Our Voice, Our Commitment: Our 2025 Feedback Review
Like most tour operators, we ask our guests to complete a detailed feedback form at the end of each journey. But as those who have travelled with us will know, we do not treat feedback as a box-ticking exercise. We take time to read it carefully, reflect on it honestly, and use it to improve what we do.
Feedback matters to us enormously. It helps us learn, grow, and remain competitive in a fast-changing tourism landscape, while still staying true to our values.
Transparency and openness have always sat at the heart of our work. That is why, once again, we are sharing an overview of our 2025 feedback review, along with the changes and reflections it has inspired. We cannot include every comment, but we hope this summary shows that we listen, that we care, and that we are willing to look honestly at both what worked and what did not.
Most of our feedback in 2025 was excellent. A small number of comments were difficult to read, but they were also useful. Rather than hide from them, we want to acknowledge them.
Table of Contents
Feedback Review: What Didn’t Go Right
Trip Fit and Small Group Expectations
One complaint this year highlighted the importance of tour fit. The guest was a professional photographer and journalist travelling on one of our small group tours. Although he achieved the photography he wanted, it became clear that the shared group format was not the right match for his expectations, working style, or professional needs.
His feedback covered several areas, including guiding, translation, context at sites, and safety expectations. While difficult to receive, it prompted a useful internal review.
What we are changing:
We are now more explicit that our small group tours are not suitable for professional photographers, journalists, or travellers with highly specific photography-led or media-focused requirements. These trips are designed as shared journeys shaped by group dynamics, flexibility, and the realities of travel in Mongolia, rather than around individual professional objectives.
Host Families and Last-Minute Changes
Feedback this year also raised a useful point about what happens when a host family is unavailable. When that happens, we always try to minimise disruption, but we do not automatically make a last-minute substitution.
We did make that choice once during summer on a trip we had run before, when the usual family changed. It did not work well and caused stress and disappointment for our guests. For us, it reinforced why our work depends on long-term relationships rather than treating local families as interchangeable parts of an itinerary.
There will always be a risk of last-minute change because of the realities of daily life but we would rather know exactly who our guests are staying with than make a rushed replacement.
Not every family is suited to hosting international visitors. Families in Mongolia, like families anywhere, can face significant pressures, and not all are in a position to host tourism well, safely, or consistently. That is why we choose our partnerships carefully.
What we will continue to do:
We will continue developing partnerships with families who are interested in tourism and who have the stability, interest, and practical conditions needed to host guests well.
Guiding, Safety, and Team Support
One guest this year was unhappy with the guiding on his tour, although other group members rated the trip assistant highly. His comments reflected a particular set of expectations and included comparisons with other Mongolian guides he met during the journey.
He also raised a safety concern, which we reviewed carefully. While we did not feel it pointed to a wider safety failing, we believe it is important to acknowledge it here. Feedback of this kind is always taken seriously and used to review both our work and our training.
This sits within a wider part of our work. One of our major aims is to create employment opportunities for Mongolian women from underrepresented backgrounds. Most of the women we work with already come to us with some tourism training and experience, often gained with other operators. They are not exclusive to EL, but through our work we aim to provide further training, support, and access to different ways of improving their lives and livelihoods.
This is not always the easiest path, but it is central to who we are. The feedback reminded us that we must keep strengthening both our support for team members and the way we explain our approach to guests.
What we will continue to do:
We will continue strengthening training, communication, and support for our trip assistants. The fact that our team members continue to be headhunted by other tourism companies suggests this investment is needed and having a wider impact.
Drinking Water
Feedback this year again highlighted the balance between reducing plastic waste and helping guests feel confident about water safety.
We understand that some guests prefer bottled water, and we are happy for individuals to buy it if they wish. At the same time, access to bottled water is not always easy in remote areas, and the plastic waste it creates remains a concern.
What we are changing:
We continue to provide boiled water, recommend reusable filtered water bottles, and have updated our trip information so that our approach to drinking water is explained more clearly in advance.
Response Times and Booking Processes
As a small, highly seasonal business, we know our response times are not always as fast as we would like. We focus only on Mongolia, do not have a large office team, and tailor-made itineraries take time to design properly.
What we are changing:
In 2025, we moved to new back-office software designed for small operators. Although itinerary creation will still take time, the software should help create a smoother booking process and allow us to streamline pre-departure information and guest communication.
Yeruu Lodge
Yeruu Lodge is one of the more premium accommodations we use, and feedback this year showed that guest experience there was mixed.
Guests appreciated the beautiful setting, the comfort of the rooms, and the location. However, several comments highlighted shortcomings in service and in how food, drink, and shared spaces were managed. Concerns included limited drink availability, slow or disorganised meal service, a lack of clarity around corkage charges, breakfast issues on departure morning, and larger groups appearing to take priority over independent guests.
For us, this feedback highlighted the gap that can sometimes exist between accommodation style and service delivery. A challenge that remains widespread in Mongolia.
What we are changing:
We will keep this under close review, take it into account when setting expectations with guests, and continue assessing how we work with the property.
Feedback Review: What We Did Get Right
Launching Our First Impact Report
One of the most important milestones of the year was the launch of our first Impact Report. There is always more work to do, but the report is one way of showing where tour money goes, how support is shared, and how our guests are part of a bigger travel philosophy.
Long Term Local Community Partnerships
Our community-based tourism model remains rooted in long-term partnerships that support local livelihoods and allow families to participate in tourism in ways that work for them. We do not ask our partners to alter their way of life to meet outside expectations. Instead, we try to maintain exchanges that are respectful, genuine, and sustainable for everyone involved.
Building Opportunity Through Tourism
We remain committed to using tourism to create employment and training opportunities for Mongolian women, particularly those from backgrounds often overlooked by the industry. This continues to be one of the hardest and most important parts of our work.
Navigating A Changing Tourism Landscape
With visa-free entry introduced in 2023 and extended until 2028, tourism in Mongolia has grown rapidly. Much of that growth has happened with little regulation, creating a more challenging landscape for companies like ours.
Mongolia is often perceived as a budget destination, even though travel here is costly. At the same time, we are not a luxury company — nor are we a standard tour operator. This can sometimes lead to misunderstanding.
Some travellers see our prices and expect luxury. Others experience our simpler homestays and assume we are cutting corners. Some expect a guide who has lived outside Mongolia and experienced other cultures firsthand.
Social media also continues to shape how Mongolia is perceived, often in ways that do not reflect the reality on the ground. Influencers, content creators, and photographers often focus on the parts of Mongolian culture that sell, rather than Mongolia as it is.
Having worked in Mongolia since 2006, and run our business since 2010, we have seen major changes in both tourism and traveller expectations. Even so, we remain guided by our ethics. As a small independent business without investors, we are able to stay flexible and adapt.
We are committed to travel that is responsible and fair — for Mongolia’s people, for local communities, for our guests, and for our team. It is not always an easy balance to maintain, but it is one we believe in.
As a small team, we are not always as efficient as we would like to be, but our priorities remain the same:
to create meaningful journeys for our guests
to ensure those journeys also benefit Mongolia
to keep learning, improving, and staying true to our values
We hope this review helps future guests better understand what to expect from an EL journey, and reminds past guests that their support truly matters.
As always, we are deeply grateful to every guest who chose to travel with us in 2025. Whether you were with us for the first time or returning again, your support allows us to continue doing this work in the way we believe it should be done.
Thank you for being part of a bigger travel philosophy.
Jess & the EL Team
