Five Things I’m Excited For At PEAK DMC
Recently I wrote a short note about how, after a few years solely focusing on day tours with our Urban Adventures brand, I’ll once again be involved in our multi-day operations with Intrepid Travel and PEAK DMC.
The latter, PEAK DMC, operates white-label touring product for in-house and external travel brands. It’s the engine driving sustainable, experience-rich travel in 90+ countries but to travellers it’s invisible. It operates as the face and voice of a number of much-loved tour operators, embodying their brand to delight customers across the world. Here’s what I’m most excited about in working more closely with the DMC teams.
1. Making Adventure More Accessible
Adventure is for everyone. Regardless of physical ability, family status, gender, financial status, sexual orientation or otherwise. Over the years, I’ve loved PEAK’s initiatives to make adventure travel more accessible and inclusive — whether it’s launching and growing a range of products for families, experimenting with vegan food tours, or even helping those with physical disabilities achieve their dreams by taking on the Inca Trail and visiting Machu Picchu.
2. Creating Innovative Products
Travel products should be cool, and if creating them isn’t ruddy good fun you’re doing it wrong. There’s nothing more fun than building and sharing new product concepts with partners and customers.
One of my favourite parts of Urban Adventures was seeing the creativity our teams had in creating such product ideas. An LGTBQ+ celebrating tour launched for the 50th anniversary of the Pride movement in NYC. Another was our award-winning range of ‘In Focus’ tours that partnered with NGOs to tackle local social issues through tourism.
On the multi-day side, I admired PEAK’s creation of women’s-only expedition tours — led by females, for females — that gave women a platform to share their unique perspectives on local culture. Bringing innovative ranges like this to the attention of more operators and travellers is something that I’m really looking forward to.
3. Making Travel Better For The World
Travel is one of the world’s most important industries. It accounts for 1 in 10 jobs worldwide and 10% of global GDP. It’s powerful. And with great power, comes great responsibility.
At its core, PEAK’s style builds a flywheel that drives economic opportunities for local communities which in turn deliver enriching customer experiences. This could be a family welcoming travellers into their humble abode for a unique home stay experience. It might be partnering with indigenous communities to help people understand their heritage and ongoing connection to their lands. It’s always employing local guides. Each destination PEAK operates in has its own opportunities to build supply chains that deliver value for the community and for the customer.
There’s no denying that travel can also create problems too. It’s a contributor to the climate crisis and overtourism has caused a host of problems for more popular destinations. Being a purpose-leader in the industry requires identifying these problems and being a part of the solution rather than contributing to the problem. For instance, PEAK was the first DMC in the world to ban elephant riding in 2014. Trips were all made carbon neutral in 2010, but in recognition of the escalating climate crisis they’re progressing towards being carbon positive. In driving gender equality, the number of female tour leaders employed has doubled in the last three years.
Progress is never a straight line and there’s plenty of work still to be done. New challenges will emerge. Fortunately, PEAK are only just getting started and I’m looking forward to helping take on these challenges that can make a real difference to people and communities.
4. Building Partnerships Outside of the Travel Industry
Anyone with a community, and every forward thinking brand, should be investing in building a community around their product. Most can benefit from bringing like-minded people together in the real world to strengthen bonds. As the world becomes increasingly digital, interweaving in-person experiences for stakeholders will be a competitive advantage.
Think ‘Experience-as-a-Service’ for employee wellbeing, immersive education, and as a storytelling tool for innovative media brands.
As an industry, it’s an area that we’ve barely scratched the surface of. Day tour and experience operators have been innovating in this area. It’s only a matter of time before we see brands dial in on the opportunities of longer, more immersive experiences that bring customers closer to the brand.
5. …and Within The Travel Industry
One of the things I love most about the tour and activities sector is how supportive the community is. Everyone is so darn helpful. They realise that the benefits of working together to improve every traveller’s experience helps to grow the market for tours and activities, which benefits everyone in the long run. The better the experience for the customer, the less likely they are to satisfy their sightseeing/entertainment needs with independent travel, theatre tickets, guidebooks etc.
Growing the pie is the aim — to have more people take more tours by making every operator better, rather than hampering each other.
I’ll be looking to share our best practices, particularly when it comes to people and our planet, with tour operators and other DMCs to help their businesses thrive.
Final Thoughts
Speaking with our existing multi-day partners over the past few weeks has been a breath of fresh air and positivity in some ways. The long planning cycles for multi-day operations means we’re crafting ideas and planning trips well into 2022 — some into 2023.
After consigning 2020 to the dumpster, they’re pressing on. They aren’t waiting for the ‘new normal’ in travel to define their destiny for them — they’re shaping their own by targeting new customers, creating new product concepts, selling new destinations.
It’s a strange time to be excited about travel whilst the world has stopped travelling. I’m embracing it, and forward-thinking tour operators are too. With the passion and creativity I’ve witnessed in the last few weeks, there’s no question that there’ll be a whole host of exciting new products awaiting customers when they’re ready to return.