A Certified B Corporation since 2016, Inspired Adventures is the leading adventure fundraising agency in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.
This passionate crew partners with local and international charities to create and manage meaningful and, well, inspired adventures throughout the region and the world.
Giving fundraisers the opportunity to trek, cycle or run for a cause they care about, Inspired Adventures was voted Best For The World in the Customers category three years running (2017-2019). As we take a look Behind The B, hear from Inspired Adventures on how they navigate the complexities of ethical travel, and the commitments they are making to combat climate change in the tourism industry.
Photo by Štefan Štefančík on Unsplash
Connecting worthy causes to adventure seekers
From humble, hopeful beginnings in 2004, Inspired Adventures is proud to have managed over 620 charity challenges and engaged over 7,220 community fundraisers for 317 charities worldwide. In addition to organising these adventures, a big part of what we do is support fundraisers themselves, who to date have raised over $41 million for charities and causes they care about.
As a dual fundraising and travel agency, making environmentally and socially conscious business decisions has been an integral part of our fabric since day one. And after becoming a B Corp in 2016, we have drawn heavily on B Corp’s standards to further guide us in improving our business practices and positive impact.
The opportunity to reflect
While the last couple of years have brought many unwelcome challenges, particularly in the tourism and travel industry, we have been grateful for the opportunity to step back and reflect on our role within the industry, and to draw on the knowledge and support of the B Corp community to boost our better business practices even more.
While there are so many ways that we have used B Corp principles to improve (or mitigate) our impact on people, the planet, and communities – there are three in particular that stick out to us as we share Behind The B:
1. Being ethical means being conscious
While most of our tours are treks and cycles, which are slow, low-impact ways of travelling, as a travel agency, being conscious of our social and environmental impact is always top of mind. This means making the conscious business decision to partner with locally-owned tour operators, touring with small groups and supporting small, local accommodation and restaurants in order to lessen our carbon impact and promote impact in local communities.
We have also created Ethical Travel guides, giving our travellers guidelines on how to leave no trace; how to ethically and respectfully engage with local communities and cultures; and how to treat the local animals and environment with the utmost respect on trekking or cycling trails. Part of this is also ensuring that the tour operators we partner with share these values and principles, whether our travellers are staying close to home, or travelling as far as Europe, Africa or Asia.
2. Customer service has to have a company-wide focus
We focus heavily on doing good for the community, and that means having a company-wide focus on customer service. While we are proud to say that 96 per cent of our participants have rated their overall experience with us as either 4/5 or 5/5, we have measures in place to constantly take participant and client feedback on board, even if it’s not so great.
In the daunting early phases of COVID-19 in 2020, this openness to feedback and the mechanisms to support it, meant that we could quickly spring into action and ensure our clients and participants had their concerns heard with open lines of communication about how the latest news would impact their tour.
We also developed a stringent COVID-19 Safety Management Plan, and consulted widely with medical and government experts, to ensure our stakeholders could rest easy knowing that their safety and best interests were top of mind. There was also our Booking With Confidence policy, created to ensure that participants had a clear understanding of their travel options and the flexibility to choose what they felt comfortable with.
Though travel restrictions have gotten in the way more times than we can count, the adventures we have been able to send out in 2021 and 2022 have received incredibly positive feedback about how our team has managed the complicated logistics and kept people informed.
Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
3. There’ll be nowhere to travel without urgent Climate Action
In 2020, we developed our Climate Action Plan and partnered with Tourism Declares to declare a climate emergency and commit to cutting global emissions in half by 2030, including full transparency on how we plan to do that.
That includes minimising air travel, choosing low-emission transport options, supporting local conservation efforts, and protecting wildlife with robust Animal Protection Guidelines. We have also introduced a blanket ban on single-use plastics on our adventures, and have re-assessed our existing itineraries to ensure there is a stronger focus on slow travel and supporting local businesses.
Three ways we are trying to create a more ethical tourism industry
While we are proud of the steps we have taken thus far, we know there is still more work to do, and we have set ourselves the following goals to continue improving as a business:
- Minimise our carbon output and become carbon neutral by 2025 – through a partnership with Carbon Neutral, a project developer of the first and only Gold Standard offset project in Australia (Yarra Yarra Biodiversity Corridor), we have calculated the carbon emissions that result from our average adventure. We then give the equivalent amount to Carbon Neutral to invest in this project for every person on our tours. To date, this has amounted to nearly $8,000, which has gone towards the creation of a 200km green corridor in Western Australia.
- Supporting and facilitating climate action – as a travel agency, it is vitally important that we, more than most, recognise and minimise our environmental impact wherever possible. Through partnerships with climate and conservation-based organisations, including Climate Council, Australian Conservation Foundation, and Bob Brown Foundation, we are proud to have facilitated fundraisers raising over $800,000 for these causes. To grow this impact even further, we have pledged to increase our existing partnerships and build new partnerships with climate and conservation organisations, to the tune of at least $100,000 per year.
- Use our platform to advocate for change – we recognise our position and privilege as Australia’s leading adventure travel agency. We also acknowledge that our operators and extended supply chain consist of guides, drivers and their vehicles, accommodation providers, restaurants, and much more all around the world. By sharing our pledge to do better with each of them, and encouraging them to join us, we can help make real and lasting change to the travel industry globally.
If each of us uses our platforms to advocate for and promote positive change to preserve the planet for future generations, we can have a real and lasting impact on the world.
Thank you to Inspired for submitting this piece as part of B Corp Month 2022 as we invite you #BehindTheB to uncover what makes a B Corp a better business. Learn more about Inspired Adventures work or join the B Corp Climate Collective and use your platforms to address the injustices brought about and exacerbated by climate change.
Want more Behind The B action? Watch the video below to hear from Justine Curtis, Founder of Inspired Adventures.
