tourism income supporting local families directly.
- Dukhobor villages, Javakheti — tracing the exile and quiet resilience of one of Georgia’s smallest religious minorities, on the high plateau of Samtskhe-Javakheti.
- The Udi community, Zinobiani — one of the Caucasus’ oldest Christian cultures, keeping a disappearing language alive in a single Kakhetian village.
- Rewoven, Marneuli — an Azerbaijani women’s carpet-weaving studio sustaining both a centuries-old craft and the women who practice it.
- Tush highland weavers, Alvani — kilim and carpet traditions carried down from the Tusheti mountains.
- Nukriani women’s workshops, near Sighnaghi — felt and quilt crafts from local motifs, one of several women’s cooperatives we partner with across Georgia.
- The Temi community, Gremi — people with special needs living and working together since 1989, making organic food and natural wine in Kakheti.
- Ikorta enamel workshop, Tserovani — cloisonné enamel jewellery made by internally displaced families from South Ossetia.
- The Elkana Biological Farming Association — guardians of Georgia’s agrobiodiversity, reviving endemic crops and breeds since 1996.
- Café Oasis, Udabno — a desert-edge social enterprise near Davit Gareja employing Svan eco-migrant families.
- Shepherds & cheesemakers, Tusheti — guda cheese and the old transhumance routes of the high pastures.
- Keepers of song & knowledge — polyphonic singers, ethnographers and artisans across Svaneti, Kakheti and Meskheti, from hat-felting to endemic wheat.
- Foragers, herbalists & beekeepers — wild herbs, mushrooms and rare alpine honeys from remote family apiaries; knowledge passed down, lightly taken.
- Protected-area rangers, Vashlovani & Tusheti — conservation work and gazelle monitoring your visit helps sustain.
- Home cooks & family kitchens — cooking classes and family tables in every region of Georgia; the supra’s true authors.
Journeys that prove it
From relationships to itineraries
Three examples, east to west. Every journey is tailor-made — and the community thread runs through all of them, from day trips to multi-week expeditions.
8 days
Discover Georgia — A Community Journey
Tbilisi · Kakheti · Kazbegi · Ateni Valley
Felt-making with the Nukriani cooperative, lunch at Lamara’s, a day with the Temi community, qvevri wine with a fourth-generation artisan. Every overnight, meal and visit: locally owned.
5 days
Svaneti & the West — Highlands with the People
Lechkhumi · Ushguli · Mestia · Martvili
Village wine in Lechkhumi, Europe’s highest inhabited village, dinner in the home of a sacred church’s guardian, Svan songs by the fire. Guides whose families live these mountains.
4 days · slow travel
A Different Kakheti — People, Culture & Adventure
Sighnaghi · Vashlovani · Telavi
A felt workshop, garden-to-table cooking with foraged ingredients, a full day of gazelle conservation in Vashlovani — based at Lost Ridge, rural regeneration you sleep inside.
These three are only examples — every journey we create, a single day or a month-long expedition, is built the same way.
Memberships, licensing & standing
ETOALong-standing member
GNTAMember · exhibits internationally
GITOAIa headed the board for ten years · serves today
Georgian Ecotourism AssociationMember
ElkanaBoard seat
Licensed & certified guides · Adventure-safety standards · Liability insurance — documentation available on request
“Everything on this page lives in real villages, with real families. Come and hold us to every word of it — I would be glad to welcome you myself.”
— Ia Tabagari, co-founder & CEO
Policies — Child Safeguarding · Animal & Equine Welfare · Responsible Travel · Responsible Traveller Guide — [in preparation, will be linked here]
See it for yourself.
Every word on this page can be walked through, tasted and questioned on the ground.