If you would have asked me five years ago when I started Acanela Expeditions if I would ever encounter a global pandemic, where all flights would be grounded and country borders closed, I probably would have said never in a million years. I’ve been to enough places to know that there is nothing too small to overlook, or too big, like a pandemic.
I was actually in Bhutan when coronavirus was announced as a global pandemic and flights started canceling and countries started closing their borders. Before I left, I had no idea what how drastically the travel industry would change in those few short weeks I was gone. When I returned home mid-March (after several flight cancellations and re-routings) I knew that we were going to have to change our business approach quickly.
Having a lean, talented, and creative team means you can pivot and adapt quickly.We decided that there was no better time to launch some of the projects we had in the works, but never had the time to move forward. One of those was launching our Adventure Dress, an initiative to empower women around the world, inspire adventure near and far from our homes, and help conserve the environment. The second project was virtual tours, bringing travel experiences to people through real-time personal experiences around the world. Both of these initiatives are focused around bringing travel into peoples’ homes, during a time when people can’t go out to travel.
Another thing that really stuck with me, as we were pivoting our strategy, was outside of the United States, one in 10 jobs are in tourism. With tourism being one of the industries hit the most by COVID-19, you can only imagine how it’s affecting people and countries. Both the adventure dress and virtual tours, help give back to locals all around the world in this difficult time.
The Launch of Virtual Tours
I’m used to traveling every month and had trips scheduled for April, May, and June (which have now been canceled). This was the first time in seven years that I wouldn’t be traveling this month! I knew being home would be an adjustment (good, but different) and that I couldn’t be the only craving some sort of travel. Even if it was virtually!
Virtual tours are an interactive experience and thanks to the internet, we can basically go anywhere in the world! They are hosted on a video conference platform, like Zoom, and allow people to sign on and experience it in the comfort of their home. We are so excited to announce the launch of FREE (donation based) virtual tours to support locals around the world while bringing adventure to your home!
We have teams operating in 100 countries, including Morocco, Peru, Cuba, Tonga, Botswana, just to name a few. The first step was to pick a destination for our virtual trip and see if we could really pull it off. We worked with our Director of Morocco, Jamal to put together our first virtual trip. Jamal lives in Fez, Morocco, and is one of our favorite travel guides. On the virtual tour, he took travelers through popular locations such as Chefchaouen and Essouria. My favorite part of the tour was joining Jamal as he showed us his preparations for Ramadan and experienced a live call to prayer and break the fast at sunset.
It was so fun to see peoples’ comments as they experienced the Morocco virtual tour. Jamal was able to give us all a little taste of what traveling to Morocco is like! We had such great success, that we have decided to host a monthly virtual trip on the first Thursday of every month.
Sign up for Our Peru Virtual Tour, June 4th
Our next one will be on June 4th to Peru led by our Director of Peru, Domingo. He will take us through some of his favorite destinations and a llama blessing ceremony. You can sign up for our next virtual tour to Peru here! After our virtual tour to Peru, we plan on hosting a virtual trip to Cuba, Egypt, Botswana, Mount Kilimanjaro, and possibly even Antarctica. We really want to take people all around the world and give them a taste of what’s out there.
While this is a challenging time for businesses, and nothing I ever thought I would have to overcome as an owner of a travel company, we’ve taken this as an opportunity to push ourselves creatively and think outside of the box. We hope that while everyone is staying home, and missing physical travel, the virtual tours help fill the void of adventure. And until it’s safe to travel again, we will be creating these experiences for everyone to enjoy. Who knows, maybe they will become a regular thing of Acanela Expeditions!