Small group travel specialist G Adventures is forming a new holding company for its existing brands and acquisitions called G Travel Community (GTC).
The new entity aims to bring together a group of travel companies with a vision for “community-led” tourism growth and to “affect positive change” within the travel sector.
G Adventures will front the GTC portfolio, with UK-based G Touring that comprises Just You and Travelsphere, TruTravels and G Adventures’ not-for-profit partner Planeterra also joining the organisation.
While a centralised office will support all GTC brands, each brand will have its own sales and marketing, customer service, and product development teams and have its own style of tour operations, identity and values.
The formation of GTC comes on the back of G Adventures’ tie-up with private equity firm Certares one year ago, which signalled the company’s intention to implement an acquisition strategy for its business.
Leadership reshuffle
It also heralds senior leadership changes within the organisation.
Effective immediately, G Adventures founder Bruce Poon Tip takes on the title of chairman of GTC, former G Adventures chief operating officer Jeff Russill becomes GTC CEO, and current managing director for G Adventures in the US Ben Perlo becomes president and CEO for the G Adventures brand.
“The formation of GTC – the travel community – signifies that this sense of community is truly at the heart of our entire business – from the naming of our holding company all the way through to our community tourism projects on the ground,” Poon Tip said.
“We are the pioneers of community tourism, so it’s exciting to see this be fully embraced internally as well as externally.
“For 32 years G Adventures has had a positive impact on both our travellers and the communities we visit, but our goal is always to have a far bigger impact in the wider world of tourism.
“With the formation of GTC we are finally creating that community – a stable of travel brands that can really drive change to a wider demographic of people who love to travel, but at the same time want to change the world.”