Lockdowns have increased wanderlust:
G Adventures reveals future travel trends
Although he’s definitely not one to shy away from competition, G Adventures’ founder Bruce Poon Tip believes tour operators should come together when it comes to the safety of travellers.
“We are all going to follow global standards, we’re all going to do similar things, we are all going to make our customers as safe as possible. Ultimately, we have a unified goal to get people travelling again and this is not an area where we should compete,” Poon Tip said during a recent press briefing. “We should all agree that we will do whatever is possible to keep our customers safe.”
Pointing to a recent G Adventures survey as an example, Poon Tip expects travel will make a quick return. According to the survey, 51% of Canadian travellers said lockdowns have made them want to travel more than ever before and pent-up demand is rapidly building. Other positive signs are the fact that bookings are returning, including through agency sales.
“Longer booking windows, but we’re seeing record numbers of people booking trips finally. They started last November, so Cyber Month for us, we saw a huge spike in people willing to commit to travel, but with now eight-to-nine month booking windows,” he said.
Poon Tip also sees travel advisors playing an important role in the recovery of the travel industry.
“The value of the travel agent is always seen,” he said. “Travel agents are advocates for their customers — they became even more relevant during this time. The most important thing we can do is educate customers to travel differently on the other side, and travel agents have huge power to do this.”
After a year in “hibernation mode,” Poon Tip can finally see some light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to “the return of travel.”
Citing the ongoing vaccine rollout and the European Commission’s Digital Green Certificate as an example of the positive steps that are underway, Poon Tip said countries and companies in the travel industry are hopeful to have a summer season.
“We’re trying to get trips off in the summer this year… a lot of countries are pushing for July 1. We’re hearing every day countries are pushing more and more to open to get a piece of summer,” he said. “September 1 is probably when we anticipate there will be larger numbers, more meaningful numbers for operators like ourselves.”
As for what types of trips are appealing to travellers, an interesting trend is an increase in bucket list trips and active trips in the great outdoors. According to the survey, 25% of travellers are keen to take an active tour and 41% of people want to head out in nature.
“Active, bucket list trips. One of the most interesting statistics for us is that we saw a spike in Everest Base Camp inquiries on our website, and Kilimanjaro climbs, and Inca Trail climbs,” he said. “We thought it was maybe people using our website to do book reports or school projects, but when we actually dug into the data we found that more and more people are booking active type experiences, but they’re also booking bucket list trips. This is significant because more and more people are trying to do milestone type travel.”
Bruce Poon Tip
The value of the travel agent is always seen. Travel agents are advocates for their customers – they became even more relevant during this time. The most important thing we can do is educate customers to travel differently on the other side, and travel agents have huge power to do this.
Travellers also want to be more purposeful with their holiday choices and 77% of Canadian travellers said they want their money to benefit local people.
On a much smaller scale, G Adventures already started operating in select destinations in September 2020, with over 100 tours undertaken since then.
“We started with Europe in September, Costa Rica was open in November, Tanzania opened in December,” he said, adding that more destinations are continuing to open up. “The customers are loving the trips, loving the experience, it’s a bit different, we’re following local protocols as well as creating our own standards for safety, but the responses have been off the charts.”
When asked whether he thinks travel will become more expensive post-pandemic, Poon Tip believes it will be cheaper in the short and long term, but in the mid-term prices will rise.
Additionally, the results found that close to one third of travellers who are waiting to be vaccinated to travel say they will travel within three months of being vaccinated, rising to 46% for travel within six months of receiving a COVID-19 inoculation, meaning there could be a rise in bookings when vaccines roll out.
