“Inspire people to see the world through diverse perspectives”: Justin Drape woos the industry at Travel DAZE

Travel Weekly, hosted its annual industry event Travel DAZE, where travel industry experts, Aussie media icons and a couple of foreign ambassadors, amongst others, dazzled and informed a captivated audience.

Amongst those speaking was the former co-founder of advertising agency The Monkeys and current co-founder of travel community site Exceptional ALIEN, Justin Drape.

Drape began his talk with an overview of his previous work with The Monkeys, most prominently for the latest Qantas ad.

He went on to discuss Exceptional ALIEN which he started last year with Michael Canning, another celebrated figure in adland.

Drape’s section at Travel DAZE was aptly titled ‘The Future of Travel is Creative.’

He told the audience that his aim, alongside the mantra of Exceptional ALIEN, is to “inspire people to see the world through diverse perspectives.”

Drape explained the role of creativity in travel and how he planned on launching travel playbooks that would help creators across the globe help people search and plan their travel by looking at creators and what they post.

This is part of Exceptional ALIEN’s goal, Drape said, to show off hidden gems and creators’ favourite destinations.

The main target demographic of Exceptional ALIEN is millennials and generation Z, of whom, Drape said, approximately 25 per cent would consider themselves to be creatives/creators.

Drape also discussed Exceptional ALIEN’s partnership with Tourism New Zealand and how he felt that the work his company was doing could have the potential to change the way people travel.

Exceptional ALIEN recently released part two of its collaboration with Tourism New Zealand to showcase New Zealand through the lens of different creatives including fashion designer Kiri Nathan, contemporary artist Sofia Minson, Fat Freddy’s Drop frontman Dallas Tamaira, sustainable fashion designer Maggie Hewitt, and Olympic skier Nico Porteous.