Are you familiar with G Adventures? Bruce Poon Tip founded Gap Adventures in 1990 after returning from a backpacking tour of Asia. The company was originally named Gap Adventures, in part because Tip had a “Eureka” moment and realized that there was a gap between traditional group tours in air conditioned buses with fancy hotels and backpacking. Many people wanted something in the middle, where you could enjoy the safety and camaraderie of a group but get safely off the beaten path for a real travel experience. (G Adventures Photo: Bruce Poon Tip receiving a ritual Amazon cleansing).
Since then, G Adventures has become the world’s largest and probably best adventure travel company, receiving countless awards and developing a kind of travel that is more than travel. G Adventures does more than any other adventure travel company to give back to local communities and be there in times of need. In 2003, G Adventures created it’s own sustainable travel nonprofit Planeterra. G Adventures is not just a company; it’s a cause.
Like G Adventures, BeachCorps had a “Eureka!” moment. Ours was when Founder David Searby was speaking us the US Embassy Press Attaché on a Dominican radio show focused on travel in the North Coast of the Dominican Republic and the host asked “What do you love about the Dominican Republic? Searby had just visited a wonderful nonprofit, The Dream Project in Cabarete (now a key founding partner for BeachCorps). He answered: “Well, obviously I love your beautiful beaches and hotels. And I love the wonderful nonprofits that are here, too. Hey, wouldn’t it be great if you could get some of the tourists who stay in your hotels to take excursions to help these great nonprofits?” And the light bulb went off. For the rest of the interview, Searby’s mind was racing ahead.
We hope to fill a market gap in travel to allow travelers to combine nice vacations with impact travel and sustainability. BeachCorps seeks to reinvent impact travel to focus on empowering locals through established nonprofit causes and social campaigns, instead of creating voluntourism experiences designed chiefly to please tourists. BeachCorps is designed to be a benevolent “trojan horse” to spread sustainability inside one of the least sustainable travel markets: the all-inclusive travel industry. This industry has brought so much good to the Dominican Republic, but there is a growing recognition that going forward the industry must give back more to local communities and slow down and one day reverse the harm done to the local environment.
We may be flattering ourselves, but we are struck by the numerous similarities in our approach to business. We agree with Tip: “There is a social revolution taking place and I know the only brands that matter in the future are the ones that make people’s lives better.” We will seek to create a company culture similar to G Adventures to create “passion and purpose as a way to engage the people inside the business which in turn will engage people outside of it.” The G Adventures list of core values inspired us to create our own so that from the beginning our company and all its employees know the kind of culture that will create voluntourism that helps and doesn’t hurt.
We’ve even mirrored some of Tip’s bonehead moves. In his wonderful book “Looptail,” Tip tells the story of how he got himself arrested in Burma after illegally crossing the border as a tourist hiding a camera, raising fears he was a spy. He narrowly escaped years in a Burmese prison in a story that is too good to tell here. READ THE BOOK! On our end, BeachCorps once had the Beachmobile impounded by the Dominican traffic police AMET for a day after a bonehead move driving around without a copy of our car registration in the glove compartment.
So far our the story of BeachCorps is not nearly as exciting and rewarding as the story of G Adventures. But one day the Beach Bum wants to grow up and be like Bruce Poon Tip, and BeachCorps wants to grow into a company that is changing travel and helping local communities.
In Part 2 of this blog “G Adventures, A Little Grain of Sand, and Doing Big Little Things” we’ll look at Tips’ two books “Looptail” and “Doing Big Little Things” and how these books have inspired BeachCorps.
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