Face To Face with G Adventures' Bruce Poon Tip: 'We need to reset travel'

The entrepreneur – and author – concludes travellers and travel businesses have been given a unique opportunity to reshape how we travel in the future.

Unlearn: The Year The Earth Stood Still is a free, short “instabook” (e-book) written by Poon Tip while in isolation last month.

It is designed to be a letter to all who love to travel, to inspire them to reimagine how they can emerge from this pandemic with a renewed sense of purpose when selecting their next holiday.

“This pandemic has created the largest start-up economy ever seen as we all go into hibernation and wait until we can travel again – and we must travel again,” he said.

“But we can do it better. We can rethink everything we thought was normal. Why fight so damn hard to return to normal when the opportunity to transform travel is on the other side of this mess?

“Initially, I wanted to write a love letter to our travellers, to reassure them that travel will return and to provide them with hope for the future.

“Our mission has always been to use travel as a force for good, but as the letter got a lot longer, I realised I needed to encourage anyone who travels in the future to think about the positive impact they can have on communities by making wise choices.

“Some of the poorest people in the world are suffering right now, and they will need us when travel returns.

“People will travel again. We don’t yet know when, but we know that they will. I want to challenge everyone who travels to ‘unlearn’ what they think they know.

“We have the opportunity to use this reset to be more conscious about how we can improve, both as individuals and as a wider travel community. We all have the ability to create positive change and to transform even more lives in the future.”

Poon Tip describes Unlearn: The Year The Earth Stood Still as designed to “capture a moment in time”.

Through the course of the book he reveals how this crisis unfolded for him personally, then looks at the current state of the travel industry regarding home-sharing, climate change, “flight-shaming”, overtourism and the proliferation of mass-market holiday options.

He next explores the lessons travel teaches us in terms of connection and compassion and the potential for community tourism to be a force for good.

Unlearn: The Year The Earth Stood Still is now available for download on Apple Books, and Kobo in Canada.