In 1990, Bruce Poon Tip founded Gap 窪蹋勛圖厙s in Toronto with two credit cards and a dream to bridge the gap between backpacking and mainstream travel. Twenty-one years later, with an annual $150 million in revenue, Gap is the largest adventure-travel company in the world, operating in more than 100 countries, taking 100,000 customers on the road each year, and boasting the highest repeat-customer rates in the business. During the recent recession, Poon Tip, 44, managed to grow his company 42 percenta fact that has many struggling competitors scratching their heads.
KEYES:Youre selling the idea of adventure, but isnt adventure the opposite of group travel?
POONTIP: Theres an element of security that comes with traveling in a group, but I dont think adventure travel has anything to do with the number of people youre traveling with.
Even if the itinerary is planned out for you?
I guess its how you define adventure. I think 90 percent of our trips are adventurous by destination, meaning that being in Mongolia is adventurous whether youre with a group, by yourself, or with a conference. 窪蹋勛圖厙 is such a commodified word these days. I was out swimming the other day and there was an adventure pool for kids. I looked at it and thought, Well, how are they promoting it as adventure? It had special toys and things for children. For a kid, that was adventurous, because theyre swimming in a different pool away from parents.
You built the brand on controlling the customer experience but now guide more than 100,000 travelers a year. How big is too big for you?
I think were many years away from having that kind of problem. Right now were still a niche company, were still a niche market.
Still, 100,000 is a lot of people.
Seriously, think about this. A sun travel company here in Toronto that might take people down to Jamaica could carry 600,000 passengers in a year, and they wouldnt even be the largest in Canada. We still dont register in the mainstream tourism numbers of a tourist board when you look at China or Thailand or some of the other big destinations.
What do you think of the voluntourism trend? Those kinds of trips seem to be booming.
Voluntourism is a bit like a Wild West shoot-em-up right now. There are a lot of bad companies doing a terrible job. It takes work to manage volunteers, and it has given a bad rep to the volun簫tour concept. To coordi簫nate a team of people who want to paint a school or build a wellthe management involved in unskilled labor is massive. 簫Everyone who arrives has a different idea of how much they want to do. They have good intentions when they sign up: Were going to build stoves or wells in Cambodia. But when you get there, are you 簫really prepared to get up at four in the morning and work ten-hour days? No, actually. With the change in the world right now, people have a need to give, and thats a great thing, but that doesnt necessarily mean they want to bust their asses for two weeks.
Yet youre known for your role as a pioneer in this trend.
Weve stayed in our comfort zone, which is having short elements of volunteering within a holiday program. We were the first company that said, ultimately, the motivation of the customer is the holiday. With our trips now, were planning a lot of our groups around what we call random acts of Gapness, where groups spontaneously do something. Just yesterday a group went out and bought rice for a village in Guatemala. But our groups decide and we facilitate. Thats the element of giving that makes people feel goodtheyve actually had an impact, and its not necessarily overengineered.
What other travel trends are you seeing?
People today are so connectedwired up with phones and laptops and social mediaso theyre more into remote spaces where they can be disconnected [while on vacation]. Five years ago, people liked the hustle and bustle of markets: they liked Egypt, Moroccan shopping markets. Now were seeing people wanting to go to Tibet and more remote areas to disconnect.
Are you also seeing the opposite of that? Travelers constantly tweeting about their trips?
Oh yeah. People used to book a trip with us and theyd shut off and have a vacation, right? But theres a group of people now who come very wired up. When they arrive in any town, they whip out their GPS. We constantly hear from people who say, We went here, but I read about this, and maybe this would have been better. You decide to go on a rickshaw trip in Hanoi, but someone says, I heard you can do it by Segway. I just found an app for Hanoi Segway tours.
You were also an early adopter on Twitter. How has it changed your relationship with your customers?
Twitter for us is far more of an internal tool. We have more than 1,000 employees on Twitter around the world, and we all link to each other and communicate with each other through that. Its part of how we remain connected, because we want our people to feel that theyre part of a community. I just got a live photo of one of my managers eating in Italy. Hes in Sicily, hes having a typical Italian lunch. In response, someone e-mailed a shot of a greasy burger in New York.
Isnt it one of the unspoken rules of Twitter not to share what you had for lunch?
Youd better tell that to my people.