South-West France includes ten departments: Dordogne, Landes, Gers, Lot, Gironde, Lot-et-Garonne, Haute-Garonne, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Hautes-Pyrénées and Tarn- et-Garonne.
Strongly focused on tourism, it is a colorful region, strong in its history and traditions, which has managed to combine ecotourism and sustainable luxury by combining desire and reality, innovation and preservation of natural resources.
More and more catering and hotel professionals are practicing luxury ecotourism to meet the expectations of customers in search of the art of living, in harmony and at the rhythm of nature.
– The hoteliers offer their customers in search of authenticity, swimming pools whose pure natural and non-chlorinated water comes from nearby sources, are ingenious to imagine systems for heating the water and the air generated by wood collected on their estate or by solar energy and ventilation directly inspired by Roman times: the Provençal well whose operation is simple but efficient. Air circulation underground causes a transfer of calories between earth and air through tubes. Little affected by variations in ambient air, the temperature of the basement will allow cooling of the air conveyed underground in summer and, on the contrary, heating in winter.
In addition to traditional hotel rooms, guest rooms are added with enchanting names and charms that embellish the houses of yesteryear. Bourgeois furniture and family memories give them their own identity and, often with a private terrace, they are a place to rest but also the pretext to savor the tranquility of the landscapes and the beauty of the surrounding nature.
– Restaurant owners, when their professional space allows it, no longer hesitate to produce their vegetables and fruits organically themselves, or even their truffles and sunflower oil to concoct a cuisine of sincere and generous flavors and aromas where simplicity and refinement come together for the sake of authenticity.
They revisit the legendary local gastronomy in the style of finesse and delicacy. Season and inspiration give rise to tasty appetizers, foie gras, black Périgord truffles and black Gascon pork are combined with virtuosity and inventiveness and the same love of excellence governs the selection of refined cabécous and a lyrical flight of wines. homemade desserts and sorbets.
To the classic accommodation and catering services, professionals add activities related to nature (discovery of truffles, orchards or vegetable gardens, walks or bike rides), gastronomy (foie gras cooking lessons, etc. ) or reinvent the pleasures, once forgotten, of reading in a comfortably imagined library or tasting a good cigar in a lounge-smoking room reserved for this purpose.
Sustainable luxury and ecotourism have a cost, it is undeniable, but it is the cost of respecting nature, the environment and the return to responsible and quality tourism.
