"This is about celebrating tourism, about how tourism can change the world,” announced Bruce Poon Tip. Standing on stage, he was conducting the orchestra that is G Adventures’ second World Community Tourism Summit.
Poon Tip, founder of the small group escorted touring company, had gathered around 500 travel industry representatives in India’s Jaipur, from agents and suppliers to travellers and "CEOs" – G’s chief experience officers, or tour leaders.
Coinciding with World Tourism Day (27 September), G Adventures – together with its non-profit partner Planeterra – said it was here to celebrate wins, pledge further action and provoke debate on the true impact of travel on communities. Guest speakers included activists, project partners and Lonely Planet co-founder Tony Wheeler.
Poon Top, who founded G in 1990, continues: "We’ve had this dream at G Adventures, since we first started, that giving back could be going on holiday.
"We’re conditioned to give to charities when we want to give back, but what if we got to a place where you could go on holiday and change the world? You’ve seen it here. That it is really possible. Tourism can absolutely change lives.”
G Adventures now offers more than 750 across 100 countries spanning seven continents. Poon Tip’s dream has always been to ensure tourism contributes to local communication in far-reaching and long-lasting ways.
And on the precipice of the brand’s 35th anniversary, it’s clear his ambition isn’t slowing. If anything, things seem even more urgent.
’We have lots of work to do’
At last year’s GX Summit in Peru, the first, G launched its Trees for Days initiative – a pledge to plant one tree for every day a customer travels with the operator. By the end of 2004, more than three million trees will have been planted across 18 projects in 14 countries, benefitting 40,000 community members.
Plans to take G travellers to see these tree planting projects first-hand are afoot; eight projects will be added to tours by mid-2025.
It also launched Project 300, an ambition to extend Planeterra’s support to 300 communities through travel by 2030. With another 13 newly added, including four in India, the total number now stands at 130.
“We have a lot of work to do,” Poon Tip reflects as he sits down with TTG. “We’re in the middle of Project 300 – we’re learning so much.
"Community tourism is finicky; it takes a lot of handholding, encouragement and support. We can offer that, and help bring more people into the tourism economy.
"We’re entrepreneurial too. We want to push these communities as well. We constantly find challenges working with different communities, because every on is different.”
The four new social enterprises Planeterra is supporting in India, and are available on its tours of the country, have been stop-offs on fams surrounding the event.
They include Pink City Rickshaw, which employs women from low-income households in Jaipur to lead e-rickshaw tours, and Sheroes Hangout, a cafe in Agra – home to the Taj Mahal – that supports acid attack survivors.
Among those to address the summit was Meenu Vadera, founder of Planeterra partner Azad Foundation, which runs the Women With Wheels spoke of its partnership with G Adventures.
Training resource-poor women as drivers, it operates airport pickups for a number of its tours in Delhi and Jaipur. In ten years, it has supported more than 10,000 women, with G accounting for 50% of the business.
“We actively disrupt culture,” said Vadera. “The mission of Azad Foundation is to break these concrete walls around women, to bring them out on the road so they’re able to claim their citizenship and become active citizens of this world.
"They don’t just become empowered women, they learn to take control of their paths, of their lives."
Psychographics, not demographics
Travellers are changing too, with the pandemic necessitating radical change throughout G. "We laid off more than 2,000 employees during Covid – we lost a lot of great talent,” Poon Tip says.
“When travellers decided they wanted to travel again, it was exciting, but a challenge building back with a whole new group of people. We’ve been able to reimagine our company and rebuild like a start-up, but with 34 years’ experience.
"Our company is unrecognisable from how it was pre-pandemic. There was a push to build-back better.”
Customers have also changed, he believes. And so has what they want. Earlier this year, G introduced Geluxe, a more premium group tour concept – slower pace, upgraded accommodation and experiences rooted in community tourism projects. Described by Poon Tip as its most successful launch ever, G now offers 45 Geluxe trips across 26 destinations.
At GX India, G debuted its new Solo-ish Adventures range led exclusively by female CEOs for solo travellers, boosting opportunities for women in travel. Of the 319 million tourism-related jobs in the world, just 66 million are occupied by women.
“The funny thing is, we [our customers] have gotten younger and older at the same time,” says Poon Tip. “Geluxe definitely appeals to a younger audience. We also launched Roamies, a partnership with Hostelworld, in the middle of the pandemic, which is definitely for younger people.
"But we also launched Family, with National Geographic. We definitely don’t define ourselves by, you know, a demographic. We say it’s a psychographic, it’s a mindset. We’ve always believed in that."
Linking holidays and values
Next year’s GX event will be held in Jordan, and with G celebrating its 35th anniversary, it will double in size. “We said the first two GXs were to build our capacity for it. We wanted to go next to a country that was more challenging and needed it,” Poon Tip explains.
Looping back to GX’s central message, Poon Tip adds: “I’m hoping there’s a change in how people look at travel, that people understand the immense privilege we have to travel. You’re so privileged to say, ’I want to go on holiday’. And with that privilege comes great responsibility. It’s such a small percentage of people on the planet that get to travel.
"Everyone should benefit from that fact. If we can look for people to just change that mindset, and link their values with their holiday, the impact will be huge. It will be transformational.”
