It’s been a long time coming, but after three decades of watching in admiration and writing about the evolution of G Adventures into the world’s largest small group adventure company, this G virgin is on a G Adventure.
This comes just days after G Adventures played a starring role at the TravelPulse Canada Readers’ Choice Awards. Thousands of travel advisors from across Canada voted G Adventures as Best Adventure Operator and Best Guided Vacation Operator of the Year. Not only that, G Adventures founder Bruce Poon Tip was inducted into the Canadian Travel Hall of Fame, another honour that’s been a long time coming.
Jenna English, (at left), is the G Adventures Global Purpose Specialist hosting the Canada fam in Belize. (Photo Credit: Bruce Parkinson)
The tour I’m on is the 9-day Classic Belize and Tikal. I’m the token sweaty male accompanying 15 much fresher-looking female travel agents from across Canada. Jenna English is our vibrant Global Purpose Specialist from G and Juan Carlos (JC) (Just Chillin’) Martinez is our CEO — Chief Experience Officer.
Our orientation meeting took place at the very pleasant, resort-style Best Western Plus Biltmore Plaza in Belize City where we spent our first night. Each advisor offered a short introduction about themselves, and their reasons for applying to participate in the fam.
Both the composition of the group and their answers about why they wanted to be on the trip say something about the evolution of the travel industry and the Canadian traveller. The age range is early 20s to 60s, but many of the participants have only started selling travel in the past few years. Most are independent consultants who are members of various consortia. Just one, William Lake, BC’s Tanya Vigeant, is a bricks-and-mortar agency owner.
For the majority, the trip is their first time travelling with G Adventures, and their inaugural visit to Belize and Guatemala.
As we went around the table with the introductions, one thing really stood out – advisors are responding to demand from a significant portion of their client base for something more than an all-inclusive beach vacation.
The comments of Holly Slater, an award-winning TravelOnly advisor from Alberta, were representative of several of the responses. She says many of her clients “are done with the buffet lines” at AI resorts. “I want to bring a new product to my clients that is more immersive,” she said. “They’re looking for people and culture, and that’s G’s specialty.”
Our CEO JC explained that on a G Adventures fam, travel advisors experience a tour exactly as their clients would. They have the same inclusions, accommodations and optional excursions.
The Belize Tourism Board hosted the G Adventures fam group at the Golden Bay Hotel in Belize City. (Photo Credit: Bruce Parkinson)
One exception to that was an opening night dinner on the rooftop of the Golden Bay Hotel, hosted by the Belize Tourism Board. It was a lovely setting, and fireworks and car horns were frequent as the young people of Belize City celebrated prom night.
Tourism is booming in Belize, with recent arrival numbers surpassing pre-COVID highs. The majority come from the U.S., with Canada currently a top-three market.
The G Adventure kicked off in earnest the next morning, when we headed to a downtown bus terminal to board local transport known as a “chicken bus,” to take us to the Guatemalan border en route to the island town of Flores, a gateway to the legendary ruins of Tikal.
The bus trip was as real as it gets. When the doors opened, there was an unruly but not impolite jostling, as our large group scrambled to make it on. To leave the bus station, everyone has to have a seat. After that, anything goes. Despite local travellers outsmarting us by piling in the back door while we lined up at the front, we all made it.
The G Adventures Canada fam group at the border to Guatemala. (Photo Credit: Bruce Parkinson)
For the next couple of hours, the bus stopped at many places along the way. It was standing room only, except for a couple of enterprising people who brought plastic buckets to sit on in the aisle. With Belize an English-speaking member of the Commonwealth, conversation was easy, and our group was highly engaged with friendly Belizean travellers.
By afternoon we had settled into the homey, lakefront Hotel Peten on the island of Flores, with 22 rooms featuring private balconies with a water view. Travelling on the “chicken bus” gave us our first experience of the G Adventures “difference,” and we enjoyed more engagement with local people than many travellers do in a week’s vacation.
G Adventures fam participants enjoying the sunset at Guatemala's Isla de Flores. (Photo Credit: Bruce Parkinson)
We had also already begun to see the impact of G’s desire to support local businesses in destination as much as possible. They use something called a Ripple Score to measure that. Across all of its tours, the average score is 93, meaning 93% of the money the operator spends in destination goes to local businesses. On this trip, the score is 99. The name refers to the positive ripple effect of spending on local communities, and it feels good to be part of that.
There’s lots of trip to come, so please follow along here and on our social channels.
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