G Adventures Reviews

Working at G Adventures is like thinking that you’ve won the career lottery......then finding out about the nasty fees that go along with it. The shiny purple loop tail is surrounded with razor blades and is representative of cutthroat tourism industry and G thinks it’s so different to everyone else because of its “culture”. G Adventures is no different to any other business in the world, it is driven by money and does not really care to make a difference in the world. G Adventures “pride themselves” on their people, making you think that career development and progression is possible but it’s all lies. Wanting to progress throughout the company is based on your popularity and I witnessed numerous counts of favouritism among certain individuals across the sales, marketing and operations teams. The core values are just marketing. Plain and simple. They are never even considered when making business decisions or creating any policies internal or external. They are often used as a weapon against employees, if you’re not “G” then you won’t make it in the purple world! G Adventures think that Friday afternoon beers, themed meeting rooms and a popcorn machine driving engagement but really as an employee all you want is to work for a company where your hard work is valued, your salary reflects the effort and dedication you have to producing high quality work and that you’re respected by your manager. You won’t get any of that working at G Adventures.

The strong culture has a way of making staff feel like they are valued, but the reality is that a global company of this size and that has been around for 3 decades should be able to properly recognise and reward hard-workers beyond ways that are increasingly normal in workplaces these days like friday drinks, a fam and an invitation to the company's annual general meeting. This might have bene ground-breaking stuff 10 years ago, but now every travel company offers these same incentives, whilst also ensuring staff feel properly rewarded and recognised in other innovative ways, as well as through fair remuneration. Unfortunately it's impossible to be properly rewarded and recognised unless you are a favourite of the leadership team, which is largely a "boys club". I saw time and time again "yes men" being promoted over smart, hard-working women who had their own opinions and ideas. If you were "in" with the male leadership team, you were going places in the company. If you weren't "in" with them, you'd go nowhere. Regarding the core values of the company, in my experience, these have never applied internally towards staff. Whilst it's great to get a fam spot every year, the prices of the tours increase every year, yet the value of the fam trip never once increased in my time working at this company. Why not? Sadly the most telling thing about the leadership team, is the way in which they handled mass redundancies during the pandemic. Some handled it with grace and empathy. Others handled it in an embarassingly poor way, proving that despite the bells and whistles of a strong company culture, everey staff member is completely disposable and won't necessarily even be disposed of in a compassionate way.