I’d like to begin this month’s journal by reminding everyone that travel is a privilege and not a right. This is a notion we hold close to our hearts here at G Adventures – one our founder, Bruce Poon Tip, uses regularly, serving to remind us that travel is a gift, and we should appreciate all that entails.
I am feeling especially appreciative right now, having just returned from an incredible fam trip to Borneo with a group of highly engaged agent partners. It came at a time I needed to experience some extraordinary travel and to be reminded what meaningful change we can encourage when we travel the right way.
I’ve come back more energized than ever, and I encourage everyone to experience a trip like this – one where you return and truly appreciate the responsibility that we have to promote a better way to travel, and to give back to the world that we live in.
I travelled with some of the best on our small group adventure! Being an agent fam, all 12 of us were from Canada, excluding our awesome local chief experience officer (CEO), Ronald! Our travel agents had a mix of experience – some had traveled with G Adventures before, and some were totally new to our style of travel.
We all came with a unified mission – to embrace the sense of adventure, to respect the wildlife we were about to encounter, and to appreciate the opportunity ahead of us. I speak for all of us when I say we came back changed for the better. A special thanks to Ronald, who had an exceptional depth of knowledge and really made the trip extra special for each of us.
I am also appreciative to work for a company that believes in making the world a better place. This particular trip is part of The Jane Goodall Collection, meaning it is supported by Dr Jane Goodall, who also endorsed G Adventures’ animal welfare policy. You can learn more about that here. We travelled on the Borneo: East Sabah Adventure, which was seven days of everyday ‘wow’. We woke up every day reflecting on how lucky we were for what we had seen the day before, and ended each day thinking that it couldn’t get any better than this – but it just did that!
As I reminded my exceptional group of travel agents in Borneo, this trip also has a ‘Ripple Score’ of 100, meaning that 100 per cent of the dollars spent in destination stay in Borneo to benefit the local communities that we visited. We remain the only travel company in the world that tells travellers how much of their travel dollars benefit the communities that they travel to.
At G Adventures, we talk about changing people’s lives through travel. On every G trip that I’ve ever been on, I experience this. On this trip, I also came away feeling changed because of the impact I witnessed the trip having on our partners.
Personally, I’ve come back knowing that my best years are ahead of me, and I have a greater role to play in encouraging more people to travel responsibly, and to create happiness and community simply by going on vacation.
Speaking of having their best years still ahead of them, it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge an extraordinary accomplishment for our founder, Bruce Poon Tip, last month!
Bruce was awarded the highest civilian honour in Canada – he is now an Officer of the Order of Canada. This is a huge privilege for him and very deserving because of his contribution to the global travel industry and his work in philanthropy.
Bruce keeps inspiring us to do better – community is everything, travel is a force for good, and we all have a role to play in changing people’s lives through travel, which Bruce has dedicated his life to promoting and has since coached me on.
Most of all, I appreciate being able to share his vision with agents and travellers every day to help change even more lives through travel.
#ProudToBeG
DG
G Adventures’ Managing Director David Green’s monthly column, ‘G in 3’ is a 3-minute read running exclusively in Travelweek Daily all through 2023
