Sustainable Today, Successful Tomorrow
In āSustainable today, successful tomorrowā Anne and Rik (Good Tourism Institute) explore real-world sustainable tourism stories that actually work.
Sustainable Today, Successful Tomorrow
Travel 'beyond the ordinary' with Pura Aventura š«
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Itās time to rethink āoff the beaten trackā. š®
Because travel isnāt about how far you go. Itās about how deeply you connect.
In this episode of Sustainable Today, Successful Tomorrow, we talk with Thomas Power from Pura Aventura about what it really means to 'go beyond the ordinary'. š«
Together, we unpack why the idea of āoff the beaten trackā has lost its meaning, and how travel businesses can design journeys that feel genuinely local.
From finding new perspectives in familiar places to building lasting relationships with local partners, Thomas shares how great travel design naturally leads to sustainability. š
If youāre ready to go beyond the buzzwords, this episode is for you. š§
How well are you communicating sustainability? Apply for our free Sustainable Marketing Scan š
https://goodtourisminstitute.com/scan/
Anne: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Sustainable. Today's Successful Tomorrow where we explore real world sustainable tourism stories that actually work. In our last discussion episode, we already shared a few highlights for my interview with Thomas co-founder and CEO of Pura Aventura, a boutique two operator from the UK committed to travel positive and to less travel places.
Anne: Today I'm excited to bring you the full interview. Thomas and I talked about what off the beaten track actually means for them, and how to ensure that travelers truly connect with local communities. It was such an interesting conversation and I hope you'll learn as much from it as I did enjoy.
Anne: Traveling off the beaten track is one of the current buzzwords and the travel industry is busy selling this, but how do you develop off the beaten track experiences? How far off the [00:01:00] beaten track do you go and how do you ensure positive impact and a great traveler experience?
Anne: That's what we are exploring with Thomas from Pura Aventura. Ura Auraura is a boutique two operator from the UK committed to creating travel positive experiences with ethical design at heart. They're also a B Corp certified travel business. They're offering trips on roads, less traveled in Latin America, Spain, and Portugal with locally rooted travel experiences.
Anne: So Thomas, thank you so much for being here. And to start right off, off the beaten track, is phrase we hear a lot in travel marketing lately, but in your experience, what does it really mean when done, responsibly.
Tom Power: Yeah. firstly, thank you. Thank you for having me, Ann. It's great to be here. and I love your work.
Anne: Thank you. off the beaten track. I guess I sort of turn this question around on you a little bit that actually the first thing we need to do is it's about the beaten track. And so I suppose underpinning the whole [00:02:00] idea of going off the beaten track is really just why do we travel? What is the purpose of our travel? And for those of us, I guess who want to travel to experience otherness and difference and to see how other people where they live, then that experience becomes heavily depleted by. By overt tourism and by, by being kind of on the beaten track, I suppose. So it's kind of more about just being somewhere that you can safely, observe otherness, whether that's, you know, cultural, that's linguistic, that's culinary. it's physically the landscapes and so on. so I guess we start there rather than specifically let's find somewhere completely bonkers and that nobody's ever been before and create a drip there. well, I think it's a good, [00:03:00] starting point so you look at off the beaten track to the route less traveled, but kind of close to the highlights, as in you're not going, to remote places, what you said no one's ever been to, but how do you find a midway in that?
Tom Power: Yeah, so it's almost, I mean, it, guess there can be two ways around it, but one of the ideas we have is the same road, different view. So
Anne: Right. Okay.
Tom Power: oftentimes, you know, for us, we're, if we're going to Peru for instance, people will always want to see peach.
Anne: picture. Yeah.
Tom Power: that's going to be like it or not.
Tom Power: That's gonna be kind of central to an experience or
Anne: Yeah,
Tom Power: purchasing decision. Whether or not it ends up being their most important memory, I.
Tom Power: think is a very different question.
Anne: Yeah,
Tom Power: you sort of start with these hooks. We know that people want to go to Patagonia, right? their expectation's gonna be set in certain obvious places, defined places. Brazil, they're gonna want to see Christ the Redeemer [00:04:00] statue. And I mean, just there's Christ the Redeemer. it's a, an absolute bun fight.
Anne: I.
Tom Power: I mean, and videos of it, it's absolutely fascinating and we've all seen it.
Tom Power: So, you know, I've, I was in Athens the year before and,watching Sunset over the,city and it was just,comical and everyone trying to just get in front of the other one to try to get the photo showing them alone with this view. And you're like, what
Anne: yeah,
Tom Power: memory, you know, it's this detachment between sort of your actual experience,
Anne: and
Anne: yeah,
Tom Power: your memory of that experience and your captured your artificial memory that you can share. what are you doing
Tom Power: value in this? It's just,
Tom Power: it's
Anne: yeah. No, absolutely. And I also think, like what you said is a really good point is that the purchase, say like the motivation to book a trip is to go see the, the statue or to go see Machu Chu. But you do experience that often. That's not the best [00:05:00] experience of the entire trip, but it's kind of the reason to go to, to Peru, for example.
How well are you actually communicating sustainability? We see many travel businesses and destinations working hard, yet they still struggle to talk about it,
Anne: and maybe you feel the same. You're afraid of being seen as greenwashing, unsure what to share, or just not really connecting with your travelers.
Anne: We've been there with a lot of travel brands and we get how frustrating it is. So with years of experience in sustainable tourism and marketing, we've created something simple to get you started.
Rik: It's called the Sustainable Marketing Scan. You just answer a few quick questions. We'll take a look, and if it's a good fit, we'll invite you for a short call to go through your opportunities.
Anne: You can start today@goodtourisminstitute.com slash scam and turn uncertainty into a clear, compelling story.
Yes, but, Patagonia is a [00:06:00] good example of this because people have always heard of or seen Torresdale pine. So it's very common that people will come in and say, I want to go to Torresdale Pine, and the first thing we do is to say, okay, why? what's brought you there? Very quickly, the conversation leads to, I want to go to Patagonia. about Patagonia? want to see the people, the culture, the landscapes, the kind of experience, the sort of the variety of, of all of these things. And almost immediately it's apparent that the Patagonia they're describing is not the Patagonia they would find southern Patagonia. It is the Patagonia. They would find the beaten track up the Kerra, router 40 on the Argentine side. you know, it doesn't take very much digging to realize that, ah, what the things you say you like hotels, kind of local restaurants, all this [00:07:00] stuff. You're simply not gonna find that in the busier places. You will still find that elsewhere. So you're sort of guiding them, guiding them away. But almost always the entry point is through a known item, a known element, a place.
Anne: yeah, exactly. And then who exactly is the Pura Aventura traveler? Like what do you think they're looking for?
Tom Power: it's really interesting. we've kind of been going through all, we're going through this process at the moment of adjusting, profiles. So we've lived with customer profiles that follow the classic sort of a B one, bloody blah. They drive two
Anne: cars and have a house with the roof and four chimneys, and it just observing this, we thought. I mean, look, they tend to be they tend to be affluent. You know, there are certain common economic,typically demographic, sort of themes But actually beyond that,
Tom Power: it didn't quite make sense. This sort [00:08:00] of the filterof economics or material stuff didn't really make sense to it. So we started thinking about profiling in terms of values. and I think that the unifying value that our clients have is that they, they travel with curiosity and they treat people with respect. They will treat people reasonably and well, no matter their kind of apparent standing, I guess.
Tom Power: know,
Anne: Okay.
Tom Power: of, it's the way people talk to cleaner and I just observe it that there are people who treat people as people
Tom Power: sort of mindset that they travel with a, an openness, they travel to see other and where they live and how they live.
Tom Power: I think there is a distinction between that and the people who travel and they demand their comforts be met. I must be as comfortable as I would be at home or more comfortable. so basically that the host community serve me [00:09:00] certain things that I demand. And it's sort of, the end of that logical thread.
Anne: You've got an all-inclusive resort or a cruise ship, I.
Tom Power: which is sort of probably the furthest reaches of the sort of travel experience from what we do. that's not to sound judgy. And I And I thinkCertain kinds of people will always go on a cruise and certain kinds of people will always go on a trip that's sort of much more connected to place. Lots and lots of us will do bits of everything. So we'll prefer I, generally speaking, I'm much, much prefer something where I'm talking to the locals and I'm experiencing new stuff and my eyes are being opened and I'm learning.
Anne: Yeah. they're all looking for that, personal connection with locals to wherever they travel. I guess that's what's, their shared value is.
Tom Power: I think so, and I find it, I did honestly once when my younger child was freshly, in the world, we went to Grenada for sort of all inclusive in a week in a hotel. I loved Grenada, I loved the people, but I mean, we were [00:10:00] outta that hotel.
Tom Power: We were chatting to the fishermen on the beach. And we, know, even in a sort of a nominally all inclusive environment, those of us who are curious, Constantly looking over the wall and kind of clambering over the fence to go see, how does this work? where do people eat? What do they eat?
Anne: the majority of the travel experiences is then also I think around, connecting with locals. Do you feel you need to really manage expectations of travelers, to prepare them on, how to approach that, or how does that work?
Tom Power: so. I mean, expectation management is critical to everything in terms of kind of managing specific cultural interactions. No for, a couple of reasons. One is we're not, I don't think we're operating anywhere that is that delicate,
Tom Power: generally speaking, we're putting people in places. we're preparing their expectations in terms [00:11:00] of. The usual things, like there will not be air conditioning in this particular place, or there will be, traditional architecture. The Amazons are a classic one that people think that, well, you must to automatically seal yourself in against the creepy crawlies. And actually traditional architecture is, there are no walls, you essentially clear two, three meters land around the lodge, and then it's just forest. it freaks people out.
Tom Power: you manage the expectation and they're saying, look, they've been doing this a while. They know what they're doing. It's okay. This is good design for the environment. so there's lots of stuff whereby you are prepping people, then the kind of, how do you, so I suppose the question then is how do you. Equip people. How do you tool people up to actually benefit? We're putting them somewhere that we think is amazing, right? then do to kind of enable them [00:12:00] to make the most of that opportunity?
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: a couple of things. One is we're pretty careful about making sure that we don't fend more than one set of travelers to the same area at the same time. So there'll be a
Anne: Okay.
Tom Power: So if there's a road trip, Patagonia's a classic one for this, a road trip down the carer Australia that three weeks long. There'll be times when they'll cross over one another there a night or two here or there, but generally speaking, and it's very, very
Anne: Difficult for you as a traveler to interact with Patagonia. First time you've been to Patagonia. First time I've been to Patagonia. If we're basically driving along together, you are more familiar. You, I know you will speak English, we can chat about the cricket or the football or the weather Yeah,
Tom Power: or the, that. It's
Anne: not the same experience.
Tom Power: it's more difficult for us to throw ourselves into, that the people here don't speak English, so I'm gonna just
Anne: Yeah.[00:13:00]
Tom Power: flat my arms until I get a plate of chicken or you know, whatever that, it's kind of uncomfortable. But of course it's that we push ourselves out into host community, into the place we are. And that's where the magic happens. That's where the memories happen. That's where the fun happens.
Anne: Yeah, the spontaneous, like not pre-planned.
Tom Power: I think of our work as being as akin to the difference between a builder and an architect, like almost anyone. If the bricks of the services within a trip, here's a hotel, here's a guide, here's a thing, here's a thing, and we shove it on top. That's not our job. 'cause in a sense, if all you're doing is booking some stuff. Then frankly, you're gonna lose your lunch to booking.com, to Expedia, to whoever you know the OTAs are
Anne: Ai.
Tom Power: AI will have your lunch. It's about the, it's architecture. So it's not about the wall itself, it's about the space between the walls the opportunity for the unexpected to happen, the delightful to happen.
Tom Power: And it's stuff that we are not, [00:14:00] we're not booking in the kind of, you're gonna have a spontaneous experience at 3:00 PM All we can do is put you in a place where actually, generally visitors are less common. So people are more interested to see you. They're generally pleased to welcome you because it's cool that you are there. The impact of your travel on their lives, their economy, and so on, their wellbeing is positive. So. You feel more welcome, and alongside that we've provided you. Look, on Tuesdays, there's a market here, here's a really nice bar. They've got live music on Mondays. Don't worry. Just walk in, sit down, ask for this, you just, you kind of provide an on-ramp
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: That's like
Anne: Which I guess is needed.
Tom Power: some people don't need it. Some people just sort of walk into, oh, here's a bar in a foreign land. I'll just walk in and I'll just work it out for myself. most people through sort of humility and you don't want to, you don't wanna impose yourself on a
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: Spain's a [00:15:00] great one for this. You walk into a bar in Spain, you know, in the uk you go into a bar and you stand there until the person behind the bar comes up to you and says, what would you like to drink? And you say, I would like my drink.
Anne: Mm-hmm.
Tom Power: You do that in Spain. You're there forever. Unless the bar's empty.
Tom Power: But in a full bar, you basically walk in, you a, you throw a request over heads, bodies, and somehow they hear it. like a minute later, this glass appears over somebody's head and to you. And if you didn't know that, you'd stand there feeling they're ignoring me because I'm a tourist and they obviously don't want me in here.
Tom Power: So, you know, you sort of retreat out. So stuff like that. But actually it's just, no, that it's kind of this simply a different etiquette. There's a different thing that happens here
Anne: Yeah, I guess that's what I meant, like with managing expectations, like how do you, engage with local communities or how do you engage with the local customs, in a place, for example, where they don't speak English or where, like this, in this bar where they have like really [00:16:00] different,custom than you're used to.
Anne: I mean, I think for most people it might seem rude to just shout over your order rather than just waiting. So I think how do you start? Do you have like a proper, well, guidelines for travelers, for destination, or how do you have these conversations with them?
Tom Power: Yeah, I mean, we have holiday guide notes, and so we sort of write our guides, but it's also, it's, we also have interaction with locals. So there's, there's very few examples where you'll go on a trip with us without having some sort of, connected interaction at the very beginning. So even on self-guided walks in Spain or Portugal, the first thing that will happen is that you'll be picked up and you'll have a sort of meet and greet and sit down and so on.
Anne: Right. Okay.
Tom Power: there's. There's that sort of demystification of place, I suppose, because Oh yeah, people seem really friendly and you can watch locals interacting. So you just, you're just getting a sense of the lay of the land. Very simple terms.
Anne: Yeah.[00:17:00]
Tom Power: guided visits of cities, anything like that's just not on a coach tour, not somebody with a flag, somebody who, it can be as simple as how do you buy something in a shop, you know, in Chile they have these arcane systems of a little bit of paper and you pay for that, and then you get the product over here and it's just a little bit of cultural translation at the very beginning push people
Anne: but then also we,provide as much information as we think is useful and much sort of background information. and that comes down to the critical fact that we specialize in very few places which sort of ties all this stuff together. I think it's very difficult to effectively identify on and off the beaten track where there's on the beaten track, which bits we keep which bits actually we say no reason for that to be the place,
Anne: so what kind of criteria do you have to make these, decisions
Tom Power: I mean, it's not a scientific criteria.
Tom Power: fundamentally it's [00:18:00] personal. It'sCan you meet the locals? Can you go somewhere and actually see something of life or connect to the local way of life in some way, shape or form?
Tom Power: I don't wanna overstate this, you know, it's like you're not going off to be a sort of a nomadic hunter gatherer. So, you know, don't pretend that, but just can you meet people who don't have name badges on,
Tom Power: this young woman, Gloriana she takes people back into her effectively childhood mountain. And then you have lunch at her auntie's farm up on the other side of the hill.
Tom Power: we can't send too many people there. I mean, it's, there has to, otherwise she becomes a restaurant, not a farmer who. Makes lunch two, three times a week or whatever, so you sort of destroy the host.
Tom Power: But then how you build your own itineraries, like it sounds like you're mainly following local stories and how do you find these local stories? Likeso this is the inch wide, mile deep thing that we, you know, we're highly, specialists. [00:19:00] So we, that has to be our value that we're adding. because in order to identify what's, in, what's out, what's on the beaten track, what's off the beaten track, what's the beaten track for good reason and what's, you know, just rubbish,
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: some years ago in Costa Rica, for instance, I just drove the entire Pacific Coast. Just so I could see every town, every village, every beach, just to sort of, okay. Yeah. you could understand
Anne: kind of feel like, yeah.
Tom Power: Yeah. you've got to know the positives and negatives. You've gotta know the ones and the zeros.
Tom Power: Otherwise you're, you know, saying that this is a lovely beach, fine. Is it lovely than the one next door? Is it nicer than that hotel? Is that guide better than that one? You actually have to eat the full menu to understand what the good stuff is. to the question, how do we construct these things? our origin story sort of was very much the people and the place and debt of gratitude to people. And so, and you'll know this when you've [00:20:00] met amazing people or you've stayed in an amazing. Place or you've had an amazing day out with a guy to, they will associate those great chefs associate with other great chefs or great cooks and great food.
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: Great guides do not associate with bad guides, great hosts, hospitality do not associate with hospitality.
Tom Power: So once you've got some, tend to out. So
Anne: Yeah. So you trust the network of your, your own network basically.
Anne: you trust the heroes of place. 'cause we've been working with them, they're partners of ours. We're working directly with them, always directly with them. Yeah.
Tom Power: so there's this constant feedback loop of, you know, there's one in, Rio de Janeiro, there's a new lodge that's opening there that is friends with somebody who runs a lodge in Patagonia. The lodge in Brazil isn't open yet. We've already been [00:21:00] there and seen it. And, you know, it's amazing because we know that one is also amazing and it's kind of conceived around the same model of, here's a precious lump of land to be protected. Here's a thing that's worthy of protection. Let's find a way of sharing it. in a way that benefits all. so there's a hook, there's your grain of sand around which, alright, that takes us out of the ordinary, takes us away from the expected flow. What else is then connected? Because, you know, sometimes these things will rise up. You know, this, these things will land on your lap.
Tom Power: It's oh right, there's a bright spot
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: that's of interest and we can do something different and interesting.
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: But having one one bright point on a map that's not kind of on the beaten track, that's not enough. You've got, you know, not gonna dive in, drive five hours and drive five hours out to go see this cool thing.
Tom Power: There's got to be a sort of [00:22:00] a. Chain. be a sort of sequence of things. that's when the kind of the digging happens. That's when you start to really say, look, there must be something in this area. Who do we know? Who knows somebody who might know something about this? And then you'll find, actually there's a natural reserve there.
Tom Power: That's pretty cool. These mountains are really beautiful. and you dig and you sort of, you start to uncover the bright spots. Then there's often, usually more. it's excavation, it's investigation, it's relationships built over time, then it's just going and going back, going back, going back and
Anne: Yeah, so it's not necessarily off the beaten track travel, it's more like beyond the ordinary, as you said. So I guess that may be the better term to, to describe it.
Tom Power: I mean we're,
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: sort of increasingly around this idea of beyond, because it's not, again,
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: you know, started last year, I think it was, to Op Pine and beyond. It's not, you know, to Pine is incredible. It's just that it's
Anne: [00:23:00] Yeah.
Tom Power: there is.
Anne: Yeah. And then how do you do that, for example, with Machu Picchu, because that's the highlight. How do you go beyond the ordinary, in your trip? How does it make it pure, like Ventura experience?
Tom Power: so Machu Picchu itself in and of itself, that's quite useful because,still go there for sunrise. Yeah. Even though it's in a cloud forest and 90% of the time, 95% of the time, there is no sunrise Machu Picchu.
Tom Power: It's a cloud until mid morning, late morning, but still boom. that's the way that things are set up. And so that's where the vast majority of people go through and pass through Machu Peaches. And there's morning hours coming off the in
Anne: I'm assuming it's promoted with a picture of Machu Picchu with an actual sunrise. Obviously
Tom Power: promote the sunrise with a picture of the sunset. But anyway, that
Anne: Okay. Yeah. Idea. You can also do that. Okay. Yeah,
Tom Power: it's bathed in warm light.
Anne: of course.
Tom Power: so we turn up in the afternoon.where at all possible, we [00:24:00] people to do the one Day in Catrell, which is a, you know, you get the train most of the way and you hike up the valley side, you join the in catrell and a right of the last stretch, but you arrive above the site on foot in the afternoon. And genuinely, I mean, this is extraordinary. I've got photos through the years and into the past years,of nobody in Machu Picchu, you know, I mean, no visible people in Machu Picchu
Anne: Wow.
Tom Power: except for our clients and not, you know, hanging off a rock ignoring the thousand people behind them. I mean, these are genuinely like, wow. so in that sense it's surprising. It's still remarkably easy to just look, there is a way. So
Anne: Yeah. So even with the very, very popular highlights, it is possible if you go at a different time or different route, that you still have that different experience.
Tom Power: Yeah, just a more sort of special experience. 'cause the thing is, you know, Machu Picchu, it is such an extraordinary place. It's such an extraordinary achievement. [00:25:00] It's absolutely beautiful. The location of, it's everything.
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: course,
Tom Power: you're going to Machu Beach, you're gonna go in and out via Cusco in some way, shape or form. And you're gonna travel along the Sacred Valley, which is the basically a hundred kilometer valley that connects SCO to Machu And so it's sort of sco, sacred Valley, Machu Picchu. most people stay in SCO when they first arrive. Two things. That's the highest altitude, so it's brutal on the body.
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: Second is Cusco the biggest busy city, but it's the center of it particularly is very touristed. So if you go there, you will see the women and the children in brightly colored weavings with a pretty llama, all fluffy and shampooed. And take a photo for a dollar or $2 or whatever it is, in front of an amazing Inca wall. And so your first experience of the Inca Empire is this sort of, it's this confected version of it, this sort of [00:26:00] perfected version of it. And you're at super high altitude. We just, we changed the running order, so we go into the Sacred Valley, so we stay, Away from the main part of the Sacred Valley, and we just immerse people a bit in, in the local place. So you'll go walking and you'll go do a bit of mountain biking, but actually the first day you're gonna spend sort of in an ordinary town buying bread in a market, literally being given solace to go buy a tomato and a potato and a love bread or whatever. Just so that there's some connection, some understanding. you'll have dinner with the local, who's there locally. She and her daughter hosts people in the house. It's humble, but it's people absolutely love it. This is really fascinating, kind of genuine exchange. The Inca culture is not, did not die years ago.
Tom Power: The Inca culture is alive today. It is not an open air museum. It is a continuum. It is a cultural continuum. And the first thing you have to do is just to show people the kind
Anne: Where it is.[00:27:00]
Tom Power: yeah. And for good, for bad, for ugly, for heart. It's hard. I mean, these are literally people scraping potatoes off the top of mountains at four and a half thousand meters.
Tom Power: I mean, it is it is a brutally hard life, but the weavings are genuine.
Tom Power: I mean, it is, it's phenomenal at that point, by the time our people get back to sco they've seen the fancy thinker with the beautiful kind of relics and artifacts, but whose family were killed by the shining path. Right. So the haves who lost in the sort of land reforms and the violent years you've got, they've seen and interacted in some way, shape or form with people who've never had a be or they've got a couple of potatoes to rub together kind of thing. They've seen craft of the women and the weavers. They've seen the people up the shepherds wearing the weavings. They're not sparkly clean. You don't go out and buy a new weaving every week. they are sort of passed down.
Anne: it's like experiencing the actual culture, like it's [00:28:00] happening today and no stage experience or
Tom Power: right?
Anne: a better one.
Tom Power: But then when you get to Cusco and
Anne: I,
Tom Power: the woman and the child with the weavings on and the fluffy lama, you are, you have a context to place that in. So you're not sitting there thinking, oh, isn't that cute? This is how people live. not sitting there thinking, this is just some tourist crap. You're
Anne: yeah,
Tom Power: oh
Anne: it's combination.
Tom Power: a thing that's, I get why they're doing that. And that's cool. That's a, I mean, I would
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: rather than scrape potatoes off hillside if that was,
Tom Power: every day of the week.
Anne: yeah,
Tom Power: not, you know, so it's like you, again, it's that sort of, how do you prepare people actually to have more, more interesting, more meaningful, sort of engaging experiences.
Tom Power: just requires some thinking and engagement at design level than just selling what's easy to sell.
Anne: yeah. And do you feel it's harder to sell this like what you're doing? Or do you feel it kind of comes naturally with as soon as you engage, like in a [00:29:00] conversation with those that are interested?
Tom Power: Yes. I think, I mean, when the conversations happen, yeah. It's it's, that's
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: obviously to get people to start this conversation to find you, that's, that, that's harder. You're choosing a, you're choosing the hard path in, in every. Dimension. I mean, as you know, the classic model of tour operator is that you are effectively a portfolio of product that is to you and is defined for you by a ground handling company in destination country.
Tom Power: Whereas we're going past them and we're, we have to off and farm our own ingredients where tour operators are essentially working off a menu of
Anne: Yeah. Yeah.
Tom Power: They're ready meals. so yeah, they, you know, it's just quite simply easier for them to transact. They're typically transacting things that are better known. They're more familiar. it's not the simple path.
Anne: No, no, I can imagine. But then how do you, approach this? How do you try and promote your way [00:30:00] of traveling? How do you sell it online?
Anne: It's, a lot of it is word of mouth, repeat, asymmetrical stuff. I.
Tom Power: it's not like the product, the marketing isn't suited to a sort of, I pay click model, sort of acquisition model of, you know, print advertising, online advertising, whatever. Because you, if you're selling a blue widget, frankly you can use a fairly straightforward form of sort of promotion and marketing, but where you have to. Where yourselves are predicated on conversations and engagement and curiosity at heart. you have to sort of create environments and situations where it's conversation can happen.
Tom Power: and it's just that actually just get somebody really interesting, of associated with somewhere we go and then people talk and, you know, it's, that's the kind of, it's just that constant, you know, value add. how do we do something that's actually coming to Not [00:31:00] sit in a room and we'll sell you a holiday, which.
Anne: experience. and, but then you're doing that mainly offline, what you said, like you do events and you do, you encourage mouth to mouth,
Tom Power: Yeah,
Tom Power: I think increasingly, yeah, that's, the way, but it's, you know, it's a complicated of communication. 'cause of course you have to be, it can't be one thing or the other in exclusivity because, you are, particularly if you're selling something unusual, unknown, your name has to appear times, multiple times.
Tom Power: So the kind of, the face-to-face might be one of the late stage interactions you have. but typically there'll be a press article or the, and, or, Advil and, or word of mouth and or,it's a whole suite of activities that sort of builds up,
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: up over time.
Anne: Yeah. And then for example, if that happened for a specific,after beaten track destination that you, offer have you noticed like an increase of interest from other operators for example, the [00:32:00] same area, after this happened or.
Tom Power: are, we special, we, I mean, look, no, you basically, you don't know. that's the thing. look, a rising tide lifts us all, so it's like, it's kind of, it's difficult to get real information. So, you know, I think you've gotta read the tea leaves a bit. One thing that gives us a decent idea of it, we often work with hotels that have literally four, six rooms and we know at peak times of year when we can find space. You know, so there's that sort of internal gauge that says you wouldn't have got a room in that place for that time of year. so we, we've sort of, I guess we've got that sort of internal barometer that's quite interesting.
Tom Power: It's probably, but it doesn't tell us what's happening in the 200 drum hotel up the road, but it gives
Anne: Yeah, but you know what's happening like in the smaller, communities that you go to.
Tom Power: And if the big places are full, then that'll tend to sort of push people out into the [00:33:00] smaller places and less, less obvious places, you know, so there is, I think there is a relationship between the occupancy rates of a big place and the occupancy rates of a little place, in some way, but it's not necessarily directly causal.
Tom Power: So, you know, you're slightly foolish to, place confidence in, in those things. But then has it ever happened that, for example, a more remote location, that you don't really feel it still fits, your pure ADV Ventura values now that, for example, a lot more travelers are coming in Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we really, our original destination was almost exclusively tore op pine that we would do the w treks we would do, it just became too much. It was, the promise of going to Patagonia and experiencing something special was being replaced with just walk nose to tail with somebody else and sleep in a, an overcrowded bunk room.
Tom Power: It just, so we kind of walked away from it, and really last [00:34:00] year we, as we were coming up with this beyond concept, we went back specifically to work out okay. How can we do this place justice and also deliver value for our clients? that was to keep some Torresdale pioneer, but actually to say, wow, there's incredible places around and about and nearby.
Tom Power: So just dispersing, diffusing.
Tom Power: so yeah, I mean, we drop, we definitely drop places when they're too, when they're too busy or when change of ownership or change of attitude to earn. I mean, we like to think that we are really good partners.
Tom Power: We, get a lot of feedback from our partners about our clients. so that happens in reverse as well. We've got loyal clients who've done lots of trips and they're like, that place wasn't very pure. And so you observe it, you know, stuff happens. But yeah, fundamentally, if they're just not delivering the service or they're not being good partners, they're not as good as they were or whatever, then, [00:35:00] just, we move on.
Tom Power: And so that, that closed, you know, there's always that
Anne: But there's a lot of personal connection that you have with your local partners.
Tom Power: yes,
Anne: clear.
Tom Power: but
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: there's a sort of downside to that, which is, it's human. There are relationships in there, there are lives in there. and that's a, that sort of, it gives it the beauty, but obviously it, it carries a high. High risk,
Anne: yeah.
Tom Power: we are not going there saying, right, this is exactly the shape of the trip
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: We are, you know, in a sense we're building it out from there. We're saying, okay, what's, what are you, what's, what are you sharing with us as visitors? And
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: of that is no longer available to share, then well, tough. Frankly,
Anne: But do you feel that's one of your, biggest challenges in developing or offering your, beyond experiences to always having to navigate, who is where, and to build these new [00:36:00] relationships with communities and to keep that, steady.
Tom Power: not, I wouldn't say it's the main. Challenge. it's a thing. Yes, we have to, it's, but the people we're working with are professionals. They're dedicated and they love it. And it because it's often happening on a very small scale, you are often connecting to a passion of theirs and a particular interests of theirs.
Tom Power: So it's, you know, they're not prone to simply upping and leaving or saying, actually, I don't fancy this anymore. I don't wanna be a guide anymore. I've got some better, you know, they're, they do tend to be very solid, long-term relationships that we build and maintain. There, there is attrition at the edges for all sorts of human reasons, but the fundamentally, they're very sound constant relationships.
Anne: Quality
Tom Power: based on respect, you know that. Yeah. we'll treat you well, we'll pay you well, we'll pay you on time. We'll [00:37:00] be, good partners to you and we will send you clients who have been well prepared so that you are so that you're actually having interesting conversations. I mean, you know, as a guide, speaking from personal experience, if you get the same sort of complete blank canvas every day, it gets pretty boring.
Tom Power: 'cause you're talking about sort of a really low level, okay, this is a tree and that's a beach, and that, you know, somebody who's arrived with a little bit more prep around, okay, they listen to some podcasts about the current political situation here, or a historical podcast here, or they've been listening to this music, or they've seen this film, they read a book. The conversation's just become much more random and enriching for both sides.
Tom Power: Focused on conversation and cultural exchange. Maybe that's,
Tom Power: In addition to, you know, a monkey or there's a potato farmer, or there's
Anne: yeah. Obviously.
Tom Power: or whatever. Yeah. but it's, but it provides a sort of richer for a conversation.
Anne: Do you also get that back from your [00:38:00] travelers that's something that they really value, like from the overall experience that they have?
Tom Power: it's always the people. It's always the people.
Anne: Oh, it's the people. Yeah. we're getting back to them.
Tom Power: Always the
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: No, but I mean, it's the same with all of us, you know? went to see Machu Picchu, but you know what? I had this crazy night in a bar and I met this person and we ended up going back here, and this happened. It's, nobody ever remembers the postcard view.
Anne: No,
Tom Power: I remember the Goucher that stopped and, you know, invited you
Anne: then.
Tom Power: sit mat day looking at the scenery. So there's sort of, the scenery is the backdrop, but the actual stuff,the beating heart of it all is personal.
Anne: You in your communication, you have a strong emphasis on these stories. how do you, for example, collect these stories? how do you actively,get these stories out of your travelers to also use that to, share it with new
Tom Power: travelers?
Tom Power: we asked them, but also they're generally, I think generally they appreciate, I. That personal thing once they've [00:39:00] been there. 'cause often they'll get the, you couldn't sell this, but you get somewhere and the place you're staying says, oh yeah, no, they're lovely, they're great. They're, you know, we've worked there for 10 years and they, you know, lots of them are friends. And so when our clients go there and they're the hoteliers naming the names in the office and their people and the stuff, and the, they're like, oh, we've sort of fallen into this network of trust. And so actually they, you know, it's, it, when they're sharing stories, it doesn't come across as now we need you to provide feedstock for our social media feed. It's actually, they're sharing stories of kind of stuff that's happened, transformational stuff that's happened. And it's amazing. I mean, there's, you know, you work in travel and people's reasons to travel and reasons not to travel. they can be pretty emotionally powerful.
Tom Power: They can be pretty inspiring. and so again, all coming down to sort of person, people, personality, relationships, they [00:40:00] seem to share willingly. And so actually now I think we're, there's a quite a focus on just connecting to our partners a lot more. and, 'cause they're there every day. All day, every day.We're constantly getting stuff in from the people on the ground, which again is very difficult for our competition to emulate
Anne: How so?
Tom Power: 'cause they don't have the direct connections. They're buying off the menu, they're buying the ready meals.
Anne: Yeah. Yeah.
Tom Power: So they literally dunno the name of the person who's gonna pick their client up from the airport or they dunno the name of the guide who's gonna be with them showing them around Buenos Aires. We do. not only that, but we've got photos of, you know, oh God, there's an empanada competition going on in, in Palmore.
Tom Power: But, you know, the sort of proof point I suppose that, yeah, look, we are actually, there is no middle person here. it's direct, directly out at the coalface kind of thing.
Anne: I think what you said, like you, you can facilitate these genuine connections because you already have [00:41:00] them locally. I think that's the key aspect here. You've invested quite a lot in knowing these people and really valuing them, knowing them personally. and yeah, by doing so, you are allowing your travelers to do the same.
Tom Power: Yeah. So it's that brokering an introduction in many ways. You
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: of think if you know, typical sort of value chain in travel is actually point to point sort of four or five points along a line. Whereas I always think of as the triangle. It's us partners, clients, we're getting the right people to the right places, but we're brokering those introductions effectively. So it creates a very different dynamic on than just sort of pushing business up and down a supply chain. It's, anyway, it's all. Crunchy hippie. But
Anne: Yeah,
Tom Power: think it's the sort of the why we travel thing is it's, look,
Anne: people.
Tom Power: the people we would want to travel with us. I think that why we travel is somewhere in and around people, not list, not so [00:42:00] that I can say I've been somewhere not to share it on Instagram or Facebook or whatever. it's people, it's, something, curiosity that drives us to gonna have conversations and just understand other otherness in its, and all its kind of wonderful otherness. It's just, I love it. I love it.
Anne: I think what I really noticed, also like in this interview is I think you said that yourself, you're not the typical to operate, that you're really focused on when you say go beyond not the take menu and to really force these,genuine connections, so both yourself and your travelers.
Anne: So, yeah, no, I think it's been really interesting to unravel, like how you do things and is not as, you don't really go after beaten track is to remote places, but more just beyond the ordinary to actually meet the people.
Anne: And I think this is actually what we maybe need more to, 'cause we always talk about sustainable tourism has to be, good [00:43:00] for people, planet.
Anne: but is it actual responsible if you don't know who is actually on the other side? So I do think that this personal connection is a lot more important than what the tourism industry thinks at the moment.
Tom Power: Yeah, I mean, look,
Anne: How, how can we travel in a world where actually where we go, people are happy to see us. We are welcomed as guests. That's kind of what we all want.
Anne: absolutely, I think that for most travelers that should be the ultimate end goal. but do you have any last advice for travel businesses trying to navigate a bit more towards the same,
Tom Power: I mean, look right. Sustainability by design. Don't sell it because nobody's buying it. nobody's searching for it. As Mille and Nicolo said, behavioral scientist, we did some work with a travel by B Corp. Nobody ever asked Mercedes for an airbag. You know,
Anne: no.
Tom Power: getting it. You're getting it, so you build it in.
Tom Power: but it can be anything. It can be really small. Final thought. This was [00:44:00] me speaking to, I'm sure you know, ed Edmund Morris at, equator. He did
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: of mapping of, group tours in Jordan.
Tom Power: it was fascinating map with sort of, you know, here's where people spend their nights and here's another place in the south. So they spend their nights and then he,lines between them and they travel past to go stay here and here. And then he mapped over areas of extreme poverty. And all these group tours were going straight past of extreme poverty, not stopping. So if you were to do one thing, and it could be as simple as one thing, stop for lunch halfway. ' cause $5 spent in an area of extreme poverty in the middle of Jordan is massively impactful. And if that, honestly,the ripple effect of that alone can be massive.
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: sort of, it's just applying the mindset. It's look, what, what wins can we have? What quick wins can we have? but don't get caught up in the kind of perfection. Don't get caught up in, [00:45:00] it's not for marketing, for quality of experience. So just do a better job of actually delivering on the promise of travel.
Anne: Yeah. No, I definitely agree. thank you so much for sharing all this, it's been very interesting. yeah. And I really look forward to following more of your work. for now, thank you so much for joining.
Anne: I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. There's a lot we can learn from companies like Pura Auraura, especially their way of building local relationships, and how this shapes genuine connections. If you're enjoying the podcast, like and share this episode and subscribe to our channel to not miss any of the upcoming episodes.
Anne: Thank you for listening, and I hope to see you next time.
Anne: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Sustainable. Today's Successful Tomorrow where we explore real world sustainable tourism stories that actually work. In our last discussion episode, we already shared a few highlights for my interview with Thomas co-founder and CEO of Pura Aventura, a boutique two operator from the UK committed to travel positive and to less travel places.
Anne: Today I'm excited to bring you the full interview. Thomas and I talked about what off the beaten track actually means for them, and how to ensure that travelers truly connect with local communities. It was such an interesting conversation and I hope you'll learn as much from it as I did enjoy.
Anne: Traveling off the beaten track is one of the current buzzwords and the travel industry is busy selling this, but how do you develop off the beaten track experiences? How far off the [00:01:00] beaten track do you go and how do you ensure positive impact and a great traveler experience?
Anne: That's what we are exploring with Thomas from Pura Aventura. Ura Auraura is a boutique two operator from the UK committed to creating travel positive experiences with ethical design at heart. They're also a B Corp certified travel business. They're offering trips on roads, less traveled in Latin America, Spain, and Portugal with locally rooted travel experiences.
Anne: So Thomas, thank you so much for being here. And to start right off, off the beaten track, is phrase we hear a lot in travel marketing lately, but in your experience, what does it really mean when done, responsibly.
Tom Power: Yeah. firstly, thank you. Thank you for having me, Ann. It's great to be here. and I love your work.
Anne: Thank you. off the beaten track. I guess I sort of turn this question around on you a little bit that actually the first thing we need to do is it's about the beaten track. And so I suppose underpinning the whole [00:02:00] idea of going off the beaten track is really just why do we travel? What is the purpose of our travel? And for those of us, I guess who want to travel to experience otherness and difference and to see how other people where they live, then that experience becomes heavily depleted by. By overt tourism and by, by being kind of on the beaten track, I suppose. So it's kind of more about just being somewhere that you can safely, observe otherness, whether that's, you know, cultural, that's linguistic, that's culinary. it's physically the landscapes and so on. so I guess we start there rather than specifically let's find somewhere completely bonkers and that nobody's ever been before and create a drip there. well, I think it's a good, [00:03:00] starting point so you look at off the beaten track to the route less traveled, but kind of close to the highlights, as in you're not going, to remote places, what you said no one's ever been to, but how do you find a midway in that?
Tom Power: Yeah, so it's almost, I mean, it, guess there can be two ways around it, but one of the ideas we have is the same road, different view. So
Anne: Right. Okay.
Tom Power: oftentimes, you know, for us, we're, if we're going to Peru for instance, people will always want to see peach.
Anne: picture. Yeah.
Tom Power: that's going to be like it or not.
Tom Power: That's gonna be kind of central to an experience or
Anne: Yeah,
Tom Power: purchasing decision. Whether or not it ends up being their most important memory, I.
Tom Power: think is a very different question.
Anne: Yeah,
Tom Power: you sort of start with these hooks. We know that people want to go to Patagonia, right? their expectation's gonna be set in certain obvious places, defined places. Brazil, they're gonna want to see Christ the Redeemer [00:04:00] statue. And I mean, just there's Christ the Redeemer. it's a, an absolute bun fight.
Anne: I.
Tom Power: I mean, and videos of it, it's absolutely fascinating and we've all seen it.
Tom Power: So, you know, I've, I was in Athens the year before and,watching Sunset over the,city and it was just,comical and everyone trying to just get in front of the other one to try to get the photo showing them alone with this view. And you're like, what
Anne: yeah,
Tom Power: memory, you know, it's this detachment between sort of your actual experience,
Anne: and
Anne: yeah,
Tom Power: your memory of that experience and your captured your artificial memory that you can share. what are you doing
Tom Power: value in this? It's just,
Tom Power: it's
Anne: yeah. No, absolutely. And I also think, like what you said is a really good point is that the purchase, say like the motivation to book a trip is to go see the, the statue or to go see Machu Chu. But you do experience that often. That's not the best [00:05:00] experience of the entire trip, but it's kind of the reason to go to, to Peru, for example.
How well are you actually communicating sustainability? We see many travel businesses and destinations working hard, yet they still struggle to talk about it,
Anne: and maybe you feel the same. You're afraid of being seen as greenwashing, unsure what to share, or just not really connecting with your travelers.
Anne: We've been there with a lot of travel brands and we get how frustrating it is. So with years of experience in sustainable tourism and marketing, we've created something simple to get you started.
Rik: It's called the Sustainable Marketing Scan. You just answer a few quick questions. We'll take a look, and if it's a good fit, we'll invite you for a short call to go through your opportunities.
Anne: You can start today@goodtourisminstitute.com slash scam and turn uncertainty into a clear, compelling story.
Yes, but, Patagonia is a [00:06:00] good example of this because people have always heard of or seen Torresdale pine. So it's very common that people will come in and say, I want to go to Torresdale Pine, and the first thing we do is to say, okay, why? what's brought you there? Very quickly, the conversation leads to, I want to go to Patagonia. about Patagonia? want to see the people, the culture, the landscapes, the kind of experience, the sort of the variety of, of all of these things. And almost immediately it's apparent that the Patagonia they're describing is not the Patagonia they would find southern Patagonia. It is the Patagonia. They would find the beaten track up the Kerra, router 40 on the Argentine side. you know, it doesn't take very much digging to realize that, ah, what the things you say you like hotels, kind of local restaurants, all this [00:07:00] stuff. You're simply not gonna find that in the busier places. You will still find that elsewhere. So you're sort of guiding them, guiding them away. But almost always the entry point is through a known item, a known element, a place.
Anne: yeah, exactly. And then who exactly is the per Aventura traveler? Like what do you think they're looking for?
Tom Power: it's really interesting. we've kind of been going through all, we're going through this process at the moment of adjusting, profiles. So we've lived with customer profiles that follow the classic sort of a B one, bloody blah. They drive two
Anne: cars and have a house with the roof and four chimneys, and it just observing this, we thought. I mean, look, they tend to be they tend to be affluent. You know, there are certain common economic,typically demographic, sort of themes But actually beyond that,
Tom Power: it didn't quite make sense. This sort [00:08:00] of the filterof economics or material stuff didn't really make sense to it. So we started thinking about profiling in terms of values. and I think that the unifying value that our clients have is that they, they travel with curiosity and they treat people with respect. They will treat people reasonably and well, no matter their kind of apparent standing, I guess.
Tom Power: know,
Anne: Okay.
Tom Power: of, it's the way people talk to cleaner and I just observe it that there are people who treat people as people
Tom Power: sort of mindset that they travel with a, an openness, they travel to see other and where they live and how they live.
Tom Power: I think there is a distinction between that and the people who travel and they demand their comforts be met. I must be as comfortable as I would be at home or more comfortable. so basically that the host community serve me [00:09:00] certain things that I demand. And it's sort of, the end of that logical thread.
Anne: You've got an all-inclusive resort or a cruise ship, I.
Tom Power: which is sort of probably the furthest reaches of the sort of travel experience from what we do. that's not to sound judgy. And I And I thinkCertain kinds of people will always go on a cruise and certain kinds of people will always go on a trip that's sort of much more connected to place. Lots and lots of us will do bits of everything. So we'll prefer I, generally speaking, I'm much, much prefer something where I'm talking to the locals and I'm experiencing new stuff and my eyes are being opened and I'm learning.
Anne: Yeah. they're all looking for that, personal connection with locals to wherever they travel. I guess that's what's, their shared value is.
Tom Power: I think so, and I find it, I did honestly once when my younger child was freshly, in the world, we went to Grenada for sort of all inclusive in a week in a hotel. I loved Grenada, I loved the people, but I mean, we were [00:10:00] outta that hotel.
Tom Power: We were chatting to the fishermen on the beach. And we, know, even in a sort of a nominally all inclusive environment, those of us who are curious, Constantly looking over the wall and kind of clambering over the fence to go see, how does this work? where do people eat? What do they eat?
Anne: the majority of the travel experiences is then also I think around, connecting with locals. Do you feel you need to really manage expectations of travelers, to prepare them on, how to approach that, or how does that work?
Tom Power: so. I mean, expectation management is critical to everything in terms of kind of managing specific cultural interactions. No for, a couple of reasons. One is we're not, I don't think we're operating anywhere that is that delicate,
Tom Power: generally speaking, we're putting people in places. we're preparing their expectations in terms [00:11:00] of. The usual things, like there will not be air conditioning in this particular place, or there will be, traditional architecture. The Amazons are a classic one that people think that, well, you must to automatically seal yourself in against the creepy crawlies. And actually traditional architecture is, there are no walls, you essentially clear two, three meters land around the lodge, and then it's just forest. it freaks people out.
Tom Power: you manage the expectation and they're saying, look, they've been doing this a while. They know what they're doing. It's okay. This is good design for the environment. so there's lots of stuff whereby you are prepping people, then the kind of, how do you, so I suppose the question then is how do you. Equip people. How do you tool people up to actually benefit? We're putting them somewhere that we think is amazing, right? then do to kind of enable them [00:12:00] to make the most of that opportunity?
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: a couple of things. One is we're pretty careful about making sure that we don't fend more than one set of travelers to the same area at the same time. So there'll be a
Anne: Okay.
Tom Power: So if there's a road trip, Patagonia's a classic one for this, a road trip down the carer Australia that three weeks long. There'll be times when they'll cross over one another there a night or two here or there, but generally speaking, and it's very, very
Anne: Difficult for you as a traveler to interact with Patagonia. First time you've been to Patagonia. First time I've been to Patagonia. If we're basically driving along together, you are more familiar. You, I know you will speak English, we can chat about the cricket or the football or the weather Yeah,
Tom Power: or the, that. It's
Anne: not the same experience.
Tom Power: it's more difficult for us to throw ourselves into, that the people here don't speak English, so I'm gonna just
Anne: Yeah.[00:13:00]
Tom Power: flat my arms until I get a plate of chicken or you know, whatever that, it's kind of uncomfortable. But of course it's that we push ourselves out into host community, into the place we are. And that's where the magic happens. That's where the memories happen. That's where the fun happens.
Anne: Yeah, the spontaneous, like not pre-planned.
Tom Power: I think of our work as being as akin to the difference between a builder and an architect, like almost anyone. If the bricks of the services within a trip, here's a hotel, here's a guide, here's a thing, here's a thing, and we shove it on top. That's not our job. 'cause in a sense, if all you're doing is booking some stuff. Then frankly, you're gonna lose your lunch to booking.com, to Expedia, to whoever you know the OTAs are
Anne: Ai.
Tom Power: AI will have your lunch. It's about the, it's architecture. So it's not about the wall itself, it's about the space between the walls the opportunity for the unexpected to happen, the delightful to happen.
Tom Power: And it's stuff that we are not, [00:14:00] we're not booking in the kind of, you're gonna have a spontaneous experience at 3:00 PM All we can do is put you in a place where actually, generally visitors are less common. So people are more interested to see you. They're generally pleased to welcome you because it's cool that you are there. The impact of your travel on their lives, their economy, and so on, their wellbeing is positive. So. You feel more welcome, and alongside that we've provided you. Look, on Tuesdays, there's a market here, here's a really nice bar. They've got live music on Mondays. Don't worry. Just walk in, sit down, ask for this, you just, you kind of provide an on-ramp
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: That's like
Anne: Which I guess is needed.
Tom Power: some people don't need it. Some people just sort of walk into, oh, here's a bar in a foreign land. I'll just walk in and I'll just work it out for myself. most people through sort of humility and you don't want to, you don't wanna impose yourself on a
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: Spain's a [00:15:00] great one for this. You walk into a bar in Spain, you know, in the uk you go into a bar and you stand there until the person behind the bar comes up to you and says, what would you like to drink? And you say, I would like my drink.
Anne: Mm-hmm.
Tom Power: You do that in Spain. You're there forever. Unless the bar's empty.
Tom Power: But in a full bar, you basically walk in, you a, you throw a request over heads, bodies, and somehow they hear it. like a minute later, this glass appears over somebody's head and to you. And if you didn't know that, you'd stand there feeling they're ignoring me because I'm a tourist and they obviously don't want me in here.
Tom Power: So, you know, you sort of retreat out. So stuff like that. But actually it's just, no, that it's kind of this simply a different etiquette. There's a different thing that happens here
Anne: Yeah, I guess that's what I meant, like with managing expectations, like how do you, engage with local communities or how do you engage with the local customs, in a place, for example, where they don't speak English or where, like this, in this bar where they have like really [00:16:00] different,custom than you're used to.
Anne: I mean, I think for most people it might seem rude to just shout over your order rather than just waiting. So I think how do you start? Do you have like a proper, well, guidelines for travelers, for destination, or how do you have these conversations with them?
Tom Power: Yeah, I mean, we have holiday guide notes, and so we sort of write our guides, but it's also, it's, we also have interaction with locals. So there's, there's very few examples where you'll go on a trip with us without having some sort of, connected interaction at the very beginning. So even on self-guided walks in Spain or Portugal, the first thing that will happen is that you'll be picked up and you'll have a sort of meet and greet and sit down and so on.
Anne: Right. Okay.
Tom Power: there's. There's that sort of demystification of place, I suppose, because Oh yeah, people seem really friendly and you can watch locals interacting. So you just, you're just getting a sense of the lay of the land. Very simple terms.
Anne: Yeah.[00:17:00]
Tom Power: guided visits of cities, anything like that's just not on a coach tour, not somebody with a flag, somebody who, it can be as simple as how do you buy something in a shop, you know, in Chile they have these arcane systems of a little bit of paper and you pay for that, and then you get the product over here and it's just a little bit of cultural translation at the very beginning push people
Anne: but then also we,provide as much information as we think is useful and much sort of background information. and that comes down to the critical fact that we specialize in very few places which sort of ties all this stuff together. I think it's very difficult to effectively identify on and off the beaten track where there's on the beaten track, which bits we keep which bits actually we say no reason for that to be the place,
Anne: so what kind of criteria do you have to make these, decisions
Tom Power: I mean, it's not a scientific criteria.
Tom Power: fundamentally it's [00:18:00] personal. It'sCan you meet the locals? Can you go somewhere and actually see something of life or connect to the local way of life in some way, shape or form?
Tom Power: I don't wanna overstate this, you know, it's like you're not going off to be a sort of a nomadic hunter gatherer. So, you know, don't pretend that, but just can you meet people who don't have name badges on,
Tom Power: this young woman, Gloriana she takes people back into her effectively childhood mountain. And then you have lunch at her auntie's farm up on the other side of the hill.
Tom Power: we can't send too many people there. I mean, it's, there has to, otherwise she becomes a restaurant, not a farmer who. Makes lunch two, three times a week or whatever, so you sort of destroy the host.
Tom Power: But then how you build your own itineraries, like it sounds like you're mainly following local stories and how do you find these local stories? Likeso this is the inch wide, mile deep thing that we, you know, we're highly, specialists. [00:19:00] So we, that has to be our value that we're adding. because in order to identify what's, in, what's out, what's on the beaten track, what's off the beaten track, what's the beaten track for good reason and what's, you know, just rubbish,
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: some years ago in Costa Rica, for instance, I just drove the entire Pacific Coast. Just so I could see every town, every village, every beach, just to sort of, okay. Yeah. you could understand
Anne: kind of feel like, yeah.
Tom Power: Yeah. you've got to know the positives and negatives. You've gotta know the ones and the zeros.
Tom Power: Otherwise you're, you know, saying that this is a lovely beach, fine. Is it lovely than the one next door? Is it nicer than that hotel? Is that guide better than that one? You actually have to eat the full menu to understand what the good stuff is. to the question, how do we construct these things? our origin story sort of was very much the people and the place and debt of gratitude to people. And so, and you'll know this when you've [00:20:00] met amazing people or you've stayed in an amazing. Place or you've had an amazing day out with a guy to, they will associate those great chefs associate with other great chefs or great cooks and great food.
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: Great guides do not associate with bad guides, great hosts, hospitality do not associate with hospitality.
Tom Power: So once you've got some, tend to out. So
Anne: Yeah. So you trust the network of your, your own network basically.
Anne: you trust the heroes of place. 'cause we've been working with them, they're partners of ours. We're working directly with them, always directly with them. Yeah.
Tom Power: so there's this constant feedback loop of, you know, there's one in, Rio de Janeiro, there's a new lodge that's opening there that is friends with somebody who runs a lodge in Patagonia. The lodge in Brazil isn't open yet. We've already been [00:21:00] there and seen it. And, you know, it's amazing because we know that one is also amazing and it's kind of conceived around the same model of, here's a precious lump of land to be protected. Here's a thing that's worthy of protection. Let's find a way of sharing it. in a way that benefits all. so there's a hook, there's your grain of sand around which, alright, that takes us out of the ordinary, takes us away from the expected flow. What else is then connected? Because, you know, sometimes these things will rise up. You know, this, these things will land on your lap.
Tom Power: It's oh right, there's a bright spot
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: that's of interest and we can do something different and interesting.
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: But having one one bright point on a map that's not kind of on the beaten track, that's not enough. You've got, you know, not gonna dive in, drive five hours and drive five hours out to go see this cool thing.
Tom Power: There's got to be a sort of [00:22:00] a. Chain. be a sort of sequence of things. that's when the kind of the digging happens. That's when you start to really say, look, there must be something in this area. Who do we know? Who knows somebody who might know something about this? And then you'll find, actually there's a natural reserve there.
Tom Power: That's pretty cool. These mountains are really beautiful. and you dig and you sort of, you start to uncover the bright spots. Then there's often, usually more. it's excavation, it's investigation, it's relationships built over time, then it's just going and going back, going back, going back and
Anne: Yeah, so it's not necessarily off the beaten track travel, it's more like beyond the ordinary, as you said. So I guess that may be the better term to, to describe it.
Tom Power: I mean we're,
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: sort of increasingly around this idea of beyond, because it's not, again,
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: you know, started last year, I think it was, to Op Pine and beyond. It's not, you know, to Pine is incredible. It's just that it's
Anne: [00:23:00] Yeah.
Tom Power: there is.
Anne: Yeah. And then how do you do that, for example, with Machu Picchu, because that's the highlight. How do you go beyond the ordinary, in your trip? How does it make it pure, like Ventura experience?
Tom Power: so Machu Picchu itself in and of itself, that's quite useful because,still go there for sunrise. Yeah. Even though it's in a cloud forest and 90% of the time, 95% of the time, there is no sunrise Machu Picchu.
Tom Power: It's a cloud until mid morning, late morning, but still boom. that's the way that things are set up. And so that's where the vast majority of people go through and pass through Machu Peaches. And there's morning hours coming off the in
Anne: I'm assuming it's promoted with a picture of Machu Picchu with an actual sunrise. Obviously
Tom Power: promote the sunrise with a picture of the sunset. But anyway, that
Anne: Okay. Yeah. Idea. You can also do that. Okay. Yeah,
Tom Power: it's bathed in warm light.
Anne: of course.
Tom Power: so we turn up in the afternoon.where at all possible, we [00:24:00] people to do the one Day in Catrell, which is a, you know, you get the train most of the way and you hike up the valley side, you join the in catrell and a right of the last stretch, but you arrive above the site on foot in the afternoon. And genuinely, I mean, this is extraordinary. I've got photos through the years and into the past years,of nobody in Machu Picchu, you know, I mean, no visible people in Machu Picchu
Anne: Wow.
Tom Power: except for our clients and not, you know, hanging off a rock ignoring the thousand people behind them. I mean, these are genuinely like, wow. so in that sense it's surprising. It's still remarkably easy to just look, there is a way. So
Anne: Yeah. So even with the very, very popular highlights, it is possible if you go at a different time or different route, that you still have that different experience.
Tom Power: Yeah, just a more sort of special experience. 'cause the thing is, you know, Machu Picchu, it is such an extraordinary place. It's such an extraordinary achievement. [00:25:00] It's absolutely beautiful. The location of, it's everything.
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: course,
Tom Power: you're going to Machu Beach, you're gonna go in and out via Cusco in some way, shape or form. And you're gonna travel along the Sacred Valley, which is the basically a hundred kilometer valley that connects SCO to Machu And so it's sort of sco, sacred Valley, Machu Picchu. most people stay in SCO when they first arrive. Two things. That's the highest altitude, so it's brutal on the body.
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: Second is Cusco the biggest busy city, but it's the center of it particularly is very touristed. So if you go there, you will see the women and the children in brightly colored weavings with a pretty llama, all fluffy and shampooed. And take a photo for a dollar or $2 or whatever it is, in front of an amazing Inca wall. And so your first experience of the Inca Empire is this sort of, it's this confected version of it, this sort of [00:26:00] perfected version of it. And you're at super high altitude. We just, we changed the running order, so we go into the Sacred Valley, so we stay, Away from the main part of the Sacred Valley, and we just immerse people a bit in, in the local place. So you'll go walking and you'll go do a bit of mountain biking, but actually the first day you're gonna spend sort of in an ordinary town buying bread in a market, literally being given solace to go buy a tomato and a potato and a love bread or whatever. Just so that there's some connection, some understanding. you'll have dinner with the local, who's there locally. She and her daughter hosts people in the house. It's humble, but it's people absolutely love it. This is really fascinating, kind of genuine exchange. The Inca culture is not, did not die years ago.
Tom Power: The Inca culture is alive today. It is not an open air museum. It is a continuum. It is a cultural continuum. And the first thing you have to do is just to show people the kind
Anne: Where it is.[00:27:00]
Tom Power: yeah. And for good, for bad, for ugly, for heart. It's hard. I mean, these are literally people scraping potatoes off the top of mountains at four and a half thousand meters.
Tom Power: I mean, it is it is a brutally hard life, but the weavings are genuine.
Tom Power: I mean, it is, it's phenomenal at that point, by the time our people get back to sco they've seen the fancy thinker with the beautiful kind of relics and artifacts, but whose family were killed by the shining path. Right. So the haves who lost in the sort of land reforms and the violent years you've got, they've seen and interacted in some way, shape or form with people who've never had a be or they've got a couple of potatoes to rub together kind of thing. They've seen craft of the women and the weavers. They've seen the people up the shepherds wearing the weavings. They're not sparkly clean. You don't go out and buy a new weaving every week. they are sort of passed down.
Anne: it's like experiencing the actual culture, like it's [00:28:00] happening today and no stage experience or
Tom Power: right?
Anne: a better one.
Tom Power: But then when you get to Cusco and
Anne: I,
Tom Power: the woman and the child with the weavings on and the fluffy lama, you are, you have a context to place that in. So you're not sitting there thinking, oh, isn't that cute? This is how people live. not sitting there thinking, this is just some tourist crap. You're
Anne: yeah,
Tom Power: oh
Anne: it's combination.
Tom Power: a thing that's, I get why they're doing that. And that's cool. That's a, I mean, I would
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: rather than scrape potatoes off hillside if that was,
Tom Power: every day of the week.
Anne: yeah,
Tom Power: not, you know, so it's like you, again, it's that sort of, how do you prepare people actually to have more, more interesting, more meaningful, sort of engaging experiences.
Tom Power: just requires some thinking and engagement at design level than just selling what's easy to sell.
Anne: yeah. And do you feel it's harder to sell this like what you're doing? Or do you feel it kind of comes naturally with as soon as you engage, like in a [00:29:00] conversation with those that are interested?
Tom Power: Yes. I think, I mean, when the conversations happen, yeah. It's it's, that's
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: obviously to get people to start this conversation to find you, that's, that, that's harder. You're choosing a, you're choosing the hard path in, in every. Dimension. I mean, as you know, the classic model of tour operator is that you are effectively a portfolio of product that is to you and is defined for you by a ground handling company in destination country.
Tom Power: Whereas we're going past them and we're, we have to off and farm our own ingredients where tour operators are essentially working off a menu of
Anne: Yeah. Yeah.
Tom Power: They're ready meals. so yeah, they, you know, it's just quite simply easier for them to transact. They're typically transacting things that are better known. They're more familiar. it's not the simple path.
Anne: No, no, I can imagine. But then how do you, approach this? How do you try and promote your way [00:30:00] of traveling? How do you sell it online?
Anne: It's, a lot of it is word of mouth, repeat, asymmetrical stuff. I.
Tom Power: it's not like the product, the marketing isn't suited to a sort of, I pay click model, sort of acquisition model of, you know, print advertising, online advertising, whatever. Because you, if you're selling a blue widget, frankly you can use a fairly straightforward form of sort of promotion and marketing, but where you have to. Where yourselves are predicated on conversations and engagement and curiosity at heart. you have to sort of create environments and situations where it's conversation can happen.
Tom Power: and it's just that actually just get somebody really interesting, of associated with somewhere we go and then people talk and, you know, it's, that's the kind of, it's just that constant, you know, value add. how do we do something that's actually coming to Not [00:31:00] sit in a room and we'll sell you a holiday, which.
Anne: experience. and, but then you're doing that mainly offline, what you said, like you do events and you do, you encourage mouth to mouth,
Tom Power: Yeah,
Tom Power: I think increasingly, yeah, that's, the way, but it's, you know, it's a complicated of communication. 'cause of course you have to be, it can't be one thing or the other in exclusivity because, you are, particularly if you're selling something unusual, unknown, your name has to appear times, multiple times.
Tom Power: So the kind of, the face-to-face might be one of the late stage interactions you have. but typically there'll be a press article or the, and, or, Advil and, or word of mouth and or,it's a whole suite of activities that sort of builds up,
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: up over time.
Anne: Yeah. And then for example, if that happened for a specific,after beaten track destination that you, offer have you noticed like an increase of interest from other operators for example, the [00:32:00] same area, after this happened or.
Tom Power: are, we special, we, I mean, look, no, you basically, you don't know. that's the thing. look, a rising tide lifts us all, so it's like, it's kind of, it's difficult to get real information. So, you know, I think you've gotta read the tea leaves a bit. One thing that gives us a decent idea of it, we often work with hotels that have literally four, six rooms and we know at peak times of year when we can find space. You know, so there's that sort of internal gauge that says you wouldn't have got a room in that place for that time of year. so we, we've sort of, I guess we've got that sort of internal barometer that's quite interesting.
Tom Power: It's probably, but it doesn't tell us what's happening in the 200 drum hotel up the road, but it gives
Anne: Yeah, but you know what's happening like in the smaller, communities that you go to.
Tom Power: And if the big places are full, then that'll tend to sort of push people out into the [00:33:00] smaller places and less, less obvious places, you know, so there is, I think there is a relationship between the occupancy rates of a big place and the occupancy rates of a little place, in some way, but it's not necessarily directly causal.
Tom Power: So, you know, you're slightly foolish to, place confidence in, in those things. But then has it ever happened that, for example, a more remote location, that you don't really feel it still fits, your pure ADV Ventura values now that, for example, a lot more travelers are coming in Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we really, our original destination was almost exclusively tore op pine that we would do the w treks we would do, it just became too much. It was, the promise of going to Patagonia and experiencing something special was being replaced with just walk nose to tail with somebody else and sleep in a, an overcrowded bunk room.
Tom Power: It just, so we kind of walked away from it, and really last [00:34:00] year we, as we were coming up with this beyond concept, we went back specifically to work out okay. How can we do this place justice and also deliver value for our clients? that was to keep some Torresdale pioneer, but actually to say, wow, there's incredible places around and about and nearby.
Tom Power: So just dispersing, diffusing.
Tom Power: so yeah, I mean, we drop, we definitely drop places when they're too, when they're too busy or when change of ownership or change of attitude to earn. I mean, we like to think that we are really good partners.
Tom Power: We, get a lot of feedback from our partners about our clients. so that happens in reverse as well. We've got loyal clients who've done lots of trips and they're like, that place wasn't very pure. And so you observe it, you know, stuff happens. But yeah, fundamentally, if they're just not delivering the service or they're not being good partners, they're not as good as they were or whatever, then, [00:35:00] just, we move on.
Tom Power: And so that, that closed, you know, there's always that
Anne: But there's a lot of personal connection that you have with your local partners.
Tom Power: yes,
Anne: clear.
Tom Power: but
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: there's a sort of downside to that, which is, it's human. There are relationships in there, there are lives in there. and that's a, that sort of, it gives it the beauty, but obviously it, it carries a high. High risk,
Anne: yeah.
Tom Power: we are not going there saying, right, this is exactly the shape of the trip
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: We are, you know, in a sense we're building it out from there. We're saying, okay, what's, what are you, what's, what are you sharing with us as visitors? And
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: of that is no longer available to share, then well, tough. Frankly,
Anne: But do you feel that's one of your, biggest challenges in developing or offering your, beyond experiences to always having to navigate, who is where, and to build these new [00:36:00] relationships with communities and to keep that, steady.
Tom Power: not, I wouldn't say it's the main. Challenge. it's a thing. Yes, we have to, it's, but the people we're working with are professionals. They're dedicated and they love it. And it because it's often happening on a very small scale, you are often connecting to a passion of theirs and a particular interests of theirs.
Tom Power: So it's, you know, they're not prone to simply upping and leaving or saying, actually, I don't fancy this anymore. I don't wanna be a guide anymore. I've got some better, you know, they're, they do tend to be very solid, long-term relationships that we build and maintain. There, there is attrition at the edges for all sorts of human reasons, but the fundamentally, they're very sound constant relationships.
Anne: Quality
Tom Power: based on respect, you know that. Yeah. we'll treat you well, we'll pay you well, we'll pay you on time. We'll [00:37:00] be, good partners to you and we will send you clients who have been well prepared so that you are so that you're actually having interesting conversations. I mean, you know, as a guide, speaking from personal experience, if you get the same sort of complete blank canvas every day, it gets pretty boring.
Tom Power: 'cause you're talking about sort of a really low level, okay, this is a tree and that's a beach, and that, you know, somebody who's arrived with a little bit more prep around, okay, they listen to some podcasts about the current political situation here, or a historical podcast here, or they've been listening to this music, or they've seen this film, they read a book. The conversation's just become much more random and enriching for both sides.
Tom Power: Focused on conversation and cultural exchange. Maybe that's,
Tom Power: In addition to, you know, a monkey or there's a potato farmer, or there's
Anne: yeah. Obviously.
Tom Power: or whatever. Yeah. but it's, but it provides a sort of richer for a conversation.
Anne: Do you also get that back from your [00:38:00] travelers that's something that they really value, like from the overall experience that they have?
Tom Power: it's always the people. It's always the people.
Anne: Oh, it's the people. Yeah. we're getting back to them.
Tom Power: Always the
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: No, but I mean, it's the same with all of us, you know? went to see Machu Picchu, but you know what? I had this crazy night in a bar and I met this person and we ended up going back here, and this happened. It's, nobody ever remembers the postcard view.
Anne: No,
Tom Power: I remember the Goucher that stopped and, you know, invited you
Anne: then.
Tom Power: sit mat day looking at the scenery. So there's sort of, the scenery is the backdrop, but the actual stuff,the beating heart of it all is personal.
Anne: You in your communication, you have a strong emphasis on these stories. how do you, for example, collect these stories? how do you actively,get these stories out of your travelers to also use that to, share it with new
Tom Power: travelers?
Tom Power: we asked them, but also they're generally, I think generally they appreciate, I. That personal thing once they've [00:39:00] been there. 'cause often they'll get the, you couldn't sell this, but you get somewhere and the place you're staying says, oh yeah, no, they're lovely, they're great. They're, you know, we've worked there for 10 years and they, you know, lots of them are friends. And so when our clients go there and they're the hoteliers naming the names in the office and their people and the stuff, and the, they're like, oh, we've sort of fallen into this network of trust. And so actually they, you know, it's, it, when they're sharing stories, it doesn't come across as now we need you to provide feedstock for our social media feed. It's actually, they're sharing stories of kind of stuff that's happened, transformational stuff that's happened. And it's amazing. I mean, there's, you know, you work in travel and people's reasons to travel and reasons not to travel. they can be pretty emotionally powerful.
Tom Power: They can be pretty inspiring. and so again, all coming down to sort of person, people, personality, relationships, they [00:40:00] seem to share willingly. And so actually now I think we're, there's a quite a focus on just connecting to our partners a lot more. and, 'cause they're there every day. All day, every day.We're constantly getting stuff in from the people on the ground, which again is very difficult for our competition to emulate
Anne: How so?
Tom Power: 'cause they don't have the direct connections. They're buying off the menu, they're buying the ready meals.
Anne: Yeah. Yeah.
Tom Power: So they literally dunno the name of the person who's gonna pick their client up from the airport or they dunno the name of the guide who's gonna be with them showing them around Buenos Aires. We do. not only that, but we've got photos of, you know, oh God, there's an empanada competition going on in, in Palmore.
Tom Power: But, you know, the sort of proof point I suppose that, yeah, look, we are actually, there is no middle person here. it's direct, directly out at the coalface kind of thing.
Anne: I think what you said, like you, you can facilitate these genuine connections because you already have [00:41:00] them locally. I think that's the key aspect here. You've invested quite a lot in knowing these people and really valuing them, knowing them personally. and yeah, by doing so, you are allowing your travelers to do the same.
Tom Power: Yeah. So it's that brokering an introduction in many ways. You
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: of think if you know, typical sort of value chain in travel is actually point to point sort of four or five points along a line. Whereas I always think of as the triangle. It's us partners, clients, we're getting the right people to the right places, but we're brokering those introductions effectively. So it creates a very different dynamic on than just sort of pushing business up and down a supply chain. It's, anyway, it's all. Crunchy hippie. But
Anne: Yeah,
Tom Power: think it's the sort of the why we travel thing is it's, look,
Anne: people.
Tom Power: the people we would want to travel with us. I think that why we travel is somewhere in and around people, not list, not so [00:42:00] that I can say I've been somewhere not to share it on Instagram or Facebook or whatever. it's people, it's, something, curiosity that drives us to gonna have conversations and just understand other otherness in its, and all its kind of wonderful otherness. It's just, I love it. I love it.
Anne: I think what I really noticed, also like in this interview is I think you said that yourself, you're not the typical to operate, that you're really focused on when you say go beyond not the take menu and to really force these,genuine connections, so both yourself and your travelers.
Anne: So, yeah, no, I think it's been really interesting to unravel, like how you do things and is not as, you don't really go after beaten track is to remote places, but more just beyond the ordinary to actually meet the people.
Anne: And I think this is actually what we maybe need more to, 'cause we always talk about sustainable tourism has to be, good [00:43:00] for people, planet.
Anne: but is it actual responsible if you don't know who is actually on the other side? So I do think that this personal connection is a lot more important than what the tourism industry thinks at the moment.
Tom Power: Yeah, I mean, look,
Anne: How, how can we travel in a world where actually where we go, people are happy to see us. We are welcomed as guests. That's kind of what we all want.
Anne: absolutely, I think that for most travelers that should be the ultimate end goal. but do you have any last advice for travel businesses trying to navigate a bit more towards the same,
Tom Power: I mean, look right. Sustainability by design. Don't sell it because nobody's buying it. nobody's searching for it. As Mille and Nicolo said, behavioral scientist, we did some work with a travel by B Corp. Nobody ever asked Mercedes for an airbag. You know,
Anne: no.
Tom Power: getting it. You're getting it, so you build it in.
Tom Power: but it can be anything. It can be really small. Final thought. This was [00:44:00] me speaking to, I'm sure you know, ed Edmund Morris at, equator. He did
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: of mapping of, group tours in Jordan.
Tom Power: it was fascinating map with sort of, you know, here's where people spend their nights and here's another place in the south. So they spend their nights and then he,lines between them and they travel past to go stay here and here. And then he mapped over areas of extreme poverty. And all these group tours were going straight past of extreme poverty, not stopping. So if you were to do one thing, and it could be as simple as one thing, stop for lunch halfway. ' cause $5 spent in an area of extreme poverty in the middle of Jordan is massively impactful. And if that, honestly,the ripple effect of that alone can be massive.
Anne: Yeah.
Tom Power: sort of, it's just applying the mindset. It's look, what, what wins can we have? What quick wins can we have? but don't get caught up in the kind of perfection. Don't get caught up in, [00:45:00] it's not for marketing, for quality of experience. So just do a better job of actually delivering on the promise of travel.
Anne: Yeah. No, I definitely agree. thank you so much for sharing all this, it's been very interesting. yeah. And I really look forward to following more of your work. for now, thank you so much for joining.
Anne: I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. There's a lot we can learn from companies like Pura Auraura, especially their way of building local relationships, and how this shapes genuine connections. If you're enjoying the podcast, like and share this episode and subscribe to our channel to not miss any of the upcoming episodes.
Anne: Thank you for listening, and I hope to see you next time.