NSB Logo Bruce Poon Tip, O.C. Bruce Poon Tip, O.C.

Bruce Poon Tip, O.C.

Speaker Exclusive

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Founder of G Adventures & Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business, Officer

Bruce Poon Tip is the founder of G Adventures, the most successful travel adventure company in the world. He once turned down a $100 million offer to buy his business, so that he could continue to grow the company based on its core values: showing how community, culture & karma matter in business, and in engaging customers and your team. As a disruptive entrepreneur who revolutionized the tourism industry, Bruce inspires audiences with his innovative customer service strategies while demonstrating the real bottom line impact of creating a culture of freedom, happiness and community in the workplace. Recently, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the country, Bruce has been honoured as an Officer of the Order of Canada, becoming the first individual in the travel industry to receive this title in 34 years.

Keynote Speeches

Unlearn: The year the Earth stood still

The Covid-19 pandemic brought the global travel industry to a complete standstill, and it is unlikely to ever be the same again. While reflecting on how this interruption would impact the future of tourism, author, entrepreneur and philanthropist, Bruce Poon Tip, has concluded that despite the hardships being presented to many of us, we have been given the gift of reshaping how we travel in the future.

He discusses how the global
community has the chance to rethink, restart, and rejuvenate the idea of what travel should be and could be.
This is about the potential for travel to be anything we want it to be on the other side. 

Poon Tip encourages:
Don’t travel less, travel better
We can do better than sustainable
Going beyond the norm
Rising to meet the challenges

Unlearn: The Year the Earth Stood Still is based on Bruce’s thoughts while in isolation during April 2020 and how things are evolving since. You can read a free copy of the April 2020 version here: https://unlearn.travel/

Looptail

If businesses want to be successful and sustainable, they have to infuse their organizations with passion and purpose as a way to engage people inside the business, which in turn, will engage people/customers outside of it.  Poon Tip shares his experience in how finding the passion and purpose in your work and in your company, transcending your industry and paying it forward creates the looptail.  He encourages audiences to understand where you come from and the development of your brand story, because it is critical to understanding your purpose and to engage anyone who touches your brand.

Beyond the Triple Bottom Line

Poon Tip shares how a focus on the bottom line of profit, people, planet with purpose and passion is a strong measure of success.  He believes that the brands that will matter in the future go beyond the triple bottom line as the ones that will make people’s lives better.

Social Enterprise Model

Poon Tip’s original mandate was to create innovative ways to show people the world by building a responsible tourism model using services provided by community members.  He wanted to run a sustainable business driven by purpose and empowering the communities he worked with.  In this way, he can solve standard business problems with solutions that simultaneously address and improve social issues like environmental sustainability and economic inequality.  The model also allows for greater sustained happiness for everyone who engages with your business. Where can your business make a difference?

Leading with Service: If you don't love your customers, someone else will

The most important core value of G Adventures is leading with service.  Poon Tip notes that G Adventures is customer obsessed and that being a customer has to be a remarkable experience.   For a company to keep growing, your customers also have to buy in and believe in your company as much as your team does – to be inspired by your core values and shared purpose. Poon Tip initiated a number of innovative customer service strategies that changed his industry for the better.

Audience reviews:

  • He's got an innovative business model and (is) a leader who doesn't include the word quit in his dictionary…

    - National Post 2013
  • If there's 1 word to describe the presentation today, it's "WOW", maybe one of the best I've ever seen! AMAZING!

    - Junior Achievement Speech Attendee
  • Thank you to all of our exceptional speakers … who helped to make this year's Summit a tremendous success.

    - Queen's School of Business, Responsible Leadership Summit 2012

Speaker Biography

“Our culture is about happiness and freedom.  In order to create those, we have to have really committed people who live by our values.  If we get people who are engaged and are excited to be part of our movement, we can do more as a company.”

Entrepreneur, leader and philanthropist Bruce Poon Tip, is the founder of G Adventures, an award-winning small group adventure travel company and pioneer of community tourism.

Following a transformational backpacking trip to Asia, Bruce had an idea to change the face of travel. In 1990, at the age of 22 and on two maxed-out credit cards, Bruce started 

G Adventures, a tour operator designed to bridge the divide between backpacking and mainstream travel, and to connect travellers with local people in the countries they visit. 

Fast forward 30 years: G Adventures is now the world’s largest small group adventure travel company, with 28 offices worldwide. We host 200,000 travellers per year, offer more than 750 tours, and travel to 100 countries — across all seven continents.

He’s been honoured as one of Canada’s Most Admired CEOs in the category of social entrepreneurship and announced one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business. 

Passionate about the power of travel to change the world for the better, Bruce has become a global leader in social entrepreneurship, leadership, immersive travel, and innovation.

He has addressed the United Nations and the World Bank, spoken at the headquarters of Apple and Google, and delivered keynote speeches at TED events and entrepreneurship conferences around the world. 

In 2003, with a vision that travel could be a force for social good and significant wealth distribution, Bruce founded G Adventures’ nonprofit partner, the Planeterra Foundation. Planeterra harnesses the power of the tourism supply chain to channel travellers’ dollars into underserved communities around the world. 

Bruce’s work with organizations such as the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF), like-minded companies, and Indigenous people, has led to more than 100 community development projects being supported globally, meaning 90% of travellers on a G Adventures tour visit a social enterprise project.  

In 2012, Bruce was inducted into the Social Venture Network Hall of Fame, joining celebrated entrepreneurs such as Richard Branson (Virgin Airlines), Anita Roddick (The Body Shop), and Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield (Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream). He was also awarded a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, which recognizes significant contributions to society, and named EY Entrepreneur of the Year in 2016, 2006 and 2002. 

In 2018, Bruce was inducted into the British Travel and Hospitality Hall of Fame, and honoured as one of AFAR USA’s ‘Travel Vanguards’ – a visionary travel industry leader who is changing the face of travel for the better. He was also honoured as one of Canada’s Most Admired CEOs in the category of social entrepreneurship and announced one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business. 

In June 2019, Bruce was granted an honorary Doctor of Laws from Capilano University, to recognize his significant community contribution at the local, national and international levels, and he entered Glassdoor’s Top CEOs list at number 10 later that year. In 2020, Bruce was conferred with additional honorary doctorates; a second Doctorate of Laws from the University of Victoria, and an honorary Doctorate of Business from Johnson and Wales University in Rhode Island, U.S. He was also announced one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business. 

Bruce’s first book, Looptail: How One Company Changed the World by Reinventing Business, was released in 2013 and became a New York Times Best Seller, and the first business book to be endorsed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who penned the book’s foreword. In 2015, Bruce released his second book, Do Big Small Things, a beautifully designed journal about life and travel that takes readers on a journey and encourages them to share their own inspirations and creativity. In 2020, Bruce released an instabook called Unlearn: The Year the Earth Stood Still, which explores what travel could look like post-pandemic.

Built on the foundation of a strong company culture that celebrates happiness and freedom and rewards disruptive innovation through risk-taking and fun, G Adventures has been named one of the 50 Best Managed Companies for more than 10 years and is repeatedly recognized as a “best place to work” in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. 

In 2023, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the country, Bruce has been honoured as an Officer of the Order of Canada, becoming the first individual in the travel industry to receive this title in 34 years.