The Luxe Story
WHAT MAKES US DIFFERENT
Our Story
Luxe Tours is a proudly family owned tour with both our founders, Katelyn & Toby, living locally in Te Anau, the gateway to Milford Sound. We have been exploring Milford Sound for years and have developed our tour to show the best local-known locations and the famous ones you would have seen also.
Katelyn & Toby are adventurers in their own right, having traversed most of the mountains you see around the Te Anau - Milford Sound area and have explored almost 100% of Lake Te Anau & Milford Sound by personal boat. Katelyn has even competed in the 'GodZone Adventure Race', an eight day continuous race with the 2022 edition tracking through Fiordland.
Adventurers & travellers at heart, Katelyn came up with the idea for Luxe Tours one morning sitting in the Eglinton Valley (on the way to Milford Sound), watching bus after bus stopping for a quick photo and then moving on. She said "surely you need more time than that to actually enjoy the area".
Luxe Tours was born.
Our Milford Tour is Different
The team has worked hard to establish a tour that gives you time and more relaxation throughout the journey. Time to "indulge yourself in nature". Our time at each unique photo stop is a good amount to stretch your legs, enjoy the scenery and take in the fresh mountain air, rather than moving onto the next stop as soon as possible.
We have purposefully kept the tour to departing from Te Anau and not Queenstown. We recommend visitors should stay in Te Anau for the night either side of travelling to Milford Sound and enjoy all our little township has to offer - cafes & restaurants, walks, boat tours & the amazing people! It is also much safer. Staying in Queenstown either side of your day in Milford adds an extra 4-5 hours of driving time to your day, on top of an already full day of adventure. It can be quite fatiguing and in winter you are guaranteed to be driving in the dark.
Our Sustainability Promise
We put our money where are our mouths are with our sustainability efforts, with the realistic expectation to donate over 3000 native trees for planting in 2024 alone.
As well as our sustainable and eco-friendly operating model, we have designed 100% eco-friendly products & packaging on board, our own composting system & most importantly - carbon offset program. Interesting fact - at our HQ, there are 10 large composting worm bins working overtime, processing up to 20kg of waste each day!
We are big believers in tourism being a driver for the enduring power of nature. In decades to come Katelyn & Toby's hope is that Luxe Tours can drive efforts into keeping the area clean, green, healthy and prosperous for future generations that will adventure through Fiordland.
