This is the biggest opportunity in Travel in a generation.

2017 presents possibly the biggest opportunity the travel industry has had in my lifetime to really stand for something and take the lead in global issues such as sustainable development and poverty alleviation. If you weren’t aware already, 2017 is the UN International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development. The opportunity afforded us all is to take the global momentum created by the UN’s involvement and use clever design thinking to solve multiple problems with innovative solutions. The best solutions will be both commercially successful, super attractive to investors and help to achieve the development goals set and agreed by our World’s leaders.

Whatever you think of the UN, you can’t deny it has one hell of a profile and some of the biggest brains on the planet have determined that Tourism is potentially the key that can unlock something special that levels the playing field across the globe. Tourism, really?

This validation and reinforcement comes as nothing but a complete joy, but also I think a real sense of urgency not to waste this opportunity. This is the time that the snowball hopefully picks up momentum and maybe the last chance before global warming melts it away forever. Now is the time that the policy making level of government and the wider business and investment community begins to pick up on the theme and that potentially those working on or looking to work on new models in tourism will be recognised, get funded and scale into an unstoppable traction.

This is not the beginning of the process – the process has been in motion for a long time. Alongside us here and Urban Adventures (and before us, our parent the Intrepid Group) there have been many voices and activists advocating through words and actions to ensure the benefits of tourism makes the places tourists go, better for the people who actually live there. Justin Francis and his amazing www.responsibletravel.com, Vicky Smith and Diana Edelman behind the #rttc Twitter chat, Ethan Gelber’s – The Travel Word, TUI, Harold Goodwin and many others have been working towards this goal now for a long time. What is important is that we collectively and I hope collaboratively, take this opportunity to bring this thinking (and then more importantly acting) into the mainstream. As Jane Ashton from TUI said quite poignantly at the recent WTM Responsible Tourism day in London last November, we’ve become so scared of greenwash that now we are in a state of green hush. 2017 offers the opportunity to bust that wide open.

We are seeing some Western cities such as Barcelona and Venice reach their tipping point now but we are charging on our way to 7 billion people flying per year by 2034 – a problem in itself. There aren’t less people coming and therein lies the opportunity because this is a problem that has a massive market. This example could be regarded as kind of a first world problem but there are certainly many 2nd and developing world problems that could be moved into a far more bearable situation by one of the biggest employing industries on the planet and probably the best industry to generate trickle down benefits into communities.

As a business when you look at the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS), it can be a little daunting:

1. SDGS 1: Poverty Alleviation;
2. SGDS 2: Hunger…

These are massive issues and on the one hand it is too easy to dismiss that our business can ever help to move the needle on this. Doubly so for a start-up business that needs to first ensure its own survival before it can help anyone. The other view however is to take a design thinking approach to multiple issues and work out how a solution might be able to be developed which solves some or many of those multiple SGDS issues and at the same time actually creates a better tourism product. When looked through this lens, I see nothing but opportunity.

I’d like to take this opportunity therefore to put it out there what we are actually going to do (and are doing) about it, rather than just talk about it. Urban Adventures has as its core business the turning of passionate local people into successful tourism enterprises which support their community. Put simply we help local people create a business that they own and in turn creates unique authentic tourism products which highlight the best of their destination. In consultation with their community, our partners ensure the benefits of that tourism have trickle down effects deeper into the economy by supporting other micro entrepreneurs such as street vendors. In our model there are no out of pocket costs to be involved because accessibility is one of our core tenets. The model is cash positive from day one. The only risk is ‘opportunity cost’ in what else someone might choose to be doing with their time which is not an insignificant consideration.

Our starting point is definitely more attuned to keeping the SDGS issues front of mind because when we re-evaluated our values after a couple of years in business, we reconfirmed the “baked in” Responsible Tourism values we had were critical to our culture, values and business. For us that means that tourism should make the places visited by tourists, better places to live for locals on top of providing great authentic experiences for travellers. Another of our values is ‘Togetherness’ which to us means we should always be thinking about how we interact with our communities both internal and external. The SGDS framework gives us tangible things to measure our performance against our values.

As reported in the Guardian, Ole Lund Hansen, chief of leadership programmes at the UN Global Compact says companies should incentivise every employee to achieve SDG-related targets, including through performance reviews. This needs to be the next step for us. Imagine if people became obsessed with ‘Sustainable Development’ in place of current ‘Economic Growth’ measure that rules the world. What different place we’d live in. We’ve now reached a tipping point as the general first world population are finding that Economic Growth is really only providing rewards for Capital over Workers. Parts of Silicon Valley are starting to realise there is an “empathy vacuum” in some of their current innovation which are running counter to the SGDS goals. The reaction to these things has been seen at the ballot box but not in a way anyone really expected. At least there has been a reaction to wake people up.

We’ve been working on our unique model for 7 years and have amazing local people now operating in over 150 cities around the world. This however is just the first falling of the snow, not the snowball. We have however, I hope and believe, built a snow maker and 2017 is the time to turn it on.

I have a particular passion for the indigenous people of my own land here in Australia. Here we have a developing nation problem in a first world country. That in itself shows the magnitude of the journey we have ahead of us as a global community. My dream is to take a system like ours (or someone else’s – it doesn’t really matter so long as it works) and utilise it to give people the skills and support they need – but not ad nauseum training for the sake of training which has (sadly and repeatedly) been the old approach. The key is to connect those wanting to be involved with people, travellers, who are interested in them and how and where they live. Somehow the piece always forgotten is sales – which is not surprising in a way because academics and Government have no concept really of the sales piece – and if they do, they certainly haven’t been able to enact it. The reason for this is because it is the hardest piece.

Taking this indigenous Australian example, I know from my time growing up in Alice Springs and as a guide in Central Australia that the community need to protect and control the place that people go on their lands. This importance to them is profound and spiritual and not open for debate. As travellers we should be accepting of those views because rather than just charging through the bush without knowing what we are seeing, the opportunity is there to be shown by a local, the person who knows best, what is the Best here. Surely that is a superior traveller experience, which also needs to be the goal.

Indigenous people also sometimes are not super comfortable having people camp on their lands. Under the model we run for example, your local indigenous guide can meet you at a designated point and in your vehicle, show you around their land. That could include a BBQ at their place, giving more opportunity to others in their family or community to participate and earn and at the end of the day, the back packer or grey nomad could head off on their way to designated campground built for their amenity and comfort and signed off by all those around.

The guide in this instance doesn’t need any assets or investment or debt. Actually they just need English language skills (in our business) and a phone. They have the knowledge – they are the expert on their own selves and heritage. They are interesting people and lead super interesting lives, very different from our own, the discovery of which is basically the point of travelling to different places. The Gray Nomads are currently going in a conga line past the door and I believe many would be interested in popping in and learning if they thought they were welcome and there was an opportunity. The elders of these communities don’t want their people moving off country, they want opportunities on country. As is the tenet of Responsible Travel, everyone should be winning and that is the opportunity here.

This is a simplistic view – I understand that. There are almost certainly more cultural factors at play like who gets the cash – and how it is distributed in the community – but the simple model of catching customers and getting them connected with people passionate about showing them the best of themselves, their land and their culture is not complicated.

What is complicated and where pretty much all these types of ventures have fallen down is the catching customers phase. It takes more than 3 weeks of Government funded classroom training to navigate the sales funnel and get in front of the right customer at the right moment. It takes knowledge that is hard won, it takes relationships with the right distribution who understand your offer and communicate it to others, it takes persistence which can easily wear you down and it can take a little tiny bit of luck (or a truck load of cash). I live this every day. Luckily we managed to get in front of about 125,000 this year and we think we can get in front of 1,000,000 each year.

My dream is that some (lots) of those 1 million are supporting places that are currently off the grid with people who didn’t know that there was a place in tourism for them and especially people for whom are currently impacted negatively by where they sit against the SGDS. I see poverty and hunger on my walk from the train station to the office, (in Melbourne FFS!), so we tried to find a small solution to help via our In Focus program. Is it enough? No. Is it something? Yes. For 2017 (and beyond) I’m going to do everything I can to amplify our model into places far and wide and offer nothing but opportunity and a place in our industry to anyone who wants to equally commit to the customer and their experience. All anyone who wants to try, needs to bring is the will and determination to be a part of it and we’ll do what we can to make it happen for them. Individuals, community groups, indigenous groups and anyone else without a solution and to which tourism can be part of the solution, I encourage them to reach out and talk to us about the innovation we’ve developed that can give them a shot.

If you’ve read this far – you can help by simply sharing this article so we can try to give as many opportunities as possible. How are you making the most out of this opportunity in 2017? More importantly, what can we do to help you? Let us know in the comments below.