Looking back & the future for RAW Travel?

Looking Back Over 20 Years of RAW Travel

This year we celebrate 20 years of trading as RAW Travel, and in that time we have, of course, seen many changes, ups and downs, and we’ve been immensely proud to be part of countless people’s active adventures right across the world.

For those of you who might be wondering where the RAW part came from, it’s an acronym that originally stood for ‘Real Adventures Worldwide’, but equally, we felt it could have been ‘Ride and Walk’, as that’s what we’ve always done.

If we rewound 20 years, RAW Travel would look quite different. Whilst we’ve always been an international travel company, we operated mostly private guided group trips. At that time, our biggest area of operations was concentrated in Asia, and a large proportion of our customers explored by bike rather than on foot.

Our active travel options also included house building in Cambodia and Fiji, along with ‘Amazing Races across Asia’. The median age of our customers back then was around 37 (as opposed to 63 today).

Lonely Planet guides, phrasebooks and paper maps still ruled supreme as our go-to sources for reliable travel information, and the iPhone hadn’t yet been released, let alone navigation and language apps.

Advertising was still principally in travel magazines and weekend supplements, as Google Search and its ads were in their infancy.

Early days in the RAW office, planning remote trips with paper maps

On our first day of life as RAW Travel, we already had a substantial operation in place, with around 800 customers travelling across 14 very different countries that year, carried over from our previous incarnation, known as ‘Intrepid Challenges’.

For me personally, life had also changed with the arrival of our first daughter around the same time we started the business, and that meant putting the brakes on what had been a freewheeling life of adventure, leading active trips around the world!

What Is Still the Same

How we plan travel and deliver services has changed since that time, but certain things have always remained constant at RAW: our commitment to working with small local businesses, providing authentic travel experiences and offering a highly personalised and flexible travel service.

People and relationships remain at the heart of what we do, and we have worked hard to put our relationships with suppliers and customers first.

We are now in an age when many big companies are racing to replace people with AI-driven customer service, but we are instead doubling down on human connection and service because we believe that’s ultimately what people value.

The Future of RAW Travel

Over the last 20 years, so many things have changed, but the desire for human connection remains constant. We all have our favourite travel moments with people we’ve met on our journeys, and some of those local encounters stay with us for life, becoming our most treasured memories.

There are usually a myriad of people at the heart of a memorable travel experience, whether that’s accommodation and restaurant owners, drivers, guides, information centre staff, fellow walkers or other locals you meet by chance, along with the people who help with the initial itinerary planning and advice before you leave.

Whilst we believe AI can play a positive role in improving our processes, informing our customers and getting information to them faster, it can’t easily take the place of advice from a real person who has been to that destination before you and knows the nuances, trials and triumphs that come with actually walking a trail. People still want to trust the judgement of a fellow walker and retain their sense of control and choice when planning their itinerary.

At RAW, whilst we are experimenting with AI, we are still investing in people and connection as the heart of what we do.

A new service we have been trialling over the past few months involves providing recommendations, travel tips, alerts and useful reminders to our customers out on the trails. The aim is to enhance their self-guided journeys and provide opportunities for deeper connections with local cultures.

These recommendations aren’t generated by an AI bot, but thoughtfully put together by our team members, who you can converse with through our app and who are also supported by locally based staff in most destinations. We will always let our customers decide whether this is a useful addition to their journeys. So far, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, with people appreciating the extra insights and support this service provides without being intrusive on their walk.

We are also exploring ways to connect our walkers with each other before their journeys, for those who would value that option.

We have always aimed to innovate (not just copy others), and whilst we can’t always get it right, we are always listening to what our customers tell us they want from their travels and doing our best to deliver that creatively, within our means.

I imagine there will come a day soon enough when you can book your entire travel itinerary anywhere through AI, without any human interaction, and some, no doubt, may prefer that. However, I do think connection is the essence of good travel experiences, and our customers have enjoyed the relationships they’ve built with our team over the years. It will be a sad day if that no longer exists. Thankfully, at RAW, that day isn’t coming any time soon!