On the Ground: Shaping Visitor Behaviour Through Tours & Activities
Summary
This ITB Berlin panel, moderated by Dan Christian (founder of Travel Trends Podcast), brought together executives from HX Expeditions, WeRoad, Traveler/Travelier, and Visit Copenhagen to discuss how tours and activities operators can actively shape responsible visitor behaviour. The session ran approximately 37 minutes and drew a standing-room-only audience.
Clarissa Cappelletti (Regional Manager, WeRoad) opened by contextualising WeRoad's community-driven model. WeRoad organises small-group trips primarily for solo travellers aged 20–40. The company has hosted over 300,000 travellers and employs 4,000 'travel coordinators' across Europe. A 2024 survey of 6,000 WeRoad travellers found that more than a third cited meeting new people and forming friendships as their primary motivation for travel — a finding rooted in a reported epidemic of loneliness among younger generations. WeRoad grew from €10 million to €100 million in revenue in three years, reaching €150 million in the most recent year, yet has not expanded beyond Europe — a fact Dan Christian used to project it as 'the next billion-dollar business.' WeRoad pre-educates travellers on how to be 'good Wiroaders' before they even book, sets behavioural expectations around respect and cultural sensitivity, and has a blacklisting policy for travellers who fail to meet those standards. The company deliberately offers shoulder-season tours (e.g., Albania in winter) and builds in off-the-beaten-path stops alongside headline sites like Machu Picchu.
Gebhard Rainer (CEO, HX Expeditions) described HX's work in fragile polar and remote environments including Arctic Canada, northwest Greenland (with Inuit communities), Antarctica, and the Galapagos. A core model involves letting local indigenous communities — specifically Inuit village elders — design the itinerary elements rather than HX imposing a programme. HX carries permanently stationed scientists on every ship, runs a science lab on each vessel, and partners with over 30 scientific institutes globally. The typical cost of a dedicated science ship is approximately €70,000 per day — far beyond most institutes' budgets — so HX offers free passage in exchange for lectures and citizen-science programmes for guests. HX is conducting a longitudinal behavioural study with the University of Tasmania tracking how guests' mindsets change during and after polar expeditions, and measuring what lifestyle changes they make post-voyage. Rainer identified 'transformative travel' as the defining trend of the current year.
Gitte Mikkelsen (Senior Manager, Wonderful Copenhagen) presented CopenPay, now in its third year, as a model behaviour-incentive programme. Tourists earn rewards (free coffee, museum discounts, etc.) for performing 'good deeds' — collecting harbour trash, cycling instead of taking a taxi, and similar low-impact choices. The programme's most valued reward is informal contact with locals, not discounts. Mikkelsen also described Cultigen, a collaboration between Wonderful Copenhagen, the municipality, universities, and museums focused on destination development and engaging local citizens as informal ambassadors and tour guides. Copenhagen's tourist information maps deliberately make the city centre a small portion of the display to visually nudge visitors toward peripheral neighbourhoods such as Valby and Vesterbro. The CopenPay model is being packaged as 'Destination Pay' so other cities can adopt it.
Mario Gavira (CMO, Travelier) explained that 75% of visitors to Italy — based on a study by Professor Guido Gerzone of the University of Milan, covering 1,000 travellers — visit only 4% of the country. Travelier's multimodal booking engine combines flights, buses, trains, and ferries to make secondary and remote destinations bookable. Many bus and ferry operators in Southeast Asia and Latin America still manage inventory with pen and paper; Travelier provides them with an inventory management system, pricing tools, and a 'full-stack GDS for small operations,' and in some cases provides investment to help operators acquire additional electric buses or ferries. An AI recommendation engine deployed at booking-confirmation pages suggests off-the-beaten-path alternatives — for example, suggesting Ilha Grande instead of Rio's Búzios, or Palawan instead of the Maldives. Gavira highlighted Bangkok-to-Koh Tao as an example of a newly bookable multi-modal itinerary. The company is approximately 8 years old, handles ground and sea connectivity at scale, and is on a growth trajectory Dan Christian described as 'soon to be billion-dollar.'
A recurring theme across all panellists was peer influence: small groups normalise responsible behaviour through positive social pressure. The moderator also cited a trend of 'transformative travel' entering mainstream consciousness in 2025, driven by growing consumer desire for meaningful, mindful, and purposeful experiences.
Key Takeaways
- •WeRoad scaled from €10 million to €100 million in revenue in three years, reaching €150 million in the most recent year — all within Europe only — making it one of the fastest-growing small-group adventure companies globally. Dan Christian predicted it will become the next billion-dollar travel business once it expands internationally.
- •A WeRoad survey of 6,000 travellers found that more than a third travel primarily to meet new people and form friendships, reflecting a broader loneliness trend among people in their 20s–40s. WeRoad leverages this by using peer dynamics and its 4,000 travel coordinators as positive behavioural role models — turning 'peer pressure' into a force for respectful travel.
- •WeRoad enforces a blacklist policy: travellers who do not respect the company's values and behavioural expectations can be permanently banned from future bookings. Clarissa Cappelletti framed this as taking 'this responsibility incredibly seriously,' underlining that community standards are a product feature, not just ethics messaging.
- •HX Expeditions partners with over 30 scientific institutes globally, offering free ship passage in exchange for scientist lectures and citizen-science participation — a model made viable because a dedicated science ship costs approximately €70,000 per day, which is unaffordable for most institutions. This arrangement turns paying guests into active science contributors.
- •HX is running a longitudinal study with the University of Tasmania measuring how guest mindsets change during polar expeditions, how long the change lasts, what they communicate to friends and family, and what personal lifestyle changes follow. Gebhard Rainer positioned this as evidence of the 'responsibility we carry in this industry.'
- •Rainer declared transformative travel the dominant travel trend of the current moment: 'I do believe this is the year that transformative travel really enters the zeitgeist.' He linked it to growing consumer demand for mindful, purposeful, and science-informed experiences — particularly in fragile environments like Antarctica and the Galapagos where climate change is most visibly apparent.
- CopenPay, now in its third year, incentivises tourists to perform 'good deeds' (e.g., cycling instead of taking a taxi, picking up harbour trash) with local rewards such as free coffee or museum discounts. Gitte Mikkelsen noted that the good deed itself has become the primary reward — and that locals actively want tourists to engage with them, making authentic local interaction the highest-value outcome of the programme.
Transcript
We have another panel ready for you now and they are ready to uh debate uh a lot of the issues that we've already touched on uh earlier. uh the title is um the title of the session is on the ground shaping visitor behavior through tours and activities and I guess this is a bit of an educational session in parts but it's very much also to hear from companies across the industry um and tell us you know how they truly help uh the local communities that they that they all work with. We're going to t...
