JORDAN — Towards the end of TTAND’s annual conference, celebrating 10 years in the business, travel agents stepped out from the conference room – getting a chance to experience the host destination for themselves.

That included spending a day at Petra, a bucket-list archeological site dating back to 300 BC, guided by G Adventures CEOs (Chief Experience Officers) and with a private candlelit musical performance in front of the famed Treasury. This was followed by a Jeep ride through Wadi Rum with lunch at a Bedouin camp, and snorkeling and boating in the Red Sea at Aqaba.

It was a chance for TTAND travel agents to experience G Adventures’ style of sustainable travel, which they heard more about during a keynote from G Adventures founder Bruce Poon Tip, who flew in just for the occasion.

G Adventures founder Bruce Poon Tip (with TTAND travel advisor) flew to Jordan to deliver the keynote address

“You’re kind of guinea pigs,” said Poon Tip, referring to the sheer effort of organizing a conference for 284 participants across three destinations in Jordan: the Dead Sea, Petra and Aqaba.

There are a “finite amount of beautiful places and iconic destinations, and a growing number of people who want to see them,” he said, adding that one in 10 jobs globally is related to tourism. Women make up 60% of the travel industry and 80% of the industry’s decision-makers, meaning “women drive the tourism economy.”

“You have to sell customers what they want, but how many people got into the travel industry to get rich?” he said. When we sell on capacity and commoditize experiences, he said, the industry is missing an opportunity to redistribute wealth. “We have that opportunity to alleviate poverty in some of the poorest parts of the world.”

For every $100 spent on holiday, only $10 stays in the local economy, he said. Somewhere along the way we became “consumers” of culture, where we’re more concerned about the thread count of our sheets than about the destination itself.

“Imagine we get to a place where giving back is going on holiday,” he said, adding that the travel industry “has this opportunity to be a transformative industry to change people’s lives.”

The No. 1 thing that travel agents can do is help their clients understand that “travel is a privilege, travel is not a right – you as the sellers of travel have an opportunity to have that impact.”

Malia Asfour, managing director of the Jordan Tourism Board North America and board member of Tourism Cares, said that in many parts of the world, sustainability has negative connotations, like greenwashing.

“Meaningful experiences is the new luxury – you want to have these experiences in your itinerary,” she said, “Fortunately G Adventures and Planeterra have a lot of [these experiences].”

The Jordan Tourism Board has also created a meaningful travel map of Jordan (at www.golocaljordan.com), featuring social enterprises where money stays in local communities and empowers women and families. “We need to distribute tourism dollars all over the country and not bottleneck them in Petra or Amman,” said Asfour.

“Trailblazers is an important theme to us,” said Flemming Friisdahl, TTAND’s founder and President, reflecting on the conference’s theme for 2024. “Being in Jordan is one example of that. We’re going to continue to do things like this that make a difference.”

TTAND plans to keep working with the Jordan Tourism Board, now that the conference is wrapping up.

“We want to make sure that we keep that enthusiasm for Jordan alive to the best of our ability,” said Friisdahl. “Many agents are saying that they would sell this destination when they get back home.”

Penny Martin, TTAND’s VP of Agent Experience, with TTAND founder and President, Flemming Friisdahl

The closing session before travel agents made their way home on a chartered Royal Jordanian Airlines’ Dreamliner included an emotional goodbye from Penny Martin, TTAND’s VP of Agent Experience, who will be retiring from TTAND this summer.

During the conference, TTAND travel agents raised $73,200 for Pencils for Kids. TTAND also made a US$25,000 donation to Planeterra to help women and youth in the Duong Lam Village in Vietnam stop rural-to-urban migration by developing tourism opportunities, such as village tours, traditional meals and homestays. Going forward, TTAND will donate US$5,000 to this Planeterra project annually.

On behalf of TTAND, G Adventures is planting 2,400 trees as part of its Trees for Days initiative, which is meant to enhance community resilience in the face of climate change and support biodiversity conservation.

Next year’s TTAND conference will be held at the Iberostar Selection Paraíso Lindo in the Mayan Riviera.

To read the first two instalments of Travelweek’s coverage from TTAND’s 10th anniversary conference in Jordan, click here and here.