About Us

Kaunos Tours was founded in 1993 in the small village of Dalyan in the South-West region of Turkey as a small tourism business for car rental, motorbike and bicycle rentals. In 1995, a franchise agreement was signed with the high standard and quality car rental organisation Europcar and started to provide the Dalyan area with a professional car rental service. The same year, Kaunos Tours introduced guided mountain bike tours to explore the Dalyan vicinity; it became a licensed tour operator a year later. The first web site of Dalyan has been designed by Kaunos Tours and is on line since 1997. On line bookings for accommodations, airport transfers, car rentals and package tours became real for Dalyan. Over the past 15 years, new tours have been introduced such as jeep safari, road cycling, canyoning, seakayaking, rafting, trekking and various boat tours and package tour arrangements have been made with several foreign tour operators.
Today, Kaunos Tours serves as an experienced tour operator organising a variety of daily and multi-day outdoor adventures, private cultural trips and relaxed tours in the area and as a professional tourism company offering car-rental, transfer and accommodation services.

Our mission:
As Kaunos Tours our mission is to ensure with helpful, experienced and friendly staff that all of our guests have a great holiday, explore Turkey in our attractive tours, have no worries about their transfers and accommodation and above all enjoy life while here and leave with good memories about this beautiful country.

Staff: 
Kaunos Tours’ specially trained staff is dedicated to provide excellent service to its customers. There are three outdoor guides including the general manager, one cultural guide, four transfer drivers, one jeep safari guide and 4 drivers, two boat captains, an accountant and a sales office personnel. All personnel are bilingual (excellent command of Turkish and English), except for local drivers with low command of English. Kaunos Tours office also works just like a local tourism information center which gives detailed information about anything about Dalyan and Turkey.

Licences: 
Under rulings set by the Turkish governement , all travel operators have to obtain a tourism enterprise licence called “TURSAB”. Kaunos Tours holds an A-type licence (with licence no. 3830) for in-coming and out-going tours. All tours are insured with our special outdoor insurance and public liability insurance up to 500.000 USD.

Activities:
Kaunos Tours is the acknowledged expert in adventure tours and activities in the Dalyan region. We specialise in a wide range of fun day-activities and multi-day trips in Dalyan and area. Whether customers want a lazy day on a boat or a multi-day trip comprising of walks between villages, a jeep safari, canyoning, seakayaking or white-water rafting, we arrange it as a tailor-made package to suit customers’ exact needs. We are experts in the use of sea-kayaks, mountain bikes and 4WD vehicles and know many little-known paths to small, hidden villages, enabling us to show guests a different side to rural Turkey.
Our weekly active package tours are great to discover the unbeaten sections of the country. Seakayaking along the South-West turquoise coast with wild camping and Walking the Lycian Way are our weekly adventure packs where customers enjoy the coast and rural areas in small groups. Multi-Active Outdoor weekly package tour combines a variety of active daily tours with Dalyan as base.
Beside the tours in the area of Dalyan, Kaunos Tours runs multi-day cycle tours from Izmir to Antalya, using back roads and visiting the many ancient sites from the Lycian time period such as Ephesus, Miletos, Xanthos and Olympos. On this tour we do combine activities with culture. The ancient culture on the sites and the now- a- days culture by visiting small villages and chat with the locals. Many of our customers travel on to Istanbul & Cappadocia, both a live culture site. Organising their transport, accommodation and guides is part of a complete package we offer. The role of our guides is not only to make sure everything runs smoothly, but to inform, in a fun way, something of the traditions and culture of the region and its people, ensuring customers go back with knowledge on what they see and the people they meet.

Responsible travel: 
Dalyan is located in an environmentaly protected area, which includes the beautiful Köyceğiz Lake and Iztuzu beach, used by sea turtles for egg laying. Kaunos Tours prides itself on organizing its trips and activities in an eco-friendly way, giving full respect for the environment, enjoying it but not damaging it. Over many years we have built up strong relationships with local families and small businesses and as a result we now provide a significant income to some of these people, supporting the local economy in new ways.