Take A Journey With… Claire Copeman – Co-Founder of Adventure Tours UK

She started the company to create the kind of adventures that she and her husband (and fellow co-founder) go wild for. Adventure Tours UK offers holidays for people who get their thrills from being in the outdoors and who want to care for it too, for those wanting to disconnect from the daily grind and reconnect with nature.

Like most outdoor adventurers, Claire and the team are passionate about protecting the wild spaces they take people to. The company is proud to have become BCorp certified recently as this globally recognises its efforts to meet rigorous social and environmental standards.

Adventure Tours UK offers a range of different itineraries including hiking Snowdonia’s famous 14 Peaks route, the new Traws Eryri Mountain Biking route and winter wellness retreats.

All a bit formal, that. So tell us something about you that not a lot of people know.

Despite all the podcast interviews, webinar appearances and panel discussions I’ve done since starting Adventure Tours UK, I’m a complete introvert! My favourite way to recharge after a busy week is to quietly hide away in my polytunnel, digging in the dirt and tending to my vegetables.

Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. Why did you start Adventure Tours UK? What problem did you seek to solve?

There are 38 million inbound visitors per year to the UK, but most come here for shopping, sightseeing and football – so that’s a lot of people missing out on what the UK really has to offer.

We’re here to put the UK’s incredible wild spaces on the global adventure travel map!

What would you say is the biggest motivator behind why you do what you do? And what impact does Adventure Tours UK aim to have?

We truly believe that the UK is a world-class adventure destination and we want to share it with the world. Well, more specifically, we want to share it with like-minded travellers who will enjoy and appreciate the natural beauty and who want to help us protect these fragile environments.

We also want to do support the rural communities we visit, working with local independent businesses and championing out-of-season travel wherever possible.

We live in a rural community in North Wales ourselves and see first-hand the highs and lows of being a tourist destination. For example, summer can be so busy that we have to, and want to, avoid local ‘hotspots’ but in the winter, we see the same business owners struggling to keep people employed.

Our aim is to educate travellers, helping them find a better, more sustainable way to travel and giving them a far better, more authentic experience as a result.

Be honest – what has been your biggest challenge since starting Adventure Tours UK?

Aside from a global pandemic in our second year of business?!

Covid hit us right as we were getting started and has, without doubt, made a huge three-year dent in our five years of trading to date. Everyone has had to deal with that though and as the saying goes, ‘we all weathered the same storm, but we did have to navigate it in different boats…’

Since the pandemic, I’d say the biggest challenges have been cash flow and staff. With trade group tours, you’re always working 12 to 18 months in advance of receiving any revenue for the work you’re doing. That’s not been easy to continue funding when, for almost 3 years, it simply wasn’t possible for us to trade at full capacity.

And, after having had a fairly settled team for the past few years, a series of unexpected and unrelated situations has meant we’ve recently seen several changes, which is challenging to navigate as a small group.

I don’t think this is unusual though, and I’ve yet to find another small business that isn’t going through the same challenges, especially in today’s challenging economic climate

Tell us about one marketing approach that has worked really well for you.

I wish I had an answer to this but we’re still trying to figure out what works best for us!

Having only really existed as a business during and post-pandemic, our existence has been full of change and we don’t have any ‘normal’ times to look back on.

Rather than any one marketing channel, I would say that our consistent and genuine messaging around sustainability is the thing that makes us stand out to both consumers and trade time and time again.

Now, think back to 10 years ago, what is one piece of advice you’d give the past you?

Stop worrying and just go for it!

Over the years I’ve learned it’s better to fail fast than never try at all.

Fast forward again. What do you think has been the most important strategy, value or approach that has helped you get to where you are today?

Being true to myself and what we stand for as a business. We don’t just tick boxes when it comes to sustainability – it’s my genuine belief and a shared passion of our whole team.

When we first launched, I created a ‘Responsible Travel’ page on our website and buried it away thinking no one else would ever be interested. In fact, I was genuinely worried my ethics would put most people off, thinking a sustainable approach would make us more expensive.

The best thing we ever did was to start measuring our impact and shouting about it from the rooftops – and now look at the travel industry, everyone’s doing it! I believe we stand out because people can see how genuine our approach is and it seems to be what we’ve become best known for.

Congratulations on being a B Corp! What inspired you to get this accreditation? Why do you feel it is important to business?

Thank you! As I said, creating a business we can all be proud of and that genuinely aims to provide a positive experience for all we work with – whether that’s guests, trade clients, our staff, guides or partner suppliers. This has always been at the heart of why we exist.
I guess I’m an empath at heart and would have always chosen this route anyway, but I do believe that a sustainable business is a commercially sound and future-proof business.

Going for the B Corp certification meant that we could formalise our values and aims, creating a structure around which we could strengthen our impact and be held accountable. It also provides a globally recognisable seal of approval, demonstrating that we have passed the most rigorous assessments of our commitment to protect people, place and the planet.

Expectations are increasingly high, and rightly so. People deserve to enjoy a holiday with the confidence that their good time is not at someone else’s expense and is in some way having a positive impact on the areas they visit.

Adventure Tours UK supports local, independent businesses and you always use local guides. Why is this important? How do you find these partners? And what advice would you give to anyone else looking to do the same?

Local guides provide a depth of experience only someone who lives and breathes the area can – I truly believe this gives our guests the most enjoyable and authentic experience possible.

It also provides meaningful employment opportunities for people who often live in remote rural areas. In the long term, and as a compound effect of more and more businesses working this way, I believe it will help to ensure we stem the flow of young people from our towns and villages into the big cities as they seek employment. As a result, we can protect the traditions, heritage and language that make these places so unique.

Providing a ‘sense of place’ is core to every trip we run. If you can’t tell what region of the UK you’re visiting by the accents you hear, the stories you’re told, the food you eat and the drinks you enjoy, then we haven’t done justice to our guests or our local communities.

We’ve organically grown our network through our own travels around the UK over the years and referrals from our existing partners. We also actively engage with local and regional DMOs, which is really important to ensure we’re in the loop with new experiences or accommodations as they launch so we can then make plans to engage with them.

A lot of people took up running and walking during the pandemic as there wasn’t much else to do during lockdowns. Do you think this has had an impact on the active travel sector? Do you think there has been increased interest in this type of holiday as a result?

Absolutely. I believe it’s the main factor driving the increase in self-guided active holidays. 

People discovered new pastimes and active hobbies like hiking, cycling and running that they could enjoy from their own home. Now travel has returned, they’ve realised there’s an opportunity to explore new places in a more interesting and rewarding way.

We know that travel is ever-evolving, but what trends or strategies do you believe will be key in driving positive change in the coming years?

At long last the travel industry seems to be grasping the importance of bringing local communities along with them. If we all continue to do this, the expectations of travellers will continue to shift for the better and this will create an unstoppable groundswell of positive change. 

We were the first UK inbound operator to carbon label our tours back in 2020 and we were amongst the first UK travel businesses to achieve B Corp certification. 

I’m now thrilled to see that almost every adventure operator (and, increasingly, more mainstream tour operators too) are now carbon labelling their tours as standard and there is suddenly a steady flow of operators announcing their B Corp status. 

At the 2022 Adventure Travel Trade Association’s Summit in Lugano Switzerland, the closing speech delivered by Jean-Claude Ravel compelled a global audience of operators ‘to deliver not what customers want, but what destinations need’. 

Those words struck a chord with me and as each day passes, they feel ever more true and ever more critical that we all take heed.

The travel industry is finally holding itself accountable and that is beginning to drive a change in consumer behaviour and expectation.

Quick Fire

• Favourite travel destination I’ve visited: This is a real toughy. I love everywhere for different reasons and I will never grow tired of exploring the UK’s wild spaces, but I guess the place I am most fond of and want to go back to is Bonaire. It’s an absolute diver’s paradise!
• Travel destination still on the bucket list: Belize. I’m an avid scuba diver so we planned to spend our honeymoon there, but after 5 years of marriage, we’ve still not got around to booking anything!
• Destination that you wouldn’t return to: I wouldn’t return to Thailand, but not because I didn’t like it. In fact, I loved my time travelling there after university so much that I went back for a holiday the following year but it revealed so much change in just 12 months and it was a change I didn’t like. A McDonald’s popping up in what was a small town and family businesses were being pushed out as a result. I could never go back there now as too much time has passed and I know I’d be heartbroken by the ‘progress’ the country has seen.
• Most treasured travel memory: I have to mention the day my now-husband (and business co-founder) proposed on a beach on Bonaire. We’d just finished our penultimate dive of the holiday and were buzzing after seeing 7 turtles in that one dive! It turned out he’d been trying to propose all holiday but anyone who knows me knows I don’t sit still for long. Every time he tried to pluck up the courage, I was already rushing us along to the next dive site. I was sitting on the back of our hired pickup basking in my post-dive euphoria when he popped the question!

About The Author...

Tom McLoughlin

Founder

Tom is here to steer the ship in the right direction, to ensure what we offer is best in class, and to keep clients and the team happy! Naturally, he loves to travel, but Honduras is a favourite destination after having spent a year there teaching after finishing school.