EcoTraveller interviewed Bruce during his recent trip to Australia to chat about Looptail. From the interview:
What has been your most challenging part of running the company?
There have been lots of challenges. I mean, we financed ourselves. [Thinks hard] There are two things: people understanding what we do, and people understanding what our true purpose is as a business. Because when we come to a region they need to know us. For example, two weeks ago we were in Columbia and I met with the Minister of Tourism and the doors were open for us. I met the CEO of Avianca, their international airline, too. The country’s open for us because we have a reputation there and we know we can have a positive impact on countries. Ten years ago we didn’t have that, and people didn’t understand who we were. They just thought “that’s just another travel company”. Once we started building relationships within other businesses and community projects everything became much easier.
I think the other challenge for us in our industry is greenwashing. With the extent of which we do things, and the true passion we have at what we do, companies that are completely profit-driven conglomerates greenwash their businesses, make people think that that’s what they do, and that they’re equal to us in every way. We spend so much time with so many people on the ground to make our company work every day. Everything is just disrespected when companies in our space greenwash their all-inclusive businesses when it doesn’t benefit local people at all. One company claims to be the largest all-inclusive company in the world, yet buys out small adventure companies and uses them to greenwash their brand. It’s unbelievable what’s going on.
Click here to read the rest of the article on EcoTraveller.
