Much Better Adventures

Bosh! Thanks Wanderlust Travel Media 🤙

Summer adventures are calling! We’ve teamed up with outdoor active travel experts Much Better Adventures to bring you a huge giveaway this month. One lucky winner will get the chance to win £1000 to put towards a Much Better Adventure of their choice, as well as £1000 worth of Montane clothing and equipment To be in with a chance of winning enter following the link below. https://lnkd.in/eMp4wg2F Much Better Adventures deliver solo-friendly outdoor adventures for active people. They have trips all over the globe, from Scotland, to well known European destinations such as Madeira and Norway, as well as far flung adventures in places like Guatemala and Tanzania. Whatever your adventure needs, we’re sure they have a trip for you. To help you take on this adventure, we’ll kit you out with all the gear you’ll need to explore your chosen destination. From protective waterproofs, to warm down jackets and high stretch legwear - Montane’s lightweight, durable gear will help you navigate with ease so you can comfortably push your boundaries and expand your horizons. Competition closes midnight 30/06/24 and one winner will be selected at random and contacted via email. T&Cs apply - see website for further details. Please note that we will not contact you via social media relating to this competition.

We're growing our team again! Know someone brilliant? Send them our way 🙂

We're delighted to be nominated for 'Travel Magazine of the Year' at the 2024 TravMedia UK Awards. Our magazine is our gateway to the mountains, the ocean and the open road. In the the past year, our 'Tourism Leakage' series has looked at how tourism can work harder for local communities, asking who’s really benefiting from the visitors that come to a destination, and is that value being distributed fairly? Our 'Unlocking Adventure' series meanwhile looked at some of the barriers preventing people from exploring the outdoors and embracing nature - and how we can overcome those barriers to get more people out on an adventure. You can check out both series via the links in the comment section now 👇

"You can look for poor decision making, or getting upset at things. If you cry at dropping a Kit Kat, you're probably sleep deprived to an extent where it's an issue.” How important is sleep for performance? We asked Jenny Graham, the fastest woman to cycle round the world, and Robbie Britton, who holds the British 24hr record. Then we ran their answers by sleep expert and Kipmate-founder James Wilson to get the science. "There are four things we need to live: food, water, air and sleep," says Wilson. "If you didn't exercise for 10 days you'd be fine. If you didn't sleep for 10 days you'd be dead. Let's put the right emphasis on the right part of our wellbeing.” ✏ : Words by Stuart Kenny | Illustration by Charlie McCulloch

I've really appreciated the articles that Much Better Adventures has been publishing lately. The team is not afraid to "go there" when it comes to addressing challenging issues that travelers should be thinking about. This article on souvenirs is a particular favorite that they recently published. The creation and consumption of souvenirs is something I think about a lot when I travel. I often find it to an uncomfortable experience to engage in a transaction over something deeply embedded in a culture. Does the financial benefit to an artisan outweigh the commodification of a culture so that a small piece of a place can live on in my life (outside of its original context)? From the article: "It’s possible for this to change the nature of the craft itself, from something for use in, say, a specific spiritual ceremony, to something purely being produced for commercial value, and perhaps even manufactured differently. But for Mansi, this is a natural progression."

“We’re facing a climate crisis, but we’re also facing an equity crisis,” says Rebecca Armstrong, of The Travel Foundation. "It’s that question of who’s really benefiting from the visitors that come to a destination?" Tourism can be a powerful force for good, protecting nature and improving local lives - but currently, the industry falls far short of fulfilling that positive role. “Only a fraction of the money spent by tourists stays with local communities - so often, people are not actually benefiting much from your being there,” says Dr. Lynn Minnaert. The issue is called tourism leakage. "It's basically, any money that is spent at the destination level that doesn't stay there. It leaks out." Levels of leakage vary hugely from resort to resort or country to country - but a 2023 market sizing report from the Adventure Travel Trade Association found that it takes four adventure travel tourists to generate $10,000 USD for a local economy, while you would need 96 cruise tourists to generate that same sum. “When it's at its best, tourism has local communities as an equal player; as a stakeholder in how it operates,” says Rochelle Turner, co-chair of the group Travel by B Corp. “It’s too often about a product rather than people and place." It should be about linking up with local communities, not leakages. “It’d be naive to think the whole world will one day be adventure travellers,” says Alex Narracott, of Much Better Adventures. “But adventure travel can be the case study that influences other sectors of the travel industry - and it does do that. It’s raising the bar in terms of transparency around supply chains and carbon. It just needs to figure out how to do it more.” We spoke to the experts about unlocking the positive potential of tourism as we move forward, in the final entry in our series on #TourismLeakage. ✏: Stuart Kenny

According to a survey of 2,000 Brits, only 30% of us made new year's resolutions for 2024. Our Deputy Editor Dani Redd was one of them. "You’ll find all sorts of advice on setting goals online. Here’s mine: new year’s resolutions should be geared towards making you a happier person, not a more productive one," she says. "I don’t want to wake up any earlier and I don’t want to deprive myself of anything. In fact, one of my New Year’s Resolutions is to find more time to relax." And, of course, more adventuring is definitely on the cards... What New Year's resolutions have you made, if any? https://lnkd.in/e7X9QQ73 #newbeginnings #newyear2024 #newyearsresolution

What’s your favourite travel souvenir, and what does it remind you of?⁠ ⁠ Souvenirs are a vital part of the tourism experience today. Opportunities to engage with authentic crafts (in markets or workshops, for example) are increasingly important to travellers; a way of connecting with locals and educating themselves on different cultures - and there are huge benefits for those locals too.⁠ ⁠ In Rajasthan, academics Paliwal and Sharma write, handicrafts “contribute considerably to the culture and tourist experience of tourist destinations and significantly to the state's economy by employing crafters and artisans who, while preserving cultural heritage, generate income through the informal sector.”⁠ ⁠ In short, well-made souvenirs can help to keep traditional crafting methods alive, while also providing local communities with economic opportunities.⁠ ⁠ “Craft people, like any of us, want to make a living and have a good life,” says Mansi Sathyanarayan Rao, Collection Curator at The South Asia Collection. “And if you don't evolve to the requirements of current markets, there is no future for those craft practices.”⁠ ⁠ Here, we head to Rajasthan, a hugely-varied state in northern India brimming with crafts - from the Molela plaque and handmade puppets to Kaavad storytelling boxes - to find out what a souvenir is really worth.⁠