Tour experts Collette are celebrating a legendary 100-year legacy of guiding travellers all over the world to experience other cultures and positively transform lives in the process.
Very much the quiet achievers since the company began in 1918, one little-known fact is that Collette has donated a whopping 21% of their profits to charitable causes in just the last five years.
21% is a remarkable feat when you consider that most large corporations struggle to break open their wallets to donate just 1% of their profits per annum to worthy causes.
The “Collette Cares” program funds eleven foundation projects for kids around the world including Alice Springs, and while they had a goal of donating a million meals through a number of partnerships including Rise Against Hunger, they’ve already smashed it at 1.3 million meals to date.
Bravo Collette.
Collette Cares, Rise against hunger
I caught up with Dan Sullivan, CEO Collette recently and asked him the one question I wanted to know for us all to take into 2019.
Despite being a simple question made up of just five words, it’s such a powerful one. “Can travel change the world?”
Here’s Dan’s eloquent response.
“Travel is the great educator. It can change the world and it will. Because the more people travel, the more they understand.
The more people are different, the more they’re the same. Ultimately, you realise that we all want the same things in life.
The new Explorations range from Collette goes deeper
When you get out and explore the world, wherever you might be, even in the most troubled spots in the world, you’ll usually find that the people are great.
It’s politicians and money that gets in the way. Sadly, it’s corruption, greed and power that take over while the regular people are the ones who often lose out.
When you get to the bottom of it, that’s why you want to visit the locals and in a perfect world, go inside their homes, see where they live, see what they do, and see what their family life is like.
More often than not, you find more similarities than differences.
Dan Sullivan, CEO Collette speaking at the Global Travel Forum
That’s what we try to deliver on our tours. Those moments are a big part of it. It may not be seeing an iconic site, but it might just be the thing they remember the most about the tour.
Often, they’ll write about it when they send us their post-tour survey and tell us how it has made a big difference to their lives.
Sometimes it might be just meeting and talking to people. That’s what has to happen more in the world – we’ve got to talk more with people.
At our centennial celebration, Peter Greenberg (CBS) was our speaker, and he said, “People don’t talk to each other anymore. That’s the biggest issue.”
The panel at the Global Travel Forum
That’s true. People don’t pick up the phone or if they’re away from someone, talk to them so much. They send them an email.
How personal is that, getting emails? There’s a time and places for emails but if it’s all emails, and you don’t have a relationship, what do you have?
I think it’s a way of life that we have to get back to. More one on one time, or just being with people at home and abroad. That’s the great thing about travel. When we go out to different cultures, we go out and meet people.
Sometimes we feel like we know people from other cultures better than we know people in our own business or personal lives. Because we’ve spent quality time with them and they weren’t on their iPhones. And that’s important.
I think people want to know that they’re going to travel with a company that does good, gives back and still creates a great experience. That’s part of our success and our DNA.
There aren’t that many travel companies that stick around for a long time. They either evolve or they die. In any industry.
The companies that have been successful have and evolved and adapted to the market demands while staying true to their values.
100 years on, everybody at Collette gets four hours a month of paid volunteerism. But a lot of times people do it even more as they’re involved in all of our communities and around the world.
So I think there’s a tremendous opportunity for travel.
Because when you look around the world, there are so many issues happening in so many places in the world.
But the more people are aligned, as a global collective, I think the better it is for the world.
Where is travel going? I don’t know. But, I do know it’s going to evolve, I know it’s going to be more immersive, and I know it’s going to be about more people meeting each other to share ideas and experiences.
And that’s the thing we’ve got to get back to because that is the real world we all want to be part of.”
Find out more about Collette: Go Collette
- READ: FOOD DREAMS: Collette’s culinary encounters replace boring lunches with big bucks
- READ: INNOVATIVE TRIPS: Collette unveils explorations; of Morocco, Colombia & more
- READ: Collette celebrates centennial with more than just cake