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| Bruce Poon Tip is CEO of Gap Adventures |
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New explorations
Interview from Spotlight, Vol. 501
Bruce Poon Tip is CEO of Gap Adventures, a Toronto-based group adventure tour operator. As a 20-year-old, he founded the company in 1990 with a $10,000 loan and a $5,000 advance from VISA. Gap Adventures has become a $120 million-a-year company with 1,000 employees and recently launched YOLO (You Only Live Once), a new product for the 18- to 30-something crowd.
Group Tour Spotlight: How did you get started in the travel business?
Bruce Poon Tip: I started Gap Adventures in 1990. It was a very different time. People researched their travel very differently back then.
There was a gap in the market, and that’s why the name Gap Adventures came out. The gap was between mainstream travel like resorts and cruises and backpackers. You either had to backpack or you had to go on more of a mainstream holiday. I thought there was a demand there, and I decided to start the company.
Group Tour Spotlight: Do you have a company motto?
Bruce Poon Tip: We have our core values, and that is being committed to changing people’s lives — our employees and our travelers. We are really committed to creating unique travel experiences that impact people’s lives, as well having an impact on local communities. We have five core values.
Group Tour Spotlight: Run through those core values.
Bruce Poon Tip: The first is we love changing people’s lives. Number Two is lead with service in terms of leading the industry with the best possible customer service. Number Three is do the right thing. Number Four for us is embrace the bizarre. It’s our commitment to embracing every and all people of different personalities and different types. We are a service company, and we see ourselves as a group that are stronger together than apart. The last one is create happiness in the community as a company, which we do regularly.
Group Tour Spotlight: In your view, what sets Gap Adventures apart?
Bruce Poon Tip: Well, I think it would have to be our people and our company culture. We have a different kind of business philosophy about investing in our people and our company culture. We are developing a company that people can identify with beyond just the travel holidays that we offer. And so our customers and our consumers relate to our business and our company as well as our travel experiences.
But we create a higher purpose with all the commitment we have to giving back through our foundation. We have a foundation called the Planeterra Foundation. That’s just our business philosophy in terms of engaging people beyond just the holiday. For us, it’s about a whole lifestyle choice of sustainable living and sustainable holidays.
Group Tour Spotlight: Do you find that your travelers want to aspire to that lifestyle or do you have to work at that message?
Bruce Poon Tip: We have been doing it for a very long time. And we have definitely found in the last four or five years much more of a connection with our consumers toward being interested in the sustainable side of our business and identifying more with that. More and more companies are going to jump on board with sustainable philosophies and sustainable programs. Our customers used to be kind of a niche market, a smaller kind of niche group. But over the last four or five years, we’ve obviously grown quite considerably to the point where we are just appealing to more people and it’s not necessarily what we are doing as much as that the mindset of travelers is changing.
Introducing a new trip style
Group Tour Spotlight: How has your business changed since 1990?
Bruce Poon Tip: Well, the world has changed. The main thing is we have adapted with the change in technology. When we started, there was no fax machine here. No Internet. People researched their travel very differently back then.
What we are very good at is that we are very entrepreneurial. We’ve been able to take advantage of the changes that we have all faced. The recent change in the last five years is social media, with Facebook and Twitter. People are just so engaged and so connected and that is always fair to offer our business.
Group Tour Spotlight: In addition to adding many new trips in 2010 and an expanded list of activity options, Gap Adventures has just come out with YOLO, You Only Live Once. This is a new trip style that aims to give recent graduates and young professionals the freedom to determine how to experience exotic destinations without exceeding their budgets. Travelers can choose their adventures and cuisine. Why are you launching YOLO?
Bruce Poon Tip: The last few years we have tried to develop tours for different age groups. They were basically the difference between our comfort class and our more rustic, basic trips. We thought people would choose different trips based on demographics. It just didn’t happen on every trip. On basic trips we would have 60-year-olds and on every comfort class trips we would have 25-year-olds because the market has changed that much. We wanted to start differentiating a younger kind of traveler that wants more remote, more rustic and is willing to be a bit more rough and ready with their travel experience. That’s where we started — almost organized backpacking. And we wanted to make sure it catered to a younger group. And when I say younger, it’s 18- to 30-something. It’s a wide range of travelers, but we wanted to make sure that the right people got on the trip.
For us, because we sell all over the world and we sell with travel agents — 70 percent of our business comes through some kind of travel agent or wholesaler — we don’t have that consumer in front of us to get the consumer on the right trip. So we are constantly trying to figure out ways to make it as easy as possible for travel agents to get our travelers on the right trip. YOLO was a great next step for us.
Group Tour Spotlight: What’s kind of response have you had to YOLO?
Bruce Poon Tip: We launched YOLO in November, and our first brochure has 80 tours worldwide. It’s very exciting stuff for us, and it’s been extremely well received. We are really pleased with it.
Asia, unplugged
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Group Tour Spotlight: What do you see as the biggest trend in the group adventure market?
Bruce Poon Tip: There are a couple of trends. In terms of destination, there is a huge push at the moment to Asia. Asia is doing extremely well for us. And I think that is because Asia has just had a hard run in the last five or six years between the tsunami and SARS and bird flu. There has been pent-up demand. Asia has had things that have kept people away for a while, so there is a huge return to Asia.
In terms of trends in travel, I think what I’m noticing more than anything is that more and more people want to go to more remote places like Tibet and Mongolia and Galapagos and Antarctica. That’s new, and that goes back to how connected people are right now.
Group Tour Spotlight: What do you mean?
Bruce Poon Tip: BlackBerries and iPhones and social media and e-mail. We’re so wired up, I think there is a natural progression for people to just disconnect and want to go to more remote places.
You hear from people a lot of times that they are actually quite scared to go away and not have BlackBerry access. But people are wanting to disconnect. I’m just seeing that people want more and more remote places, whereas there was a trend at one point where people wanted more hustle and bustle — craft markets in Cairo and Hanoi — to see the live action in a country. I think that people are just so connected and wired right now that when you go on holiday, you just want to unplug.
Group Tour Spotlight: What’s your view of voluntourism?
Bruce Poon Tip: We’ve always had elements of volunteering on our tours. We’ve never been into the full volunteer holiday. I’m not a firm believer in that model. It’s a very difficult thing to organize volunteers, and I’ve never seen anyone that can do it right on a mass scale without feeling like people are being dropped in the middle of a school in Uganda and told to teach the kids English.
Too much infrastructure is needed to truly create long-term volunteer tours. I just don’t think it’s possible to do it right. One of our core values is about doing the right thing for us — we have always stayed away from it.
We have voluntours in that we have elements of volunteering for two or three days on a tour where you do tangible things. You take a regular tour, then there are a few days added on to it to volunteer, which is in a more controlled environment and is something that we can manage and we feel that we can have a positive impact on people’s lives. We’re very big into that, and that’s very popular for us.
Leading a business leader
Group Tour Spotlight: You’ve built up quite a company. What are you most proud of about your business?
Bruce Poon Tip: There are quite a few things. I’m very proud right now that we won six awards in six weeks just recently. I’m very proud of our people for achieving these awards. Condé Nast Traveler gave us the World Savers Award, Travel + Leisure gave us the Global Vision Award. Travel Market gave us the World Tourism Award. We got really amazing recognition so I’m very proud of the people here for doing that.
But I think I’m the proudest of the foundation work with Planeterra and being seen as raising the bar in our industry and being leaders in that space over the course of the last 20 years. We invested in it very early. Our sustainable programs started in 1995. The work that we have done and the stuff that the Planeterra Foundation has been able to accomplish is pretty amazing. Aside from the work, I think that we have had an impact on the industry. It’s something to be really proud of and that goes back to the people. I wish I could say it was me personally. But we’re a company of more than 1,000 employees so everyone is involved.
Group Tour Spotlight: What advice do you have for other tour operators?
Bruce Poon Tip: My advice to any tour company that wants to incorporate some form of sustainability program or incorporate sustainability into their business model is that they have to be aware that the consumer is becoming more savvy and more educated. Consumers are just more aware of greenwashing and those companies that aren’t truly committed. In order for you to almost retrofit your business, you have to put it at the core of your business model. Customers are becoming so smart these days, and they have access to so much information. You can no longer fake it. It has to be at the heart of your business decision-making. But there are huge benefits. I’m a firm believer in sustainability in terms of the consumer and internally within your company in terms of staff retention and getting good people.
If tour operators are going to commit to it, they have to understand that they have to put it at the heart of their business model if you want to achieve stuff in the future. Greenwashing has worked up until now. But in the last two years the consumer has surpassed the knowledge that is out there. They are very aware. And they are able to understand the difference between the various sustainable tourism programs.
Group Tour Spotlight: What are the benefits of group travel?
Bruce Poon Tip: I’m a big supporter of group travel. People traveling in groups have the ability to have a more positive impact. Obviously there are issues in terms of safety and bringing people together. It’s making things easy and selling people relaxing holidays as opposed to individuals who are more motivated by the challenge of figuring out logistics. We’re a holiday company, and you can see more and do more in a shorter period of time in a more relaxing and safer environment within a group.
Bruce Poon Tip
CEO
Gap Adventures
19 Charlotte St.
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5V 2H5
(416) 260-0999
www.gapadventures.com
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