On Tuesday night, I had the pleasure of organizing an event at World Travel Market (WTM) London, where we hosted 280 people from the travel industry.
It was truly a team effort—everyone from marketing to sales, ops, PR, and product pitched in to transform the Orange stage into a vibrant networking space in just 20 minutes. We really are the dream team at G Adventures.
But the highlight of the event was undoubtedly the elephants we gave away, sourced directly from Anoothi, one of our Planeterra projects. Anoothi uses micro-credit and micro-enterprise tools to organize marginalized women into self-help groups and trains them in various livelihood skills, empowering them to live independently and with dignity. Anoothi also supports Vatsalya’s education program for rural children, making a meaningful difference in the lives of these communities.
It all began when Dan, one of our GCOs, returned from India with an elephant from the Anoothi project, and we instantly fell in love with it. As we started planning our event at WTM, where we were inviting our suppliers to join us at GX Jordan, we realized the elephants could be a meaningful symbol to connect GX India to GX Jordan and showcase the power of community tourism.
Since I was heading to GX India myself, I thought, why not bring back 150 elephants directly from India in my suitcase? I have to admit… Ant Stone didn’t quite think it would be that simple!
Fast forward, and I had the pleasure of working with Jaimala Gupta, who helped organize the elephants for me. Our incredible CEOs—who are as amazing as they sound—supported me in getting a few extra bags and suitcases. With some creative teamwork, we managed to “smuggle” the elephants back into the UK.
I was absolutely thrilled with how the elephants were received at the event, and so proud of our team for coming together to set everything up, no questions asked. It was a fantastic team moment, and one that will definitely stick with me!