Global Work & Travel partners with five international travel brands to launch “Tour” division

One of the world's leading and largest e-commerce youth work and travel platforms has partnered with five international brands as part of a strategy to become “the one stop shop” for youth travel online.

The Australia-based Global Work & Travel has specialised in, and developed an extensive range of, work & travel and study trips since it was founded in 2008, backed by the mantra “Be more than a tourist”. Now the company has launched its “Tour” division which will allow its customers to simply travel and enjoy some of the world’s leading destinations without attaching a work or study element.

Global Work & Travel has teamed up with Canada-based G Adventures, which specialises in small group tours around the world, and its sister brand TruTravels out of the UK. It has also partnered with Australian company INTRO Travel, Topdeck Travel and Barcelona-based Stoke Travel, a popular European “travel party” brand. Between the five partners there are more than 100 products across 19 countries in Australia and New Zealand, Europe, Asia, North America, South America, Central America and Africa. “This tour product is a natural add-on for those in our network who’ve already done one of our so-called ‘gap year’ travel experiences,” said Global Work & Travel CEO and Co-founder, Jürgen Himmelmann.

"Most of our customers work or study abroad once, given the nature of its commitment, but they're not immune to the travel bug and often aren't ready to stay put back home once they return. Our new Tour offerings allow our customers to keep on exploring, in a new, shorter, more familiar way."

“All of our five new partners have proven experience in delivering outstanding products backed by excellent service standards and between them we have been able to secure a really high quality mix of tours.”

Some of the Tours on offer, initially from G Adventures & TruTravels, include Hilltribe and Villages of Northern Thailand, Bush Camps and Wildlife in Southern Africa, Sailing Croatia, Capitals and Cafes of Europe, Beachin’ and Boardin’ in Hawaii, Maori Culture and Mountain Coastlines in New Zealand and Most of the Coast: Sydney to Cairns.

Global Work & Travel is based in Australia with offices in the Gold Coast, London and Vancouver, with its additional new Melbourne office about to open. “This is an opportunity to broaden our product range beyond ‘work & travel’ and study trips. Our vision is to become the one stop shop for youth travel online, with unique incorporations of modern technology,” Mr Himmelmann said.

With the recent announcements of international border reopenings and easing of COVID testing requirements for travel, Mr Himmelmann said it was the perfect opportunity to expand.

He said the pandemic created a vacuum in the youth travel market, after long standing student travel agency STA Travel’s collapse after 50 years of operation, along with the shuttering of Flight Centre’s Universal Traveller brand.

“This means there are very few dedicated youth travel organisations offering package tours, and other things that young people want to do abroad. “COVID fractured the youth travel market. We aim to piece it back together as a fully digital organisation and help drive the industry back to near where it was before the pandemic.”

He also said that in the past few months, globalworkandtravel.com had been transformed into a fully operational e-commerce machine, which was transformed and developed over the pandemic border closure period, to prepare it to scale once borders reopened.

“Over Covid, we’ve gone fully online from an initial phone-based sales model, and our team’s investment is already paying off. We knew the youth travel market would be the first to bounce back, given the strong demand we had since even when the borders were closed.

“Our customers seem to be enjoying the digital experience, given that’s what most of us are used to now, and they’re confident booking online if the tech experience is high quality and fluid. We then maintain real human support by our 100+ team throughout the whole travel experience.”

The company says that between June 2021 and March 2022, the number of site visits had increased from 500,000 to 1.7 million visits a month.