Intrepid CEO James Thornton has traveled to all seven continents and visited nearly 100 countries. You might assume space is his next frontier, but you’d be wrong. The moon is decidedly not on his travel bucket list. “Travel is about connection,” the YPO member explains. “I don’t want to go somewhere there are no people. I want to meet the locals, to hear about their culture and learn about their histories.”
Intrepid, where Thornton has held various roles since 2005 and was named CEO in 2017, launched its first trip in 1989. At the time, the only option for international travel was with large groups, directed by someone wearing the group’s T-shirt and carrying a flag for easy identification. Lodging consisted of Western chain hotels, and the hotels and tour guides indulged travelers with all the comforts of home.
Intrepid’s founders had a different idea.
“It was all about being the antithesis to traditional coach touring,” Thornton explains. Intrepid tours focus on meeting local people, trying the local food, staying in local accommodations, using local transportation, and in doing so, supporting the local economy. The average group size is 10.
— James Thornton, CEO, Intrepid Travel share
“We’re built so our travelers can better understand a country and its people – different races and religions,” adds Thornton. “The world needs more intrepid people.”
That first Intrepid trip was to Thailand. The company now offers more than 1,000 trips in 100 countries on all seven continents, and for Thornton, the company’s mission has never been more relevant.
“It feels like the world’s being pulled apart – social media, geopolitical differences, isolation and loneliness,” Thornton says. But he views travel – the Intrepid way – as the antidote. “I believe that the more people can experience our style of travel, the more we can have a more kind, prosperous and hopeful world.”
Purpose – as an outcome, not at the expense of – profit
When Thornton joined Intrepid in 2015, he was drawn to the company’s dual purpose: expanding the sustainable travel market while proving that a business could do good and still turn a profit.
“I’m on a mission to prove a business model – that profits and purpose don’t come at the expense of each other,” he says. “Business in general is becoming more aware of balancing the needs of all stakeholders. We know we need to be profitable to realize our purpose. Profitability is the output of what we do, but not the reason for what we do.”
Under Thornton’s leadership, Intrepid first earned the coveted B Corp certification in 2018. “While it is easy to measure business growth, it’s not as easy to measure impact,” Thornton says. “Hopefully we’re proving that as a purpose-led organization, we are also generating better returns.”
Thornton recognizes that much of Intrepid’s success is due to its people, and the B Corp certification helps, especially as younger generations enter the workforce and seek companies that stand for something.
“It’s no longer good enough to just earn a salary or enjoy your work,” he says. “It’s about being proud and wanting to work for companies who are doing good, and that the good they are doing is independently verified.”
A positive outcome of a pandemic
In January 2020, Intrepid was coming off four straight years of record performance and experienced its biggest monthly bookings in the firm’s history — then COVID-19 changed everything.
With no money coming, they were forced to issue refunds before suspending global operations for the first time in their 31-year history.
“It was a crisis of just huge proportions,” Thornton says. “We’d been through Gulf wars. We’ve been through SARS, bird flu, a global financial crisis. But nothing could have prepared us for the experience of having no revenue and no idea when it would return.”
Work looked different but continued. And despite the business challenges, Thornton was encouraged by the positive impacts of virtually no global travel: Being able to see the Himalayas from villages in India and Nepal for example, or marine wildlife returning to the Venice canals.
Thornton says his team knew that when travel returned, it had to look different. “We took big steps during the pandemic to start removing and reducing the carbon in our operations, on our trips and in our office,” he says. “So, when travel returned, we could encourage customers to travel in this kind of lighter impact way, so that that it might have more positive benefits.”
It’s part of what drove Intrepid to become the first tour operator with near-term science-based climate targets as set out by the Paris Agreement. It is working closely with suppliers to reduce their carbon footprint, and prioritizing accommodations that use solar or renewable power. The company has also committed to removing flights from as many of its multi-day itineraries as possible.
“Replacing flights with rail and road alternatives often results in an improved travel experience and offers travelers more opportunities to meet locals,” Thornton adds.
And when travel demand returned, Intrepid was ready to meet the growing desire of people looking for more localized experiences and purposely creating less impact from their travel.
“As a result, Intrepid did very well. Make no bones about it, we suffered for 2½ years. But we used the opportunity that we had to make sure that when travel rebounded, we could take advantage of it and recover that financial position.”
Growing the sustainable experience market
Intrepid boasts a 20% compound average growth rate, a rarity for a 35-year-old company, Thornton points out. He credits the momentum to a cultural shift — more people prioritizing experiences over possessions.
Still, he acknowledges, Intrepid is still a small player in a massive industry.
“Our job is to make responsible travel and sustainable experiences the mainstream of the travel industry,” he says. “We come to work every day to create that positive change through the joy of travel. But we know we need to be financially successful and make a profit to be sustainable. We’re trying to balance commercial return while tackling some of the big issues in the world – all while giving customers fantastic experiences.”
Thornton challenges what he calls an old-fashioned idea – that if you want to do good by the world, you need to be a nonprofit, and if you want to do well financially, you must focus exclusively on shareholder returns and profitability.
“Often there’s a perception that because we are trying to benefit local communities and are trying to do good by the world, that we’re a nonprofit,” he says. But he proposes that a strong sense of purpose isn’t just good ethics — it’s good business. Intrepid’s commercial model is essentially to generate profits that benefit shareholders and their purpose-driven activities.
The company’s customers are curious and want to connect, he says, adding, “They have a desire to get under the skin of a destination, meet different people and have different experiences.” And for him, that’s what sets Intrepid apart — it transforms not just the traveler’s experience, but the travel industry and world at large.
“Tourism works when as much money as possible stays within the destination itself,” he adds.
