GAP Adventures Named a Leading Voluntourism Company

For all of you who thought that the adventure travel companies would never fully enter this space, here is the proof. Travel & Leisure just named Gap Adventures a leader in voluntourism. Is this because of their great trips? Sustainability practices? PR team?

I’m not saying that this award isn’t deserved because I met with Richard Edwards at ATWS and really think they have a great sustainable product. I just wanted to bring to everyone’s attention that adventure travel operators are officially in this space and its time to partner.

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Travel + Leisure names Gap Adventures a leader in voluntourism

The latest and best efforts at cultural preservation, environmental conservation, and community-building through tourism are recognized in Travel + Leisure’s 2009 Global Vision Awards. CEO and Founder Bruce Poon Tip of Gap Adventures, the world’s leading small group adventure tour operator, was one of 17 organisations recognised for efforts to promote voluntourism. Through the company’s non-profit organisation, Planeterra, Gap Adventures is dedicated to the development and support of small communities around the globe since 2003.

Voluntourism, a fast-growing segment of the travel industry has been pioneered by Gap Adventure’s vision to promote environmental responsibilty and a connection to locals. Planeterra’s range of projects, which span the arenas of health, education, employment skills training, cultural heritage preservation, and environmental conservation, help travellers find ways to give back to the people and places they visit. All projects have the central goal of helping local people achieve a sustainable way of life in an environmentally sensitive manner.

Highlights of Planeterra Voluntourism trips include:
- Project Costa Rica: Travellers get a hands on experience with the Sea Turtle Conservation Project including night patrols along the beach, data collection, beach clean-ups, maintenance, monitoring of the turtle and if the timing is right, counting baby turtles and releasing them.
- Project India: Volunteers participate in a five-day community project at the Bal Prakash Center which focuses on the eradication of child labour by a meaningful blend of education and vocation, while experiencing the beauty and adventure of India’s culture.

“We are excited to be honoured with this award and are pleased that Travel + Leisure recognizes Gap Adventures commitment promoting voluntourism,” says founder and CEO of Gap Adventures, Bruce Poon Tip. He adds, “We hope this honour will encourage travellers to seek out ways they can give back in the course of their adventures and make a positive impact on the world.”

Nancy Novogrod, editor-in-chief of Travel + Leisure, says “The individuals and organisations recognised in T+L’s 2009 Global Vision Awards epitomise the idea that travel is a force for good. Even in these challenging economic times, it is encouraging to see that important issues for our world and our industry are a priority for this year’s winners. We applaud their outstanding efforts and hope that they provide inspiration for both travelers and others in the travel world.”

As a result of Gap Adventure’s commitment to voluntourism, the Canadian tour operator was selected by a jury of eight members including Dan Barber, Celine Simone Cousteau, Bruce Mau, and Dr. Joseph E. Stiglitz for the fifth annual Global Vision Awards.

Read full article

Travel Companies Lag in the Online Marketing Race

Some interesting articles, that are very true, about the lack of online marketing by travel companies. Sites are increasingly confusing in an attempt to keep relevant and companies are starting social media accounts with no clear sense of direction. My advice? Stop, think about the key differentiators of your brand, then act – don’t keep running with the same bland messaging that doesn’t set you apart.

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“Travel companies expect the consumer to behave like a travel agent”

A new report, released by Forrester Research, found that far from embracing the do-it-yourself era, many consumers were fed up with the complicated process of planning and booking travel.

According to Forrester, travellers are fed up. There are 15 percent fewer travellers who enjoy using the web in 2009 than there were in 2007. Just one in three US online travellers feels that travel websites do a good job presenting travel choices, down from 39 percent in 2008. Travellers feel that they, and their business, are taken for granted.

“What we’ve seen is growing frustration,” said Henry H. Harteveldt, a Forrester travel analyst. “Consumers see other websites becoming easier to use — retail websites, banking websites, media websites. But travel is treading water as a category. There are very few travel companies that are really looking to improve the planning and booking process.”

Instead, customers are forced to figure out extra fees, wade through fine print and understand industry terms like the difference between a deluxe and a standard room, in addition to educating themselves about destinations, flights and hotels, Harteveldt said.

“Travel companies expect the consumer to behave like a travel agent,” he told the New York Times. “The question I always ask these guys is, ‘Could your mother-in-law use your website without having to call you for help?’ The answer is always no.”

To reverse travellers’ dissatisfaction and avoid having them abandon the web in favour of other, more expensive offline channels, travel eBusiness professionals must rethink their approach to travel eBusiness. To reverse this trend and re-engage travellers, travel eBusiness professionals must recognise that travel eBusiness is comprised of four continuous phases — not isolated, unrelated processes — supported by the five pillars of merchandising, context, engagement, value, and customer appreciation. Expect travel eBusiness professionals to be asked to become more involved with customer data strategy and for global distribution systems (GDS) to evolve into more useful global merchandising systems (GMS).

July 23, 2009 |

Online travel sector needs to improve overall customer engagement: survey

Online travel sites need to work harder at improving the entire end to end website experience if they are to build trusted, long-term relationships that encourage customers to buy from them time and time again, according to a study.

As per the findings of the first eTravel Benchmark survey, the online travel industry as a whole has some way to go in order to compete with ‘best in breed’ companies for website engagement and customer service.  When the sites were measured using the net promoter score  to find out which are most likely to be recommended through word of mouth, while eight companies ranked ‘above average’, the sector as a whole achieved score of +5.

Compared to other recent eDigitalResearch benchmarking studies that scored retail at +27, finance at +18 and car manufacturing at +7, the online travel sector is clearly lagging behind.

Airlines, however, were notably let down by poor first impressions and disappointing customer service, both of which play a vital part in overall customer satisfaction.  When measured on telephone customer service, just one airline, British Airways, made it into the top 10 rankings, rated seventh and just two airlines (Virgin Atlantic and British Airways) scored highly enough to make the top 10 for email customer service.

Derek Eccleston, head of research at eDigitalResearch said although there are clear leaders in certain categories, there is not one operator who has managed to tick all the boxes consistently.

“In a sector whose customers are particularly promiscuous – switching brands for a better deal, looking for recommendations and picking the purchase channel that most suits them at that particular time – failing to perform well  across the board is more than a missed opportunity, it is commercial suicide,” said Eccleston.

“What customers want is a clear step-by-step process.  They want a site that is easy to purchase from but at the same time that has the inspirational ‘wow’ factor to keep them engaged.  Add to that transparent pricing, great customer service, and of course a great trip and you’ve cracked it.”

The eTravel Benchmark survey uses eDigitalResearch’s eMysteryShopper tool to measure the ‘usability’ of 18 channel crossing, cruise and airline websites, comparing seven key areas ranging from first impressions to the search and booking process.  Overall, channel crossing operators fared better in the survey with P&O Ferries emerging as the top performer and Stena Line second.

Legislative Update on Voluntourism

Just got an email update from Paul Joss, thought i’d share with those beyond the BBC world. Basically there are two developments that represent strong government endorsements about the importance of international volunteering.

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1) As you know from our recent advocacy work mobilizing the coalition, the US Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs held a markup of the 2010 funding bill last week.  In their markup, they included strong language recommending that USAID support the Volunteers for Prosperity program.  The same subcommittee from the US House of Representatives made a similar recommendation a few weeks ago.  Both the House and Senate funding bills include funding increases for USAID, along with their recommendations that the agency support Volunteers for Prosperity.  In summary, this is good progress towards securing the full $10 million funding for the VfP program, which was authorized in the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act earlier this year.  Many feel that this was one of the most positive outcomes we could have hoped for.  Very strong language from Congress in support of the VfP Serve program was included and many indicated that out work was pivitol in making this happen.

2) The House and Senate subcommittees have also both recommended funding increases for Peace Corps.  The House of Representatives recommended $450M, which is an amount that the More Peace Corps campaign has been advocating in support of the goal to double Peace Corps.  The Senate recommended $373M, which was in alignment with the budget submitted by President Obama.  The Senate indicated a willingness to fund doubling the Peace Corps pending the selection of a new Director and more specific plans for modernization and reform.

Adventure Philanthropy…what the heck is that?

Paul von Zielbauer, a New York Times reporter and Iraq war correspondent, launched Roadmonkey Adventure Philanthropy, www.roadmonkey.net, in 2008 to give more people the chance to explore the world and do good things along the way. I asked him to write a blurb about Adventure Philanthropy and the creation of Road Monkey.

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I hear the question more and more nowadays. “What’s Roadmonkey?” When I started Roadmonkey Adventure Philanthropy Inc. last year, I didn’t have a prepared answer, just an idea to combine ass-kicking adventures and meaningful volunteer work into a new, integrated kind of foreign travel experience. I didn’t know if anyone would think it was a good idea, or if anyone would go with me.

A year or so later, as I write this aboard a 767 flying to Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, to meet nine other Roadmonkey expedition members, I have better answers to that question. Roadmonkey means pushing our physical and cultural comfort zones to experience new corners of the planet in an interactive way, and completing a sustainable, custom-made project while we’re there. It means digging below the tourist surface, and getting sweaty and a little dirty in the process. Roadmonkey, in other words, is small-group travel for people who don’t like traveling in groups.

What we practice is the art of “planned serendipity.” That’s what adventure philanthropy is all about.

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As a reporter for The New York Times, I’ve covered the Iraq war from Baghdad, the American military justice system from Camp Pendleton, Calif., and the New York City jail system from Rikers Island. Newspaper reporters are paid (not that well, by the way) to reveal problems that others will hopefully solve. I launched Roadmonkey last year to solve some of the problems I was reporting and writing about, and find some high adventure along the way.

We launched our first adventure philanthropy expedition last November, in Vietnam, a country I first experienced in 1993, when most Westerners were still assumed to be Russian and almost no one north of the former DMZ spoke English. For 9 days, our Roadmonkey crew – four women and seven men, from Boston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Toronto and Madrid – cycled through the stunning hills and valleys of northwest Vietnam, near the Chinese and Lao borders, through monsoon rains, cotton-thick mountain fog and past rushing chocolate-colored mountain rivers. (see attached photo)

“It literally takes your breath away,” said one guy in our group, an L.A.-based producer named Philip Ruddy, after bombing down a particularly gorgeous stretch of mountain road.

After covering about 300 miles on bikes, we spent four days building a playground for orphans at a remote facility west of Hanoi. (see attached photo) We used money Roadmonkey raised with its non-profit partner in Vietnam, the Worldwide Orphans Foundation, www.wwo.org.

Watching the kids jump and play on that playground was extraordinarily gratifying, and that feeling is also what Roadmonkey want to be about on each expedition we lead.

I think we’re have a good start in Tanzania now. For six days, we’ll climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, all 19,345 feet, arriving at dawn on June 26. Then, after an 8-hour “buffalo bus” ride from Moshi, at the base of the mountain, to Dar es Salaam, on Tanzania’s Indian Ocean coast, we’ll go to work building a clean-water system and painting classrooms at a small school for about 100 children, one-third of whom have been orphaned by East Africa’s AIDS epidemic.

This November, Roadmonkey heads back to Vietnam, this time to cycling through the central highlands for a week, then build a small farm at a boarding school for ethnic minority kids, with our non-profit partner there, the East Meets West Foundation, www.eastmeetswest.org. The farm will grow vegetables and fruit that will be sold at market to help more kids pay tuition and get a solid education in one of Vietnam’s poorest regions.

Next year, Roadmonkey pioneers adventure philanthropy in two new places: Peru and Nicaragua, where the adventure will involve surfing (lessons) and river kayaking through the Peruvian Amazon, on our way to building more playgrounds and more clean-water systems for villages that now drink contaminated well water.

So now when someone asks me, “What is Roadmonkey?” I give them a much better answer.

Voluntourism – Just for WASPs???

Interesting article I found on the Suburban Struggle blog – what do you think, is voluntourism just for WASPs??

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“Like unpaid internships, WASPs can be held responsible for keeping the voluntourism industry alive and well.  WASPs love nothing better than getting in touch with their philanthropic side by travelling to a developing country and volunteering at a local school, AIDS clinic, or grassroots NGO.  Voluntourism, like the unpaid internship, allows WASPs to combine quasi-legitimate work with a vacation.  In addition to boosting their resume, they get to travel to an exotic place and add more stamps to their passport.

Voluntourism is so attractive to young WASPs because of its “real” factor.  Unlike their parents, who are more likely to give to the poor via charity balls and auctions, the younger generation likes to get down and dirty.  Well, not really that dirty.  If they have the time and internet connection to post pictures of themselves playing with African children on facebook, it is safe to assume that they are doing pretty well over there.  At least better than the local population that they are helping.  Nevertheless, voluntourism does force WASPs out of their comfort zone and asks them to interact with people who are different, which is a startling experience for most white people, and so we suppose that they deserve some credit.

Voluntourism also helps with the WASP with their street cred, which they are sorely lacking.  Most WASPs hail from quiet suburbs such as the one featured in the movie “Pleasantville.”  They are desperate to travel to other countries so that they can prove that they are not that white and have some awareness of the world around them.  Therefore, the more dangerous the place, the better the cred.  Going to Rwanda, for example, is considered soooo cool because there was, as you may have heard, a genocide there not too long ago.  In fact, voluntourism occurs all the over the world, but anywhere in Africa is pretty much considered the trump card of street cred.

Neither of the two authors of this blog have had the opportunity to partake in any voluntourism yet (you better believe we are looking into it), but three summers ago I worked (volunteered) in the office of an organization that ran voluntourism trips.  One of my responsibilities was photocopying and filing applications – 98% of them were from white people with university degrees.  Based on this sampling, we have strong evidence to suggest that voluntourism really is a WASP phenomenon.”

Trad. Non-Profits vs. Volunteer Sending Organizations

The voluntourism field seems to be divided when it comes to the non-profits versus for-profits, but what about within the non-profit sector? I have heard a lot of companies describe themselves in different ways – some are development organizations some are volunteer sending organizations. Now that defining your marketing message is more important  than ever, how do you describe your organization?

Never one to stay away from controversy, I found this blurb in an email I received from a friend in the industry and wanted to get your thoughts on it.

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My experience in the non profit world has lead me to see that there two main types of non profits who work with volunteers.  On type is non profits whose mission is centered around a volunteer and the goal is that they have a meaningful experience while make a difference.  Typically these organizations main source of income is the volunteer who pays for the service of the non profit.  Then there are organizations that are more like what has traditionally been a non profit.  Their main mission is the project/cause itself and volunteers are simply a part of accomplishing the mission overall.  It is important that the volunteer help the cause/project first, a meaningful experience is secondary, thought important.  These organizations primarily are funded through grants and donations rather than fees for services.   Grants and donations are to accomplish the cause or the mission and volunteers are one of many ways to accomplish this.

Volunteer Sending Organizations

Primary Mission:  The Volunteer Experience

Secondary Mission:  Sustainable Project/Cause

Primary Income:  Primarily fees for services

Secondary Income: Donations

Traditional Non Profits

Primary Mission:  The Cause/Project  (the orphanage, school, park etc)

Secondary Mission:  The Volunteer Experience

Primary Income:  Donations and Grants

Secondary Income:  Fees for services

Voluntourism Research Page Added

Have a look at the top of the blog navigation now – there’s a new ‘voluntourism research’ page. There are a lot of great reports running around out there and no central place to find them so this is a start.

Check it out at: http://voluntourismgal.wordpress.com/voluntourism-research/

If you have a report you think I should include please let me know.

Travel websites confusing customers, says Frommers survey

Saw this article on TravelMole.com about a recent Frommers survey and couldn’t agree more. Websites have to be user friendly and focused on the customer, they shouldn’t be designed around what your web team thinks is cool!!

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Half of all travellers have struggled with poorly constructed confusing and inaccurate travel websites, according to a survey carried out by content experts Frommers Unlimited.

A worldwide survey of more than 1,200 people, carried out by eDigitalResearch, found that 50% had encountered confusing sites with information hard to find, insufficient pictures, insufficient information about the destination, hotel, cruise, airline or ferry company.

A third of travellers said they were frustrated by a lack of response to email enquiries and sites which weren’t bookable online, while 40% also reported finding inaccurate, or misleading information and not enough information about things to do.

Just 10% said they got the right tailored material when searching online.

“Our survey has really highlighted the consumer experience problems which travel companies need to address in their websites,” said Joel Brandon Bravo, general manager of Frommer’s Unlimited.

“However we also identified what people most value when they look online and the point at which that information was useful.

To read the full article visit: http://www.travelmole.com/stories/1136049.php

Travelocity’s Change Ambassador Grants Offer Volunteer Vacation Opportunities

Tasha Carvell, Director of Travelocity’s Corporate Social Responsibility program, Travel for Good, was kind enough  to submit the below blog post. The Travel for Good site is alive and well – what do you think of it’s contribution to the field?–

Travelocity’s Change Ambassador Grants Offer Volunteer Vacation Opportunities

When Travelocity returned to the black in 2004 after the bleak period after 9/11, the company breathed a collective sigh of relief. Rather than bask in the glory of profitability, however, a groundswell of employees joined in a united appeal to company leadership to funnel some of those earnings into a philanthropic effort. To their credit, and thanks to a couple of particularly committed members, the executive team was quick to concur and, in the spring of 2006, a committee which included employees from all levels of the company was formed to brainstorm and come up with a concept that would be the focus of Travelocity’s corporate social responsibility program.

There was no shortage of ideas to come out of the working group, but everyone in the room quickly realized that the common denominator was a belief in the transformational power of travel, and the conviction that Travelocity had a role to play in promoting responsible tourism. That passion, combined with some internal polling which showed that many of Travelocity’s customers were interested in giving back to the communities they visited while on vacation but were unsure how to go about it, led to the establishment of the Travel For Good program and its cornerstone, Change Ambassadors.

The idea of Change Ambassadors is to help bring the idea of volunteer vacations to a broader audience. Travelocity launched a microsite to help make it easy for its customers to find volunteer opportunities through partnerships with gold-standard voluntourism providers Cross-Cultural Solutions, Earthwatch, Globe Aware, the American Hiking Society, and Take Pride in America, all of which can be accessed at http://www.travelocity.com/travelforgood or from a permanent “voluntourism” link on the Travelocity home page. In addition, travelers wanting to hear about the experiences of other everyday folks who have taken a volunteer vacation can do so at http://www.travelocity.com/volunteerstories, a site dedicated to highlighting user-generated volunteer stories.

Although Travelocity’s members for the most part can afford a volunteer expedition as an alternative to their traditional family vacation, Travelocity recognizes that there are also many people who could not afford to go on their own. Therefore, the company launched a second part of the Travel for Good initiative – Change Ambassador Grants. Travelocity awards two $5,000 grants per quarter to customers and one $5,000 grant per quarter to an employee to go on a volunteer vacation sponsored by any one of the Travel for Good partner organizations. Thanks to generous donations from partners like Marriott Hotels, Conde Nast, and MasterCard, additional grants have been added in past quarters. Forty grants have been awarded to date, and the number of quarterly applicants has grown by 200 percent year over year. Grant recipients have run the gamut of volunteer work along the way: building wheelchairs for landmine victims in Cambodia, doing trail maintenance on volcanoes in Hawaii, caring for orphans in Peru, and restoring mangrove ecosystems in Kenya.

Problems like climate change and needs like disaster relief demand something from each of us, and traveling responsibly doesn’t just help the communities it touches, but also affords a deeper experience for the volunteer-a chance to see local cultures and address challenges from the inside, the opportunity to gain a fresh perspective, and to know the joy of sweat equity. Travelocity is proud to help its customers and all travelers navigate the voluntourism opportunity waters and take that transformational trip of a lifetime.

Tasha Carvell

Director, Travel for Good (Travelocity)

Tasha Carvell is the director of Travelocity’s corporate social responsibility program, Travel for Good, overseeing its non-profit and corporate partnerships, grants program, employee-engagement initiatives, online community-building activities, sustainability efforts, and marketing. She was part of a small grassroots group of employees who helped to found the program in 2006.

To learn more from Tasha regarding Travel for Good you can follow her at The Window Seat at http://windowseatblog.com

Researching Volunteer Tourism: Defining the Experience

Just wanted to take a second to clear up a little confusion that seems to have arisen about this blog in the last couple days. I am a voluntourism industry consultant so some people who read this do hire me – but I will never let that influence what is done or said on this blog. My consulting practice is just that, and the blog is a forum where I try to present a neutral issue and encourage people to debate so we can further the field. I don’t make money off of this blog, I just want to help facilitate conversations.  There have been some great learnings so far so let’s keep it going!

On to the real post of the day:

Angela M Benson, Principal Lecturer Sustainable Tourism Development, University of Brighton, presented the below research at the GWTTRA Symposium – I found this really interesting as she talked to a lot of travelers and compared their perceptions of volunteering with the messages that voluntourism operators are putting out there.

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“What is clear is that if organizations do not want volunteers to view this as a holiday experience more clarity in the message and terminology used is required and a transfer of that message is actions and activities at the field site.”

To see the full study download: defining-the-experience