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Home > About
Us > Authenticity In Travel
Authenticity in Travel
By Kurt Kutay
Presented at:
Ecotourism and Conservation in the Americas
Stanford University
May 2-5, 2002
A writer for National Geographic Adventure Magazine recently
called to query me about a story she was writing on the
newest frontiers of adventure travel. Although we are introducing
some New Trips featured in this newsletter, we are not so
focused on seeking new, untouched destinations in adventure
travel as we are looking for new ways to create more enhanced
experiences for our travelers; experiences that define the
"Wild Style" by creating opportunities for our
travelers to have the most authentic, in-depth, unique and
meaningful life enhancing experiences during their Wildland
Adventure.
Since 1986, we have enjoyed success and found real joy
in defining our ecotourism business model from the standpoint
of the traveler's experience rather than strictly the business
of selling tours. In many ways, focusing on the client's
experience has created a 'Wild Style' branding that distinguishes
us in the market, generates substantial return clients and
referrals, and is the focus of our staff in selling our
trips against those of other adventure travel companies.
Twenty years ago the adventure itself defined the 'Wild
Style'. It was only a matter of setting up an itinerary
to remote places with a capable guide and ground operator
knowing that traveling in an undeveloped region with a minimal
infrastructure would result in any number of "authentic"
experiences just by virtue of the serendipity and breakdowns
that inevitably occurred. In those days, clients loved hitching
a ride in the back of a cargo truck with local villagers
going to market in the Andes, or bunking down under an open
air, palapa of a rag-tag settlement on the Amazon River
because there were no lodges and because that was how the
local people lived. These were the early defining characteristics
of the "Wild Style" that attracted intrepid adventure
travelers to Wildland Adventures before there were so many
choices of other adventure travel companies. The fact that
we organized Clean-up Treks on the Inca Trail Trek, contributed
to protection of conservation areas and reducing our impact
on the environment, and did what we could to involve and
support local communities, our company was recognized from
the outset as a specialized ecotourism outfitter.
In many ways, ecotourism as we originally defined it at
the first International Ecotourism Society board retreat
in 1990 has become secondary to "authenticity"
in our business model. Ecotourism, travel which contributes
to conservation and supports the well-being of local people,
is no longer the quintessential defining characteristic
that distinguishes one greener adventure travel company
from another. I am pleased to see that ecotourism has become
an absolute and expected requisite of doing business in
our specialized segment of the industry, and in many respects
it has reached into the highest echelons of luxury travel
and even mass tourism.
Today, everything has changed. The adventure travel industry
is a highly developed network of outfitters and guides with
sophisticated communication capabilities, and an infrastructure
of reliable and safe transportation and comfortable lodging.
The market of specialty adventure travel has blossomed into
throngs of soft adventure travelers seeking active outdoor
oriented trips, intellectually stimulating learning opportunities
combined with fun, laughter and camaraderie, with a requisite
level of safety and comfort. And, for the most part, they
want to travel on their time, in their individual style,
with a sense of flexibility and freedom that allows them
to have their own experience.
Our challenge, and the focus of our traveler-oriented business
model, is to create opportunities for our clients to have
the most "authentic", in-depth, unique and meaningful
life enhancing experiences during their Wildland Adventure.
What is "authenticity" and what does
it mean to the traveler?
It can be argued that authenticity is an unattainable goal
in travel. Our very arrival alters the nature of a place.
Our presence will forever change the place and the people
with whom we come in contact. And our soft-adventure clients
are no longer interested in paying us to organize a "reality
tour" that immerses them into daily living conditions
and political realities. They are on vacation after all.
Travel writer, and former editor of Escape Magazine, Joe
Robinson, wrote about authenticity in an outstanding article
entitled "Real Travel" published in the July-August
2002 issue of UTNE Reader magazine. He speculates that behind
the growth of adventure travel, home stays, ecotourism,
spiritual tours and all this specialty travel, is a "craving
for authentic experience." He quotes from Dean MacCannell's
book, The Tourist (Schoken, 1976), who says travelers want
to find "a connection between truth, intimacy, and
sharing the life behind the scenes."
Some of our more novice clients still think authenticity
is synonymous with travel to pristine natural areas and
untrodden villages where native peoples retain traditional
values. They associate authenticity with what author Graham
Greene referred to as a "nostalgia for something lost."
To be sure, getting back to nature, experiencing more exotic
cultures of the past and present, and being reminded of
the sacred interconnectedness of life that traditional cultures
express, are primary goals many adventure travelers seek.
However, what I find equally gratifying and meaningful
is simply the truth. In fact, authenticity is little more
than honesty, sincerity, good faith, and genuineness. Observing
wildlife and experiencing the wilderness, while also learning
about environmental threats and conservation programs. Or,
getting beyond a photo stop at a Yagua Indian village on
the main stream of the Amazon River to try a poison arrow
blow gun to really experience a more personal, honest and
meaningful understanding of local life and the dilemma of
native people throughout the Amazon. Authentic experiences
are just as available in popular tourism destinations like
Costa Rica and Thailand, as they are in remote Mongolia
or the Bolivian highlands. It all depends on how we conduct
our business and integrate our tour operations from trained
guides to informed guests. If authenticity is genuineness,
as I believe it is, then the level of cultural or economic
development, or the degree to which people live according
to their traditions, should not be factors in how we judge
the value and meaning of our cross-cultural encounters.
If we are to provide authentic, life enhancing travel experiences
we must constantly ask ourselves the question: How do we
create authenticity in a product which is staged, scheduled
and orchestrated to give pleasure? Can we create an "authentic"
experience when a client's needs and expectations of safety
and comfort separate them from the reality of local life?
It's the guides!
How do we show a real world without artifice, that craves
our understanding and compassion rather than our judgment;
a world that seeks to welcome us rather than entertain us?
Above all else, it's the guides. Guides are the catalyst
between travelers and their experience. There is nothing
more important to creating authenticity in travel than the
right guide. In spite of decades of experience in ecotourism
and some excellent, locally-based guide training programs,
finding the right guide that creates the 'Wild Style' experience
is the difference between magic and mediocrity in a Wildland
Adventure. There are many trained naturalists, excellent
tour escorts, and knowledgeable historians and archaeologists,
but it is still rare to find a native guide with the requisite
range of skills and character: a sufficient command of the
English language, the requisite knowledge and the skill
to impart the information, the experience to lead, and a
personality that is open to sharing a part of themselves,
their beliefs and values which induces heart-to-heart interactions
between travelers and their hosts.
Itinerary Planning
The majority of adventure travelers still want to experience
major tourist sites like Machu Picchu, maybe even hike the
popular Inca Trail, to see Alaska within the confines of
Glacier Bay and Denali National Park, or to visit any number
of other world famous tourist sites. But carefully crafted
itineraries, executed by guides who understand what eco-travelers
seek, will still create memorable moments and opportunities
of reflection in which we are reminded of our place and
time in the Universe. This can be accomplished if only by
careful timing, or purposefully planned activities that
enhance a visit like setting up a private oratory exchange
between travelers inside a Roman Odeon at an archaeological
site on the Turkish coast with wine and candles after hours.
We must work closely with our operators, in collaboration
with the guides, to create itineraries that include the
well-known with the unforeseen, leaving time for unpredictable
opportunities of personal discovery for individual guests.
Ground Operators
We seek local inbound outfitters who make an effort to build
authenticity into our travel programs. It takes more time
planning, traveling on the ground, researching, training
and oversight. Our local partners must be willing to collaborate
with us, to take time to understand the 'Wild Style', then
offer suggestions for creating authentic experiences. Their
challenge, which requires experience and sensitivity to
understand the traveler's needs, is not just to offer real
world experiences, but to expose travelers to behind the
scenes life while simultaneously taking care of their comfort
and security.
Outbound Operators
As an outbound adventure travel company, we are no longer
selling a destination. Our travel "product" is
the experience. We have to be able to transmit the idea
of this experience to our prospective clients to be competitive
and this takes a more sophisticated and highly knowledgeable
approach to sales. To have a competitive advantage over
guide books, web brokers, Internet information, and lower
priced tour operators, our sales staff must have first hand
experience to sell authenticity. They need to know how things
work, distances, travel times, and hotel peculiarities for
example, in order to explain why we don't offer day tours
to Tikal, or why we don't use a well-known but poorly managed
historic hotel or ecolodge. Beyond the logistics, however,
they have to be able to transmit succinctly and quickly
to the prospective customer what is unwritten in a published
itinerary about why the experience will be better if they
travel by the 'Wild Style'.
In the text of message entitled "Change, Travel, Technology,
and Magic", Michael Kaye, President of Costa Rica Expeditions
put it this way:
"The criteria for excellence in our profession have
changed from knowing the product to inventing the most profound
and valuable benefits that travel can provide; from knowing
the market to knowing the individual client; from knowing
what the individual client wants; to know what the individual
client should want."
From Kenya to Costa Rica, we have to keep finding new ways
to distinguish our travel product by the experience, both
in terms of how we market ourselves and how we deliver our
"product". Otherwise, our programs just become
another packaged wildlife eco-tour and we begin to diminish
our role as intermediaries to customers who could otherwise
simply book direct on the Internet. So, far beyond our role
of providing pre-departure services and guaranteeing logistical
success in tour operations, we must be able show the real
value-added of what we offer through experience.
Most important for Wildland Adventures to maintain our
traveler-centered business model is to stick to those elements
that we know work best-crafting creative itineraries, establishing
relationships with guides and outfitters that match the
'Wild Style', and using our expertise to sell the experience
rather than a place to go or a sight to see.
As one of our partners put it we need to, "Stop following
the market and start leading it. To use our creativity and
experience to determine the greatest benefits that travelers
can obtain from traveling and design and market a travel
experience that provides those benefits," states Michael
Kaye of Costa Rica Expeditions.
I find much more meaning in my work, and in the experience
I provide to our clients, by creating opportunities of personal
discovery in the mind and the heart, rather than the place.
In response to those who seek new frontiers of adventure
travel, I prefer to think of setting trends that create
real value and meaning in travel, when the experience touches
our humanity and inspires concern for the global environment,
rather than the newness of a pristine environment or token
method of travel.
I believe that authentic travel experiences in nature and
among people different from ourselves will help break down
what separates us from the world around us. If we become
more intimate with nature and other people, we will begin
to love our world more. Jacques Cousteau once told his son,
"People protect what they love." And at the turn
of the century his son, Jean-Michel, reminded travel professionals
in a Millennium speech, "With love comes understanding
and the humility to realize that we are vulnerable yet strong.
It gives us the strength to deal with our difficult past
and the confidence to move into the great adventure of the
future."
A day never passes that I don't respect what a potentially
powerful role we play. Holding the precious vacation time
of peoples' lives in our hands, we can shape the world into
a more just, peaceful and healthy place to live.
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