Guest Bio
Dan Christian is the podcast host of the Travel Trends Podcast and founder of the Acceleration Team. With over two decades of experience in the travel industry, Dan has worked with major travel companies and startups alike. His career spans roles at Lonely Planet, G Adventures, and The Travel Corporation, where he helped shape global travel brands and digital strategies. Today, he focuses on advising travel businesses and exploring emerging trends through his podcast and consultancy.
Show Summary
In this episode of the Big World Made Small Adventure Travel Podcast, host Jason Elkins speaks with Dan Christian about his journey from founding an early online snowboarding community to becoming a seasoned travel industry veteran. Dan shares how his passion for snowboarding sparked a deeper love of travel, which led him into various influential roles supporting adventure travel brands and digital innovation.
The conversation covers Dan’s personal reflections on family, loss, and how those experiences influenced his decision to leave the corporate world and start the Acceleration Team. He also discusses the importance of travel as a means of connection—whether through markets, cultural immersion, or family adventures—and offers insights into making travel accessible and meaningful for all.
Listeners will also hear about Dan’s approach to building communities around shared passions, the value of traveling with children, and how his podcast aims to democratize industry knowledge to inspire others to enter or re-engage with the travel sector.
Key Takeaways
- ✓ Building a community around shared interests can be a powerful driver for travel and connection.
- ✓ Combining technology and human experience is essential in today’s travel industry.
- ✓ Travel is about engaging all five senses and creating meaningful personal and cultural connections.
- ✓ Entrepreneurial risks are best taken with a clear understanding and acceptance of potential downsides.
- ✓ Traveling with children offers unique opportunities for family bonding and cultural immersion.
- ✓ Prioritizing travel financially and time-wise is a choice that can enhance well-being and life satisfaction.
- ✓ Local, ground-based travel experiences can support communities more effectively than large-scale tourism.
- ✓ History and understanding cultural context enrich travel and business perspectives.
- ✓ Letting go of resentment and embracing personal growth can lead to more fulfilling relationships and career paths.
- ✓ Sharing authentic stories of entering and thriving in the travel industry can motivate others to pursue their own paths.
What You’ll Find on Travel Trends Podcast with Dan Christian
- ✓ In-depth discussions on travel industry trends, technology, and sustainability.
- ✓ Insights aimed at helping newcomers and veterans navigate the travel business.
- ✓ Interviews that explore personal journeys and career paths within travel.
- ✓ Coverage of emerging topics like AI’s impact on travel roles and operations.
- ✓ A focus on democratizing travel industry knowledge beyond traditional conferences.
- ✓ Stories highlighting how travel can be a life-changing adventure for individuals and families.
Learn more about Travel Trends Podcast with Dan Christian and connect with Dan at:
https://www.traveltrendspodcast.com/
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Podcast Transcript
This transcript is auto-generated on recording, and has not been edited by a human. It may contain lots of mistakes, crazy words, and stuff that makes no sense. The host and the guest are not responsible for the accuracy of the transcript.
Jason Elkins (00:42.862)
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Big World Made Small Adventure Travel Podcast. Today we’re here with Dan Christian. He is a fellow podcaster, the host of the Travel Trends Podcast and also the founder of the Acceleration Team with over 20 years experience in the travel industry and adventure stuff. Just a great resource. Dan, so happy to have you join us. Thank you for being here. Thank you, Jason. Great to be with you. I’m excited to be on the other side for a change and be the guest.
So I’m really looking forward to this. Thanks for inviting me. And it’s fun for me as well to have a conversation with a podcaster that has years more experience in the podcasting space. This is kind of a new exciting endeavor for me and it’s just really about creating conversations and I figured I might as well record them. So thank you so much for participating. So I touched on a couple of things already and I wanna start with your story, just kind of, I’d love for our listeners to get an opportunity to learn something.
about you, usually people that work in this space have some interesting thing that happened at some point in their life. Maybe they were born into it and they’ve just always been adventurous. Then I’ve got other people that were, you know, finance people that just kind of shifted into it. They went on a trip and never looked back, that type of thing. So tell us, what’s your story? How did you get into the travel space? Yeah, no, thank you. I’ve always loved travel. I was born in the UK. I was raised in Canada.
and was always traveling back to the UK and Europe when I was young. And so there was definitely always a strong desire for travel, but really what sparked it all was graduating university. Worked on my very first startup, which was an online snowboard community. This is during the dot-com craze. And so I was going snowboarding various places around the world and with my community, I was one of the first people to snowboard down Aspen Mountain when they opened it officially to snowboarders. And so…
For me, snowboarding was actually the passion that led me to travel to a lot of places. And what I actually realized is that what I really loved was travel beyond everything else. And so after our company was acquired, we sort of had a soft landing at the end of the dot-com and the three partners went our separate ways and took on different interests. And for me, it was travel. And so not only did I go traveling, we did an extensive trip through Europe, my wife and I, and would subsequently do like a six month backpacking through Southeast Asia.
Jason Elkins (03:08.93)
But I realized I loved travel so much that I wanted to do that all day, every day. And not if I wasn’t traveling, I wanted to be thinking about traveling or working on travel. And so I actually started off with a role inside Carlson Wagonly as the e-commerce project leader with like, with a capital E or a E dash, no one knew how to spell e-commerce project leader, but that was my title. And I was responsible for developing corporate travel booking solutions, leisure websites as they’re called, but cruise booking websites.
And from there, things accelerated really quickly. I went to work at Lonely Planet in Australia, lived in Melbourne, loved that. We were unexpectedly expecting twins, so we decided to move back to Toronto. And when we did, I took on a role with G Adventures. I was an avid adventure traveler, so was my wife. We had been on intrepid trips and G Trips. It was Gap Adventures then, of course, but Bruce and I worked really closely together and I really…
focused on growing that brand globally, the rebrand, the rebuild of the website, doing partnerships like Discovery Channel. And from there, I joined the travel corporation. So Brett Tolman brought me in to sort of approach the entire collection of 40 brands and had the success that I had so far in the industry. So all of a sudden I was thrust into this really exciting global role, transforming more than 40 travel companies, many of which your listeners I’m sure would appreciate like Trafalgar and Kintiki.
and Unirworld river cruises, Insight vacations. And so I thought I’d be there for a few years and nearly a decade went by. I lived in LA, I spent a lot of time in England and Australia, loved that role, loved the team. And then two years ago, I decided to actually go out on my own. It was sort of a life-changing circumstances. We had my mother-in-law and my father both passed away from cancer. And that was sort of a really tough time, as you can imagine, especially at the end of the pandemic.
but it was also a time of reflection. I realized that I’ve always wanted to have, I’ve always had an entrepreneurial streak. I’ve always wanted to work on startups. And that’s exactly what I did when I created Acceleration Team. And a lot of the, we worked exclusively in travel. And then we started a podcast, which as you mentioned, it’s become really successful as well as I’m sure your will be in short order. So that’s my whole history in two minutes or less. Wow. A lot of stuff mixed in there. I want to start with the snowboarding.
Jason Elkins (05:29.75)
So when you first launched your snowboarding company, was it mostly around the merchandise? Was this e-commerce? You were trying to sell snowboards? Or was it more, what was that like? I mean, I don’t know about that. Yeah, no, I’m glad you asked that question because what I only realized in later years when you start to reflect and understand what it is you were doing and what you were building and what you’re successful at, you start to see a bit of a through line and we weren’t focused on e-commerce. We were actually focused on building a community
of snowboard enthusiasts that wanted to go to different resorts and that we would basically negotiate package deals for them to get discounted lift tickets or discounted equipment at stores. So we’d work with the network, if you will, retailers and ski snowboard hills. And that’s really when and allowed these people to connect online. So this is pre Facebook, even pre MySpace. Believe me, I wasn’t onto a bigger concept at the time, because all I wanted to do was snowboard.
and hanging around other people that like to snowboard. But that actually gave me the realization that especially when you look at things like group travel, surrounded by people with like-minded interests and speaking to people’s passion points, but also getting people to go out in the world. I think that was the one that really stood out to me is that you connect people online and you get them to travel out in the world. So exactly what I was doing with BoardPass when we were running that is essentially what has shaped my career is using digital tools where people spend their time today.
connecting them together and then sending them on trips where they can actually experience the real world. And I love that combination, because I love technology, but I love people and culture and history and all the amazing, I’m not one for the metaverse. I do not want to strap them those to my head. It’s all about the senses of being able to walk through a market and being able to experience the cuisine, get to meet people and have that sense of connection. And so for all those reasons, I’ve loved travel, but that was, interestingly, you asked about that, the connection between
what I started doing and what I still do. Well, see, you’re unique in the space in the sense that there’s a lot of marketers out there. There’s a lot of people that work with companies to improve websites, improve networks and build communities. And you’re unique in the sense that what you just described is what I believe is bringing listeners to the show. It’s about the connection.
Jason Elkins (07:57.122)
and not necessarily about the make money, sell more trips, this and that, but you talked about things like the five senses, smelling, tasting, seeing, hearing, touching things. And I am a firm believer that with adventure travel, it’s really all about the connection. It’s not about the mountains, you know, so we thought you mentioned snowboarding. It’s not necessarily about the mountain. It’s not about the river. It’s not about necessarily the places we go. It’s about the connections that we create.
Sometimes that’s a personal connection. And you know, if someone wants to solo climb Mount Kilimanjaro, then they’re creating a connection maybe with themselves. But most of the time it’s about, you know, the interesting people that we meet along the way. It’s about that connection with the tribe. And I know for me, growing up, not everybody around me was kind of into the same things. And sometimes, frankly, I felt kind of weird. And as I got into travel and exploring more, I kind of found my tribe. So I’m curious.
If you go back to what was your major in school? So my background is really business and computer science. Those are the two passion points for me, but also history as well. So I took all of the courses and I had a kind of a broad undergraduate degree, but interesting you mentioned that as well is that I’m a huge history buff. And Yuval Noah Harari, who I’m sure many of your listeners may be familiar with, the Israeli academic who wrote the book Sapiens.
And he was inspired by the book Gun, Germs and Steel, which is on a book that I had read when I was in Southeast Asia by Jared Diamond. And so those are two landmark books for me that certainly shaped my life and trajectory, Sapiens more recently. But the reason I find that fascinating, and again, it’s more on reflection now, is that when Yuval Harari was asked more recently about why he talks about the future, if even though he’s a historian, he highlighted that the study of history is really the study of change over time.
And by understanding, you can project forward. So it actually puts you uniquely positioned. And that was another really interesting insight that why did I love history so much? And why did I almost feel like that was a subject to shy away from? Like, what did you do your degree in? It’s actually history was my major. And now I understand why, because it’s actually so relevant to understanding context, why a business is historically performed a certain way, and then how you see the potential for going forward. So.
Jason Elkins (10:22.83)
So yeah, I’m proud to say that I love history and that ultimately is what is on my degree. That’s very cool and it makes a lot of sense. I’ve read Guns, Germs and Steel. I need to read Sapiens as well and those books are just so fascinating because it’s a mix of history but it’s also sociology, psychology, and there’s so many things that are just really fascinating about a culture.
I remember reading about why the Chinese math system developed from the way that they planted their rice and they were so precise and all these different things that came out of them and how there’s those differences in cultures, which is of course, is part of that connecting, visiting other cultures, connecting, understanding those cultures. I get that, that’s fascinating. And I’m curious, so when you’re doing computer science classes in college, in university,
Yeah. And you’re kind of an adventurous type, like to get out there, like to travel. Right. Did you find that you felt kind of isolated at all in your desire to go do these things? Was it a challenge for you to find other people? Was your family supportive, your friends supportive, or was that a struggle for you early on? So I knew that coding was not a strength for me in taking those courses. I learned HTML as you needed to at that stage to build websites and maintain websites.
But what I quickly realized, especially as we formed our first team, is that Dave was the head of, he did his business school degree and went on to his MBA and has been very successful. And Han, who was in computer science and ultimately did art college as well, was an incredibly talented designer. And I kind of sat in the middle of those two skill sets with being able to understand technology, understand business and combine those two to kind of set the vision for the business. So-
Um, and answer your question, I learned very early on that I was not good at coding and I could not. Um, um, and whereas Han would work, we discussed it all day and he would work all night. And by the next morning we would push live some of the releases and changes. And I was like, that was the chemistry. That was the dynamic that worked. So I’ve always kind of, um, focused on accentuating your strength. I think there was always the concern that you’re always trying to round out your weaknesses. And it’s that.
Jason Elkins (12:44.53)
overall is if you can really sharpen the point of your strength and make sure that you kind of fill the gap with other talented people, as opposed to try and do everything. So I think that’s something that, just to sharing a little bit of wisdom, given my age and experience that looking back is clear to me now, but even at the time, I think I was starting to recognize that. And I think that’s certainly been a contributor to the success I’ve had, certainly in the corporate world and often in the startup space as well.
No, it’s interesting. As you say that memories are coming back into my head of when I went to school, I was in the military and went back to school and he said, I’m going to be a computer scientist, I’m going to be a computer programmer. And then the one I thought at the time thought that was pretty cool. So, and then within a couple of years I dropped out of school and we moved to Belize to manage a fly fishing and scuba diving resort, because I found that coding was not my strength as well.
And yet I do digital marketing as well. I’m interested in that. And I realized that, yeah, I sharpened the point and then find other people that really enjoy maybe programming and that type of thing and surround yourself with them is a pretty smart thing that may be a little too long to learn probably. So that’s a good tip for anybody that’s listening. Well, and even now, like you doing this show and that we’ve spoken a couple of times, I’ve been really impressed with the whole production and how you’ve brought this all together.
And I would just highlight the fact that even in those moments where you feel as though anyone can do this, the answer is the reality is, is that most people either don’t have the comfort level, the interest, or can ask the, feel comfortable asking the types of questions that lead to what is really an engaging conversation between two people. So anyway, I just wanted to credit acknowledge that, that obviously you gravitated to this for the right reasons. And that will help build your business and build awareness for all the things that you do.
by virtue of being able to have really fascinating conversations with interesting people. And I appreciate that. Thank you so much for the kind words and support. And it’s my desire to connect as you were speaking about as well, building a community, connecting with people and some of the other stuff. It’s like, okay, I’ll figure some of this stuff out along the way. But it’s really, I wouldn’t be doing a podcast if it wasn’t a desire to connect. So thank you for that.
Jason Elkins (15:06.282)
How did your parents, I’m curious. I’m always curious about family members. How did, you know, when you said, okay, I’m finishing up school, I’m gonna build this snowboarding community, you can get any pushback or did they have other plans for you? Or what did that look like? No, it’s interesting you mentioned that because I was joking just before we, Jason and I started recording that this can’t be our Barbara Walters interview. You can’t make me cry.
I can’t get in, you’re not gonna get in that chair and get the Sunday night sob fest. I rarely do cry, but when I do, no, I just, when you start to mention family, it is, there’s always an element and you’re trying to understand or unpack who you are and how you differentiate from your parents and decisions that they’ve made. My parents split when I was quite young. I lived with my mom, who was a single mom.
and I started working in high school and worked through university. The main reason I was able to go to university is because my mom put a little bit of money away every month into a school fund that then paid out once you got accepted. It would basically cover your tuition for the first year and half for the following years. And had I not had someone that had that stability and I would not have excelled and gone through university. And so that was obviously, and recognizing, you know,
what a single mom had to go through and decisions that she had to make, being a divorced mother that had to go out and find work, working at a Sears, then working at a Royal Bank as a teller, you realize that limited opportunities because she never got to Yale University. She was one of two children and her brother did, and she didn’t because it wasn’t the expectation that if one’s gonna go, it’s gonna be the boy. And so I think for me, my life experience has definitely been shaped by being raised by a single mom. So decisions and seeing…
workplace with advocating on behalf of women in the workplace has always been important to me. But then also the sense of entrepreneurial, like seeing how realizing that the opportunity she’d given me means that the expectations are what I made for myself. I just wanted to make her proud and ultimately my dad as well as life turns out. But that was kind of the, for me, it was a jumping off point because when I had my first startup, I was still living at home with my mom in an apartment.
Jason Elkins (17:24.406)
and then I was able to move out with the other guys that I was doing a startup with. And so she was incredibly supportive. And I think that’s for me has always been, I guess a source of strength is that, it’s kind of one of those things, maybe you can appreciate this as well, although I don’t know your background nearly as well, Jason, but if you don’t start from much, you can always come back. And I guess that always just keeps you humble. If you do well in life with business or in the corporate world.
That’s all wonderful, but it still doesn’t change who you are at the core, because you remember what that life was like. And if you had to go back to it, you could manage, right? So I guess that’s where you’re willing to take risks. You’re willing to seize opportunities because you see great upside and are willing. This is the part that was said to me fairly early on. If you can look at the risks and the downside, and you can accept and manage those, then go ahead and do it. But if you can’t.
If that’s obviously a decision you have to make. So for me, for the most part, I’ve always taken every opportunity that comes my way, accept some of the challenges and the risks that go along with it. I’m always focused on, I guess I’m a bit of an internal optimist in that regard. It’s kind of a, you know, yeah, what do I have to lose? And I can see situations where people maybe start at a different level. They’ve got maybe more financial resources as they’re growing up.
along with that also comes a lot of pressure to maintain that. If everybody in your family for three generations back was a lawyer and they send you off to school and pay you away to go to school, there’s an awful lot of pressure to continue that to be a lawyer. And it may create some challenges when it comes to, no, I want to go be a snowboarder. And I’m not saying you’re a
Jason Elkins (19:16.114)
And I did come from a similar background. I’m, my parents were divorced when I was five, you know, I’m a single mom who worked her ass off to, to get to the point where she could support me going to school. And, um, and when I told her I was going to join the army and go jump out of airplanes instead, yeah, there was a little bit of crying and once the crying was over, you know, she’s, she’s been very supportive.
ever since. And, you know, fortunately, my father was pretty adventurous. That’s probably why there was a rift in the relationship. He was more into going off and exploring and, you know, flying balloons and doing things. So that was a good influence for me in hindsight. And yeah, it’s, it’s a, I’m always interested in the stories of people that are working and, you know, some part of adventure, travel, adventure, tourism, because they’re just fascinating stories. So thank you for sharing, for sharing yours.
And I’m going to touch on, you did bring it up, you said, and in hindsight, or at some point, you kind of mentioned your father. So what, tell us anything you’d like to share with us about him. It is directly relevant and I’m happy to speak to it because I approach this with a full heart, but I stepped out of the corporate world to take care of my father when he was diagnosed with liver cancer. So I was living in Los Angeles.
working the travel corporation, to say I’d been there for nearly nine years and had an incredible experience and run, loved the team, loved the company. But all of a sudden, my mother-in-law had brain cancer, we moved back, a month later, my dad was diagnosed with liver cancer and was more or less had six months to live. And that combination of two events like that happening in short succession made me realize that this was the time where I needed to step away from the corporate world and just focus to be there for my wife and her mom and then also for my dad.
And I’m so glad that I did because I took care of him each day, I cut his hair, I brought the food to the hospital and managed to get him home so he could pass away. And all of those things I’m forever grateful for. And this is where you probably need a psychologist to map this out properly. But my dad wasn’t there for me when I was a kid, but I was determined to be there for him in his moment of need. And however cathartic you wanna look at that, but I mean, that’s the journey that I felt.
Jason Elkins (21:32.718)
compelled to be on. And I’m so glad that I did because not that I was looking for those redemption moments, but it became clear to my dad the mistakes and discussions that we had, well, cherish forever because we really, we really reestablished very strong relationship in his, certainly in the last year. And then that for me, I guess really also propelled because he was
He was very much of the, you got to stick in the corporate world, like don’t give up the corporate job, you know, we got to get, stay back in there. So they’ve always, my parents were always kind of motivated for sure in their own way and both worked hard. So I’ve always had a very strong work ethic, but all of a sudden I was in a position where I had the means and the opportunity to be there for family and to set that example for our kids as well. And a big thing for me has been giving our kids all the travel opportunities that I would have loved to have had.
if my parents had stayed together and were able to do some of the things. So I think there’s definitely, we didn’t really have family holidays when I was a kid. There wasn’t those. And I always desired that I saw other people doing it. So I’ve, I guess, made every effort. Our kids have been to nearly 50 countries. They’ve done extensive round the world trips. Like we took them out of school for a few months. And for me, that’s, you know, I want them more than possessions to meet other cultures and experience the world and have those incredible memories.
because I have to tell you every day, my dad’s mail is still forwarded to our address and he continually gets Viking or various cruise lines. And it breaks my heart a little bit when I see those because there was all these travel opportunities that he was looking forward to having that he didn’t get. And so anytime that arrives in the mail, I think to myself, I’m just glad he had the experiences that he did, but ultimately that we’re giving our kids every opportunity to get these experiences in. Who knows, maybe they’ll be home bodies.
and they’ll decide when they grow up, they just wanna tend to the garden. But that’s great, that’s their choice. They’ve seen it, right? And most people, I think once they’ve seen it, they tend to not know. It’s like, it’s hard to go backwards maybe, but I’m happy you shared that. I’m happy I asked. Thank you, because I think that most of us have challenges, issues, family stuff. So what you’re saying can, you know, in some ways is gonna relate to pretty much anybody that’s listening.
Jason Elkins (23:56.87)
And what I got out of what you said was, I think the phrase is, resentment is the only poison that poisons the person that administers it or that, you know. Sometimes when we grow up with parents that maybe weren’t there the way that we’d liked them to have been, or other people in our lives, we carry around this resentment that really gets in the way. And maybe they pass, maybe they don’t, whatever, but carrying around that resentment
It hurts the person carrying it around. So I love it. What I heard you say was I let go of that resentment. I came to peace with it, which was good for you. I’m good for him, but it was really good for you. So it allowed you to kind of change your perspective and the way you look at things. And how old are your kids? They just turned 16. All of a sudden we moved. 16. Yeah, it’s just crazy how fast that’s gone. But yes. Are they twins? Yeah, I should clarify.
Boy or girl twins? I think you said earlier, you expected unexpected twins or something like that. Yeah, I can imagine. And my son’s 17. And the last couple summers, he’s been able to travel with me. The first summer, I started traveling full time two years ago. And the first summer we spent in Latin America, Guatemala, Mexico, Belize, and all that. And then this past summer, we spent in Southeast Asia. And.
You know, he’s kind of maybe sometimes takes it for granted. He’s kind of like, yeah, whatever. He, he’s, he’s completely free to say, you know what dad, I’m bored dad. It stinks here, dad at whatever, you know, and I think it was about a month ago or so he was sitting in class and they were playing GeoGuessr. Are you familiar with the game GeoGuessr? Oh, I’m not. No, tell me. Oh, it’s, it’s great. I got to share this for anybody else listening. It’s so that’s a website. I think here’s an app as well. And what this program or what this.
this website does is it takes Google street views and it raps you randomly into a place on the planet and you can see the street view and you can, you know, maneuver yourself down the street, look around for clues, trying to figure out where you’re at and you can have like a time limit set on that. So you use the street view to look around for street signs or buildings or things that might sue you into where you’re at. It’s a lot, a lot, it’s a lot of fun for anybody who likes to travel.
Jason Elkins (26:20.938)
Anyway, Jackson’s really into that and he was playing it at school with some friends and they dropped him right in front of the peddler’s peddling street on Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia where he’d been last summer. And he’s like, oh, I’ve been to that exact same spot. I’ve stood there. And all of his friends were like, are you kidding me? What the?
And it was a moment of realization for him that not everybody has these opportunities. And all of a sudden his dad was pretty cool for taking him to these places. And so I’m curious, I suspect your kids maybe have had similar experiences in school, you know, where maybe they took things for granted. And then, I don’t know, you tell me, do you have any memories of your kids, maybe that first moment when they realized how lucky they were to be able to go to all these places?
Well, it’s interesting when I worked at Lonely Planet, I worked with Tony and Maureen Wheeler, the founders of Lonely Planet. And that was definitely one of the highlights of my career because that was when Lonely Planet was really at its zenith before it was sold and then multiple times since. But that was, and one of the things that Maureen had mentioned to me before we’d had kids was that she always, she always.
She didn’t understand why other families didn’t travel with young kids because it was the best travel experiences they had. And the example she gave, they opened their office in San Francisco and when they did, they went traveling for three months afterwards, her and Tony and their two children. They have a boy-girl, not twins, but very close in age, and they traveled through South America. And what she said was that the difference between a backpack and a child, you know, a backpack separates you from the locals, whereas a child playing at the park.
their kids, all of a sudden you interact in a way that is a much more on a human level, that connection. And so she actually, after that experience, they tried publishing a guidebook series about traveling with kids, traveling with children that she was very passionate about, but it was not commercially viable. People were not buying the books, people were, and so she almost was one of those key people in my life that highlighted the importance of traveling with kids, but also not just for what they’ll get out of it, what the whole family gets out of it.
Jason Elkins (28:31.47)
And that to me was, I guess, set the stage for all of this intense travel with very young kids. And I think that what I’m seeing now that they’re in high school and getting more into history and geography is that they can, there’s been so many examples in class where they’ve been there. They’ve been to Jordan, they’ve been to Egypt, they’ve been to Dubai, they’ve been, you know, like I won’t, but anytime a significant
event in history or a particular piece of architecture, you know, they by and large, they’ve been there and they can and they don’t ever like, but they come home and they say like, well, we learned about it. And I’m like, I’ve got pictures on my phone. I was showing the teacher afterwards. And, and even kids, the other thing too is Toronto is a very multicultural city. It’s one of the reasons I loved growing up here. And I’ve always expected workplaces to be quite multicultural. It’s not always the case as I’ve traveled around the world, worked in different settings, but their school is multicultural.
And so when you make a connection with a kid that’s just moved here and you actually know you’ve been to his country, you’ve been like, and it’s like, you know, understand the food and like, it’s, they mesh with other kids in the class in a totally different way that actually, you know, they get where they came from because that’s a huge change for them to move to Toronto, Canada and be trying to figure out this new school system. So I think that’s ingratiated them with a lot of friends that they probably wouldn’t have otherwise felt a kinship to because
there’s all of a sudden a connection. They want to tell them, I’ve been there and this is what I’ve learned. Or I know some of the language. And it’s that, that to me is like a really meaningful. That is so cool. Yeah, I do remember Jackson, my son calling me one day. We do video, cause I’m traveling, but we do video. My connection with my son is closer now than it’s ever been. And when he’s not school, he’s traveling with me. It’s been amazing, but we do these video calls and he called not too long ago and said, there’s this new kid at school. He’s from Guatemala.
And he’s like, so I talked to him and I told him, I’ve been to Guatemala. We were talking about this and that. So yeah, it’s, it’s that same thing. And, and I’m not sure that Jackson would have made that connection. Otherwise he would have just been kind of probably oblivious and maybe they would interact, maybe they wouldn’t, but because of the connection that, that created was, was pretty cool. And I also remember, cause I did travel with my father in the summers. We did some pretty interesting stuff.
Jason Elkins (30:52.47)
And I’m curious if this ever happened to you, but I remember my mom was telling me that maybe first grade, second grade, something like that. You know, when you get back at the end of summer vacation, you get back to school and usually there’s some sort of icebreaker thing the teacher does with the kids. What did you do on your summer vacation? And everybody talks about what they did on their summer vacation. And my mom had mentioned to me that one year the teacher called her and said, we really need to talk to you, Ms. Salkins, because
You know, your son has quite the imagination and we feel like he’s, you know, maybe he’s a little out of touch with reality. He was telling the kids that he went, you know, caving in and I just gave up in the mountains and then they went rappelling and then they went ballooning and the teacher was just absolutely convinced that I was making stuff up. Did you ever have that situation with any of the teachers? Like, yeah, your kids are, you know, they’re…
Well, the one I have to share this very quickly is that when we were living in LA and the kids had the experience of going to a junior high in LA, which you can imagine like a very much 902 and oh, for those people who remember that the show, you know, outdoor lockers, you know, lots of sunshine and, and you know, this outdoor space concept is not familiar to us in Canada, especially with our winters, right? But anyway, campuses are totally different and the whole vibe is very SoCal and very American. And they were learning about,
six, they were learning about Thanksgiving and US Thanksgiving. And my daughter put her hand up, apparently, she came home and told us this. But she told the teacher that we celebrate Thanksgiving in Canada. And the teacher said to her, I’m sure you do, but it’s not the same. And basically tried to, and she’s like, my daughter was like, no, we have Thanksgiving. And the teacher was like, I’m sure you call it that. I’m sure like, I went back to talking to the
Jason Elkins (32:48.114)
other people in the world have harvests as well and celebrate the harvest. That is not a totally uniquely American phenomenon. The Pilgrim story is, so it’s like, you gotta separate the two. Like there is an important founding part of American history and ties to Thanksgiving, but other countries also have Thanksgiving in Canada. My wife and I got married over Thanksgiving, so it’s more, and it’s like six weeks before the U.S. Thanksgiving, which makes sense. It gets cold in Canada sooner. Exactly, you gotta get those crops. That’s the channel, right?
And so, but that was just one of those moments you came home and like, no matter where you are in the world, and I don’t want to criticize Americans specifically for this, because it happens everywhere, is you get a Eurocentric or an American-centric view of the world or Australian-centric. Like, no matter where you come from, you see it from that perspective. And so I think it’s important to recognize when that occurs, but wait a second, think about it from the other person’s point of view. And in that moment, my daughter got, you know.
uh, knocked back that there’s no such thing as Thanksgiving in Canada. You’re from Canada. So you guys can’t possibly have the same, same traditions, same, same things. Yeah. So that’s the closest. I think, um, wouldn’t it be great. Cause you mentioned, you know, traveling with kids, unfortunately, it’s a very, very small niche that should be much larger. If you look at it as a, you know, who’s out there doing it.
You do see it every once in a while. And you’re absolutely right. And what an incredible opportunity that most people just like, yeah, I’m not going to do that. I’m waiting until my kids move out, waiting till the kids go to college. Or we got to hurry up and do a bunch of traveling before we have the kids. That’s like, there’s this 18 year window where people are like, okay, we can only go to Disneyland or the beach or whatever. And when, and when that window closes, then we’re going to go ahead and go to Costa Rica, we’re going to do all these things.
And so I hope someone’s listening. I, you know, you’d mentioned earlier, getting people to kind of get up and take action and go somewhere. I hope somebody’s listening that will do that. Cause it’s, it’s pretty special. I remember, you know, actually it was before I started traveling full time to Jackson, to Mexico, my ex wife and I took Jackson to Mexico. And there was this little, a couple, there was a family, we stayed at Airbnb and the people that owned the Airbnb were Dutch, but they’d been living. They’d been traveling south.
Jason Elkins (35:10.022)
Latin America and their kids were a little younger than Jackson. And it was so cool to just watch them, like, just make friends and, you know, okay, we’re going to the park. We’re going to do this. We’re going to do that. And, you know, and, and you don’t see that if you just kind of stay in home, I think. So, um, yeah, I don’t know. Anything you can say to really motivate somebody listening to this to go do it? Well, I’ll share the one motivation line that we, someone had said to us is, um, kids just have to come with you.
You just have to, they just take them with you and they don’t know any different. And that’s what we saw. And I think that I don’t wanna give parenting advice because certain people, I mean, we’re all trying to cope, we’re all trying to manage, we’re all trying to find our way here. But the one thing that stood out for us was this idea that it’s not about a house in the suburbs with a minivan and that you had to have everything in a certain way to bring a child into that reality. And then coddle them and kind of like, basically,
rather than changing your lives completely to be reoriented around them, they just come along with you. So you’re gonna take that job overseas or you’re going to like pursue, it’s just like the kids just come with you. Cause if you’re happy doing what you’re doing and you’re, it changes the whole family dynamic too, right? So I think that’s something that inspired us. And we would see other people traveling. Even when we were backpacking in Southeast Asia, we saw other people with young kids and we always thought that’s the way I’d wanna do it. I don’t want it to be over. I want this to be a new way of traveling. And I think-
Having kids is one of the best adventures you can have in your life and combining that experience with traveling around with them. I think people just have so many preconceived ideas of how difficult it is to travel with kids and they’re trying to constantly control the environment and actually if you really like to control bedtimes, control like, and again, I don’t wanna segue too much into parenting device, but some people can’t even wrap their head or we didn’t wait just around the world trip, there was another family said to us.
I couldn’t imagine being with our family for we’d kill each other if we were together for two weeks. Like, and I guess that’s not for you then, right? It’s just like that’s, but if your happiest times are traveling. So we took a big trip to the Galapagos this past summer. So after my mother-in-law passed away, after my dad passed away, it was our first big trip post pandemic and going through that challenging time. And I could tell the kids needed it as much if not more than us.
Jason Elkins (37:31.006)
And so we went and did this really incredible trip to the Galapagos. It was all about wildlife and adventure. And we just, it was just the four of us, but we had guides and we made our way around the islands and we snorkeled and we saw hammerhead sharks and sea turtles and seeing the joy on our kids’ faces, given what everyone had been through, it was like a complete escape that everyone needed. And our daughter said to us afterward, like, that’s the best trip we’ve ever done.
and not saying something given the number of places that she’s traveled to. But for me, I look at those photos, it’s very clear that, you know, for those of you who are listening to this, where travel is such a joy and a passion for you and you’re having kids and trying to make those decisions is that keep up that joy and passion and that spark because it’ll create stronger bonds and connections between you and your kids as well. So that would be my source of inspiration, Jason. That’s very cool.
No, thank you. I’m just envisioning that and how cool that was for your family. If you’re such a difficult time and, you know, and families go through difficult times and, and sometimes I think it’s grow up remembering difficult times because they don’t have that really cool connection moments with their family is as well and you know, Galapagos, I appreciate the people might listen to this, oh yeah, well Galapagos that’s a ton of money.
we’d have to spend. We can’t, we can’t do that. And I would invite people to challenge themselves to consider that, you know, a trip to Disney World, I don’t know, I haven’t priced it because I’ve never had a desire to do it. But I suspect that if you price out the trip to Disney World, it could potentially be more expensive than, you know, a trip to some other pretty fascinating places that, you know, I’ve been traveling full time for the last two years and
spend a lot less money than I did when I was living in Arizona in an apartment. Yeah. So, no, what you said right there is the insight that I think most people have to wrap their heads around. They’re looking at their finances because they see travel as a luxury or it’s, you know, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It’s the self-actualization. Like it’s right at the top of the pyramid that you are, you know, you’ve got shelter, you’ve got food. And so people, which is where I would say, uh, almost to invert that is that if you look at it as, um,
Jason Elkins (39:49.422)
you look at your total expenditure and figure out how important that is to happiness, well-being, and the lifestyle that you want. Obviously, it’s a case of prioritizing it. It’s the same thing when people say they don’t have enough time. We all have the same amount of time. It’s what you choose to prioritize your time with. And the same thing with money. It’s like, I don’t have enough money. It’s like, well, how are you prioritizing your money? And so if you really want, and you’re absolutely right, because even with this trip, as an example, we weren’t into scuba diving, we weren’t into
That’s part of the reason we hadn’t been to the Galapagos. And so we thought we had to go on an expensive sailing trip. And the reality was we did it all by land. We did it all with local guides. The cost was very reasonable. And not only that, the local people that we were traveling with are saying how glad that we came by land rather than by ship because you keep the money in the local communities. You actually employ locals, whereas the cruise ships don’t. And that’s, I don’t want to rail against cruise lines, but it was an interesting insight for me that the way I had anticipated traveling.
The locals appreciated that much more that we have chosen to stay in the hotels, to eat at their restaurants, to tour around on land and do some of the sailings or go out during the day and do snorkeling. But you’re still then booking with locals. And that for me was a big insight that you’re absolutely right. The people listening to this, if you go and price out the cost of going to the Galapagos, I can pretty much assure you that it’s gonna be, you can get that trip for the same price as taking a family of four to Disney for a week.
Yeah. It’s just incredible. And I understand why there’s the, you know, this misconception or this perception that things are expensive. Cause if you go to Google and you type in, you know, Galapagos rep, somebody that really knows something about marketing like Dan, maybe he’s working with a company that’s selling high-end, you know, trips to the Galapagos. And that’s what you’re going to see is come up. I would say just dig a little, you know, if, if that’s not a.
option for you dig a little deeper. I met a family in Thailand, a Swiss family, mother, father, two daughters, and they were taken, they just took six months. They’re like six months. They went to Thailand, they had their budget all planned out and they spent six months in Thailand or in Southeast Asia, you know, probably for the amount of money that it would have taken, you know, would have been gone in two weeks in Colorado at a ski resort.
Jason Elkins (42:10.186)
Not that somebody from Switzerland necessarily would go to a ski resort in Colorado, but it was just when you look at things that way, maybe you’re in between, maybe, you know, maybe you’re gonna make a career change. You’re gonna move to a new city. Maybe you take six months in between the move, you know, and take that extra money that you would have spent on six months rent in your new city and use that to travel with and get those memories and then just finish your trip in your new city. I don’t know. There’s all kinds of ways to do it. And…
I’m definitely a firm believer that finding a way is a worthwhile thing before your kids leave because once they’re 19, they’re probably not going to go with you. No matter how cool the place is, they’re probably not going to fully appreciate, oh yeah, I’m going to take the summer and go hang out with mom and dad and you know, in the middle of the year or something. It might not happen. So and then and then you’re hoping when you’re in your 60s and 70s, you’re hoping that they will take you on a trip somewhere, you know, which is a whole nother conversation we could have because.
You know, I’ve been fortunate to take my mom on a few trips and, and my dad, and that’s a, but that’s all another conversation. So, Dan, uh, we, we talked about quite a few things and there’s all kinds of stuff to talk about, but you know, maybe we get to come back and do a few more episodes and I’m curious, is there anything that I really should have asked or forgot to ask on this call that you think our listeners should know either about, you know, about, about you, Dan?
about the acceleration team. You know, there might be people listening to this that are core operators that, you know, are looking for opportunities to connect with somebody that does digital marketing, of course. You know, they’re always free to connect with me as well, but you were so gracious to come on and share your time. And is there anything about like the Travel Trends podcast that you think you’d like to share? Yeah, thanks, Jason. If you want digital marketing, go to Jason. Clearly knows what he’s doing. And so- Thank you. Yeah, of course. But in terms of-
being able to connect with me and just understand what I’m focused on or even just to keep in touch in this industry. So obviously you can look me up on LinkedIn at Dan Christian. I definitely encourage you to listen to some of our Travel Trends episodes, mainly because we’re trying to help people either come back to our industry or new people enter the industry and really democratize the information that otherwise you might only get by attending certain conferences that we want to make that information widely available. So we’re having discussions about travel trends and technology, sustainability.
Jason Elkins (44:32.982)
regional booking activities. So really staying on this theme of travel trends and 2024 is a big year for us with launching season three and we have a big event coming up at the end of February called the AI Summit, where we’re gonna look into how AI is gonna impact all the roles in our industry. So it’d be great to have you there and have some of your listeners participate and let us know what are the topics they want us to cover. So those are the real areas I would suggest people gravitate to.
Acceleration Team, we advise a lot of travel companies. That’s really our expertise. And we work with a lot of startups and established brands. So if that’s relevant, please, by all means, you can reach out to me there, accelerationteam.co. But the main thing would be travel trends and some of these new startups. I think that’s the one thing when we pick up again, one of the ones that we’ve just launched is worl because one of the reasons I love traveling is I love markets because I feel like at the intersection of culture, commerce and cuisine, and you get to know a place more deeply than just…
exploring a city without getting into the markets. And then when we were in Galapagos, we went to the mainland and we did a market in the Andes that’s been there for hundreds of years. I tried some of the most incredible hybrid fruits, saw some of the most incredible craftsmanship that clearly has been handed down from generation to generation. And that for me was, you know, as worth the trip as going to the Galapagos as to seeing this market. And so that’s featured there as well. So I think that’s where hopefully that work will inspire others. And by all means, feel free to…
connect with me and I’d love to do this again when we can make the time. That would be great. Yeah, the markets, I’m happy you touched on that because that’s something people might not, if they haven’t done a lot of traveling internationally, it might not be on their radar is, yeah, I feel like if you go to a city and you don’t go to one of the markets, you’re just missing such a huge opportunity. If you can go with somebody that knows the market that, you know, a friend you bump into, I’ve had people like.
You know, housekeepers at some of the lodges I’ve stayed at, like, take me to the market and just show me around and the opportunity to try new foods, they’re just like the coolest places. I think I could, I think you could just jump from city to city and just do the markets and you’d get probably 80% of the culture that you’d get in that city. You don’t necessarily need to go, not that the museums aren’t great, not that the other things aren’t great, but the markets and the ones that are, and most of them, fortunately, are not necessarily geared toward the poorest.
Jason Elkins (46:54.414)
I’m not suggesting the tourist markets, where you can go, but yeah, I’ve seen so many interesting things. Some things are a little, you know, culturally a little different than what you’re used to. You probably wanna kind of prepare yourself for that. But no, that’s a good tip. So, all right. And the Travel Trans Podcast, just to be clear on that, because I know that it’s great for people that really are interested in the travel business on some level.
would you say that podcast is for? Yeah, great question. We listed under business and careers because we wanna be more expansive than just talking to people in the travel industry about the travel industry, although that is how it was formed. We’re trying to expand the audience and make that information more widely available to people that just expressed an interest of, and that’s why every conversation for us always starts with how did you get into the travel industry? Which you…
keenly asked as well at the beginning is how did you get into this industry and why are you still in it? What are you doing? Like it’s just, and you get someone’s life story and it’s far more compelling to understand why they’re doing what they do and it all kind of connects. So yeah, so it is intended to be quite broad and we’re trying to educate and inform and welcome more people into the, this business and industry that we love so that they can create their own startups. They can find roles with travel companies that they can, they can pursue their passion in their, in their work.
which I love the combination of those two. I love it, because there’s so many conversations I’ve had just recently, but throughout the years of just like, I didn’t even know that you could get a job in travel. I didn’t know that people could like actually make money with a business in travel. So that’s hearing other people’s stories. You know, I think the listeners can start to say, oh, that person’s just like me. Yeah. They can do it. I can do it.
And when you see somebody that gets into travel at 30 or 40, and they, they move into the business, they start a business, they get a job working for somebody like Intrep energy or whatever. They are always so excited. I mean, it’s always like, wow, that’s life changing. I was miserable doing X before now I’m doing Y my life has changed. I wish I would have done it 20 years ago. And I do believe that people that like to travel, like to have adventures
Jason Elkins (49:18.71)
probably maybe on some level of an aspiration to be able to work in that business, right? And so it’s a great resource. So I appreciate you sharing that with the audience and I’ll definitely continue to listen to your episodes as well. So, thank you. All right. One final insight, because it’s relevant to exactly what you just said is life-changing. So at my time at G Adventures, our executive team, we did an offsite and that’s what we were working on is what is the most meaningful connection we can make with the consumer? What is it exactly that we’re offering?
and really it came down to changing people’s lives. So life changing adventures. And we took that back and embraced that in every aspect of the business, both with staff, customers, partners. And that today, I was doing a conversation with a guy named Craig Dodge, who runs the FAR circus in Cambodia. And their number one vendor is G Adventures. And their brand identity is changing people’s lives. And they genuinely do, because that’s how they operate with these kids in Cambodia that do these.
acrobatics and performance art as a way to overcome the genocide that occurred there. And so it’s fascinating that just that theme, the fact you mentioned that with adventure, why do people choose adventure is because they’re looking for something life-changing and there’s something deeper and more meaningful. So I think ending on that topic is perfectly appropriate because after having worked on that and seeing the success of the company and how it continues and just seeing businesses that connect and understand that the importance of having that kind of brand promise and delivering on it.
is what has made a lot of people successful in this space. And customers love their brands and are really happy traveling with them. So that’s a great place to take this one. Thank you for noting that. All right, man. I just really appreciate you being here. Great conversation. Look forward to having more conversations with you in the near future and participating in some of the events and things that you have going on. So let’s stay in touch. And Dan, thank you so much. Thank you very much. Thanks, Jason. It’s been a pleasure. Thanks.
Jason Elkins (51:21.954)
That was great, man.
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