Winner of the Travvy Award for "Best Tour Operator Adventure Travel"
In 1990 Bruce Poon Tip founded GAP Adventures to provide the kind of travel he wanted but could not find on the market. Twenty-five years later, it turns out that GAP, or G Adventures as it is now called, was a model for the kind of travel nearly everyone is looking for today.
"I launched G Adventures with the belief that other travelers would share my desire to experience authentic adventures in a responsible and sustainable manner," said Poon Tip.
Boy, was he right. From the beginning the company attracted a loyal following of people who shared its approach to travel. One hundred thousand people travel with G Adventures every year. Today the company has 22 offices around the world, offers more than 700 tours, operates in more than 100 countries on seven continents, and has more than 2,000 employees.
His hunch was so much on the mark that today practically every tour operator promotes their products as though Bruce Poon Tip wrote their playbook, promoting "experiential travel," "authenticity," "immersion," and "sustainable travel."
GAP stood for "Great Adventure People" and also referred to the idea that the company would offer a type of travel that would fill a gap in the marketplace.
Poon Tip started the company when he was still in college. A born entrepreneur, he had already had four businesses by the time he started his travel company.
"First was a bookmarks business," said Poon Tip. "Then I had a paper distribution business. When I was 12 years old I had 14 paper routes. I contracted them out to other kids. Then I had a rabbit business. I imported dwarf rabbits from Holland. I had the first two in North America. I took them across America and showed them at 4H Clubs."
In its 25-year history G Adventures has stayed at the leading edge of innovation in the travel industry. The small group adventure travel specialist is a model for the kind of immersive, experiential travel people are increasingly looking for as travelers evolve and their needs and interests change.
From its inception, G offered small group adventure tours that focus on culture, nature and active travel, and targeted people "with a sense of adventure - people who want to leave the beaten path and authentically immerse themselves in a local culture or environment to experience the real world in a sustainable manner."
In 2011 after being sued by the Gap clothing company over the name, GAP Adventures changed its name to G Adventures. The newly named company continued without a blink, actually getting more bookings right after changing the name than before.
Clearly it was more than a name that attracted people to the company. It has more to do with the kind of travel G offers, and the company's core values, which it formulates as: Love, Lead, Embrace, Create and Do.
The company offers travel in nine styles: Classic, Comfort, Active, Yolo (youth), Family, Rail, Marine, Local Living, and Private Groups. The company is dedicated to sustainable travel and takes more than 100,000 clients annually on trips on seven continents.
Apart from its financial success, G Adventures is a leader in sustainable tourism initiatives. In 2003 the company created Planeterra, a nonprofit organization dedicated to sustainable community development through travel.
Planeterra has supported more than 46 projects in 23 countries and invested more than $4 million into local communities. Planeterra funds projects to support people in some of the destinations G Adventures' tours visit. The projects include such things as providing homes for homeless children in Cusco, Peru; flying 60 doctors and nurses to Tibet to provide vision-restoring operations to 600 Tibetan women; and establishing a permanent eye care center in Cambodia.
G Adventures charts its own course apart from the pack. It has always gone its own way, following a different drummer than what the mainstream seems to hear. But increasingly the course it sets is being followed by the mainstream.
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