All businesses have suffered setbacks during the pandemic, but few have been battered as badly as travel operators.
Choose a Challenge saw bookings drop off by around 40 per cent when the pandemic hit, and co-founders Dan Quille and Charles Milton questioned whether they’d make it through.
But bookings are slowly starting to pick up again, and true to its focus on local communities and authenticity, Choose a Challenge has also recently secured B Corp certification.
As part of our new B Corp Beat series, which aims to focus the spotlight on ‘green’ British companies, we find out more…
![Dan Quille and Charles Milton set up Choose a Challenge in 2008](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/09/07/14/47608377-9965607-image-a-1_1631021383975.jpg)
Dan Quille and Charles Milton set up Choose a Challenge in 2008
The pandemic is not the first time co-founders Dan and Charles, who met as international development students at university, have faced a setback.
Their entire business was established after a scam contractor swindled them out of thousands of pounds on another project.
Quille is surprisingly upbeat when recounting the story.
‘We bought a farm on the lower slopes of Kilimanjaro and we were going to build a guest house there… we were going to be an in-house operator bringing people to Tanzania,’ he explains.
‘That all went to pot. We got all our money nicked by a rogue builder contractor. The last bit of money we had in the account we used to train somebody we knew who was living in the village near the farm.
‘We thought we’d sponsor him through tourism college by getting a few people to go and climb Kili.’
Today, Choose a Challenge’s customers, who are mainly students, raise large sums for charities like Amnesty and WWF who in return fund the trips.
It has exploded since its launch in 2008. The business has raised more than £20million for charities, taking thousands of people on trips to places like Tanzania, Peru and Morocco and injecting cash into local economies.
![Dan and Charles initially focused on trips to Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/09/07/14/47608545-9965607-image-a-2_1631021725971.jpg)
Dan and Charles initially focused on trips to Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania
Local community is the focus
The premise of Choose a Challenge reflects how Dan and Charles – chief executive and chief financial officer, respectively – approach international development more broadly.
‘We both really like the idea of direct investment into developing countries and at a pretty grassroots level. The majority of the money that is paid is going to porters, chefs, people, local parks… As it evolved we started to do the challenges. That’s where the demand was and that’s where the market is,’ says Quille.
Choose a Challenge offers everything from a trek up Kilimanjaro to a marathon in Budapest.
The focus on local communities is characteristically kind-hearted, but it has made the team’s job all the more difficult during the pandemic when they were forced to stop trips entirely.
While the Choose a Challenge adapted and started to develop short haul domestic trips, it left their colleagues further afield in the lurch.
‘When we originally set it up, as much as anything we wanted to put money into local communities in the Kilimanjaro region in Tanzania. We’d spent time there and built contacts and friendships with people,’ Quille says.
‘They’ve had a torrid time during the pandemic. I was getting Whatsapp messages from the guys in all our countries asking ‘What’s happening? Is there any chance of us getting any bookings this season?’
There are encouraging signs that activity is starting to pick up again for its trips abroad.
‘What has been reassuring is that people have been booking trips and have been very flexible. We’ve had people booking on for trips this summer and then they brought in the amber and red lists.
‘When the destination has been put on the red list, we’ve told them the changes and the response has been overwhelmingly that they’ll stick with it.’
‘People crave authenticity’
The Choose a Challenge team pride themselves on their authenticity, which goes hand in hand with their work with local communities.
Their website is plastered with claims that it will be ‘a trip of a lifetime’ and lists authenticity as one of its core values.
But what does that actually mean?
‘People are not staying in swanky five star hotels where the locals are the people serving them by the swimming pool. They’re staying in local accommodation owned by local people,’ says Dan.
‘There’s always a kind of craving whatever the country is… what ‘real’ Italy is or what the ‘real’ Japan is like. That’s hard, but we’ve tried to offer that experience.’
Their commitment to doing good is an essential part of this authenticity too, which meant the B Corp certification was a natural next step for them.
Choose a Challenge was only granted B Corp status in June of this year, two years after applying.
It is a surprisingly long time given the company’s clear commitment to sustainability, but Dan says he had not even heard of the certification until an adviser mentioned it to him.
‘It does seem to be growing quite rapidly… [but] there is a risk of diluting it, I feel like that happened with Fair Trade.
‘There were some companies who got accreditation on products that people felt were completely inappropriate and it watered down the whole thing,’ he says.
Does he think the same could happen with B Corps?
‘In America it still has strong positive connotations. In the UK I think they can probably do with raising the profile a bit but there are more and more companies becoming B Corps.’