BCBusiness

62 BCBUSINESS FEBRUARY 2017 ILLUSTRATION: TONIA COWAN A aron Smith shakes his head as he recalls downing 250 millilitres of industrial-grade hot sauce. "What you do for sea turtles," the CEO of Holidays for Humanity says of the dare that raised nearly a $1,000 and enabled a Costa Rican organization to buy a van. "I felt like a six-year- old boy continually pinching myself with this intense burning sensation." Based in Vancouver, Holidays for Humanity is an online booking agency that includes four‡other websites con- necting vacationers with "purpose- ful travel experiences."‡Over hum- mus and mekali cauliˆower wrap (minus, notably, any hot sauce) at Jamjar restaurant on Commercial Drive, we're meeting a year after Smith made the unusual move of buying back the sites he originally sold to Flight Centre Ltd. Having worked with the Austra- lian conglomerate since it acquired his startup within the –rst six months of opera- tion in 2012, the East Vancouver resident says his sites suit a more "long tail" approach, based on a much wider o—ering of smaller projects than mainstream tourism's focus on fewer but better- known accommodations and destinations. Keen for everything from fresco restoration projects in Italy's Puglia region and building or- phanages in Guatemala to wellness retreats and active adventures, experiential travellers are also usually more "high touch," Smith explains. Their detailed questions require greater knowledge from suppliers—something else that jarred with Flight Centre's emphasis on more commonplace travel requirements. "Perhaps I have egg on my face for trying a model that didn't work out, but now whatever we can control, we will control," the 2013 BC- Business Innovator of the Year –nalist says of the low-pro–le decoupling. "Flight Centre is a public company, responsible to its shareholders, and great at what they do—I've no regrets, learned so much and have a laser-like focus now." ‡Today, along with a sta— of seven in Kitsi- lano, East Vancouver and Whistler, Smith's business has "tens of thousands" of people booking through pay-to-play sites. Roughly 70 per cent of tra¢c comes from the U.S. (espe- cially via the 2016 acquisition of SEEthe WILD, a Portland-based group that specializes in wild- life conservation tourism), with Canada and the U.K. each accounting for about 15. ‡ Smith's conversion to this growing breed of traveller, which includes so- called voluntourists, came af- ter a decade in tourism, an in- dustry now worth more than US$7 trillion annually. He previ- ously worked for Flight Centre as Western Canada marketing manag- er and VP of marketing from 2002 to 2005 before becoming director of marketing and operations at B.C.'s Adventure West Resorts for –ve years. ‡ But after "bellying up to the bar far too many times" on vacations to typical resorts in places like Mexico and Hawaii, Smith took a trip to Kenya and Tanzania in 2010 while studying commerce at Royal Roads University. That visit "blew the door open" to how di—erent and bene–cial travel could be, he remembers. ‡"I certainly wasn't an environmentalist back then," says the 42-year-old. "But seeing how micro–nance and entrepreneurship can better a local community, I felt I could take my privileged environment and my background in tourism, and help tell these stories." ‡One of Smith's personal drivers is whether his two daughters, aged seven and 10, will be proud of what he did. He often takes them and his wife, Erin, a planner with the Vancouver Park Board, to more challenging spots in countries such as Cambodia and Vietnam. No matter how the Holidays for Humanity sites work out, Smith says, "We will always be able to say we saved thousands of turtles, we audited 500 great white sharks, and a few people even started their own not-for-pro–ts because of our introductions." ¨ His Life's a Journey Holidays for Humanity CEO Aaron Smith is fired up about purposeful travel Digital wunderkind Brian Wong on how he landed millions in VC and still gets bossed around by Lucy Hyslop L U N C H W I T H L U C Y THREE THINGS ABOUT... AARON SMITH 1. The travel junkie is obsessed with YouTube videos on how to survive in the wild, watching hun- dreds of them, especially before going to bed. "I'm particularly fond of build- ing homes out of mud." 2. After damaging his shoulder and ankle "alley-surfing" on a skateboard, Smith was recently told in Burnaby General Hospital's emergency room that, at 40, it was perhaps time for him to grow up and stop the sport. "When you're 16 you just rebound; now I go down like an anvil." 3. Echoing his childhood on a farm on the Niagara Peninsula, Smith's yard is divided between his vegetable garden and his wife's flower-centric patch. "I still fantasize about having my sweet, sweet plot of land in the future and doing my thing. There is something to be said for a big day of manual labour." NEXT MONTH

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