G Adventures acquires UK based youth travel company

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By Alexandra Coulton

G Adventures has acquired youth travel company, TruTravels, broadening their reach in the sector.

But don’t worry, the small group adventure operator’s founder Bruce Poon Tip has emphasised that TruTravels will remain ‘tru’ to their own unique brand identity, style of trip delivery, and way of communicating with their customers, who predominantly fall into the 18-25 year old demographic.

“Earlier this year, I realised we were missing a beat with a new, grassroots style of small group travel that was emerging for young people,” Poon Tip said.

“When I started digging deeper into what TruTravels does, I discovered that while their ethos is closely aligned to ours, the way they communicate, and how they travel, is so different to G Adventures that we couldn’t compete.”

“For this reason, we don’t want to change what TruTravels does. Joe and Mark are doing an incredible job in this space with this new style of fun-focussed travel which is rooted in meeting new people and driven by social media influences.

“Our aim is to give them a boost so they can do more of what they already do so well, and we welcome them to the G Adventures family of brands as a complementary business,”

TruTravels, which is based in Surrey, United Kingdom, and was co-founded in 2012 by entrepreneurs Joe Fallon and Mark Pope who will continue to run the company as partners and minority shareholders.

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According to Fallon and Pope the new partnership means achieving their dream of becoming a global operator faster and more efficiently, as they now have access to the supply chain and distribution networks G Adventures has built over the past 28 years of operation.

“While there are clear differences in the style of trips TruTravels runs, and the travellers we attract, the similarities we have with G Adventures are how we knew they were the right partners for us,” said Fallon.

“Both brands’ sales are dominated by travel agency sales and both attract travellers from a number of different countries.”

Pope said the biggest draw for TruTravels was their similarity to G Adventures in terms of the importance they place on company culture, staying ‘tru’ to their values, and their joint commitment to protecting people and the planet.

“While it’s obviously exciting to be partnering with the most established and experienced operator in our space, the most important thing for us in saying yes, was that we were culturally aligned,” he said.

“Add to that our shared passion for delivering the best customer experience imaginable, and contributing to making the world a better place, and we believe it’s a perfect match.”

While there are no immediate changes to TruTravels’ ‘TruCrew’, which is made up of 25 staff based in Surrey and 40 tour guides in Asia, they do have plans to expand their sales team as their agency distribution network grows.

As well as helping them grow this network, G Adventures will be supporting TruTravels in increasing their supply chain access, as well as with shared resourcing in areas such as technology, talent acquisition and finance.

The TruTravels deal is the latest acquisition to be made by G Adventures, which also acquired British brands Travelsphere, Just You, Swan Hellenic and Page & Moy in January 2017.

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