G Adventures celebrates advisors with gameshow-filled G’evening with Friends

Instead of a typical trade event filled with presentations and speeches, last night G Adventures held a fun agent appreciation G’evening with Friends in Toronto where agents tested their knowledge of the tour operator and duked it out for prizes during gameshows like Family Feud and Jeopardy.

“Tonight is all about saying thank you to the travel agents,” David Green, managing director in Canada for G Adventures, told PressToday. “This is a G Adventures agent appreciation night, and we have some of our tourist board partners here as well. We really appreciation people coming out when it’s so cold and snowy out. We are having a record-breaking year. In 2024, we had our best year ever. We went into January with our highest sales volume that we’ve ever achieved, our biggest January ever, and February is starting off strong as well.”

The evening also served as a fundraiser for the non-profit Planeterra Foundation. Advisors who donated funds received raffle tickets to take home even more big prizes – G Adventures trips. Lora Hamre, account manager for Visit Costa Rica with VoX International Inc., was on hand to give away a trip to the destination.

“The three pillars for Costa Rica are wellness, sustainability and adventure,” she shared. “Have you ever visited our website, Visit Costa Rica? We are so excited. We’ve just completely revamped our website.”

The big winner of the evening was Beverley Edgar of The Travel Agent Next Door, who not only took home the trip to Peru but also returned to the stage later in the evening to secure her ticket to attend GX Jordon, which will mark G Adventures’ 35th anniversary.

“Our biggest growth is coming from travel agents. I remember 10 years ago people were asking is there going to be a need for travel agents in the future? And every year we see our business with travel agents growing and growing and growing,” Green shared. “The business is 35 years old, and we just did our biggest year ever. A lot of that growth is coming from agents.”

Green noted that the Canadian market is reacting to what is happening in the U.S., and it has impacted bookings this month. As for trends, he said solo travel remains hot as well as premium style trips like Geluxe.

“We’ve always been a brand that associates itself with travel agents. We sell a complicated product – there’s more than 12 different travel styles that we have, 850 trips around the world, and we continue to innovate to make sure that we give you unique and immersive experiences for your travellers,” Green noted.

Sponsors for the evening included ProColombia, Visit Costa Rica, PromPeru, the Cuba Tourist Board, Tourism Ireland and the Jordan Tourism Board, which are all the highest ranked destinations for G Adventures travellers.

Similar agent appreciation events are slated for Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary and Halifax.