Sustainable development we believe in at El Patio-Tunis!

At El Patio-Tunis, we work responsibly to preserve our immediate social, cultural and economic environment and beyond!

With our actions as a guest house, we are working for a healthier, greener environment in harmony with its social environment. We try to make decisions that will preserve nature, and we encourage our staff to participate in the development of these practices on a daily basis. Our personal and financial investment for a more environmentally friendly tourist structure is part of a global vision with a long-term strategy.

Enrich the local culture

Our house is located in the heart of the Tunis Medina. By renovating and transforming it into a small guest house, we wanted to contribute to the conservation of the historic soul of the Medina and to strengthen the social status of its inhabitants. Through this project, we are happy to be able to enrich the local culture and its economic dynamics. When our staff live nearby, we can make sure the journey doesn't take too long and cause a lot of pollution. We also buy services and products from local businesses that contribute to the economic dynamics of the neighborhood.

The essential actions

El Patio-Tunis is equipped with a photovoltaic solar energy station which is consolidated by low consumption LED lighting. Thanks to this investment, and from the opening, we produce a good part of our electricity consumption, thus reducing the carbon footprint of our structure on the environment. We have also covered the patio of our Dar with a movable glass structure (closed in winter and partly open in summer). These two heavy investments allow us to save a lot of heating energy in winter and less cooling energy consumption in summer. At the catering level, we operate with a pre-order system so that we can avoid food waste during breakfast and dinner.

Participate with us

We make our immediate surroundings aware of good practices for a clean and green environment. We make our guests aware of the moderate use of water and electricity. Housekeeping and towel change are done at the host's request. In cooperation with a young and very dynamic waste collection structure, we recycle waste. Colibris is the first Tunisian startup specializing in door-to-door collection of recyclable waste from households and SMEs, with a reward system for users. We avoid food waste during breakfast. We communicate our actions in favor of a responsible guesthouse in our brochures, on our blog and during guided tours.

Our projects and future actions

1. Continuing on from what we have already achieved for a sustainable guesthouse, we plan to cover the roof of the house with a living planted carpet. This process will be doubly beneficial: 1 / further reduce our electricity consumption for air conditioning in summer and reducing the heating in winter. 2 / beautify the roof with a green roof with production of vegetable will make our guests aware of the importance of preserving the environment, particularly in urban area. We are counting on the expertise of our environmental and financial partners to turn this project into a reality.

2. A social cultural center: The district of Tourbet el Bey, however historic, rich with its active and young population, where great monuments of the architectural heritage of Tunis have been built since the 13th century, has not benefited from the many cultural projects, that the Medina of Tunis has known since the 70s. The cruel lack of a cultural dynamic with great added value severely handicaps the development of this part of the Medina and creates a sociocultural imbalance with the "quartier le Tribunal" and "la rue du Pasha". El Patio-Tunis and in cooperation with all living forces in the Medina who would love to participate in this project, want to boost this initiative for a leveling up of the local specifications and include them in a dynamic of sustainable development. An existing site with typical architecture and well suited to a cultural activity, easy to develop and for which the financial costs of development and establishment seem quite moderate is the small El Koba mosque, a site who symbolizes the knowledge and the culture since the 14th century, where the famous historian and father of historical sociology Ibnu Khaldoun studied before joining the great Zitouna mosque, a few steps away. This space with a large room and a few small outbuildings would provide an excellent first cultural center with a social and culturel dynamic which will offer the opportunity to restore the Tourbet el Bey district to its former prestige as a district of knowledge and culture.