Storytelling is a powerful method for learning and understanding the world that humans all share. It allows people to connect, communicate and educate. Travel is a series of compelling stories that encourage connections and deeper engagement; storytelling is the ultimate human experience that unites people across the world. Postcard is a travel media and representation company for luxury hotels and travel designers that support the local community and promote responsible tourism.
Member companies publish local stories of their people and place, and Postcard showcases them to its global community of mindful luxury travellers through its portfolio of media products. Anecdotal stories are a powerful way of communicating experiences and journeys, and this new, innovative company has created a platform that allows travellers to seek alternative experiences around the world, using travel as a force for good.
Promoting Responsible Tourism through Storytelling
Throughout the pandemic, the dream of exploring mystical foreign lands was often referred to as armchair travel and promoting responsible tourism through storytelling. A new dawn of travel is emerging as society stretches its wings and planes are again in the sky; travellers are seeking innovative and experiential journeys that lead to mindful travel, encouraging personal growth and transformation. Embarking on conscious travel experiences allows for the discovery of oneself with increased empathy and understanding of different people and cultures in a world of fascinating diversity.
The new wave of travellers wants to see the money they spend on travel go directly to help local communities. More and more companies are driving this change by affording mindfully aware vacations to a growing community of compassionate travellers. However, there is room for improvement globally to accelerate the process of making it mainstream. As we enter this new period of travel, more and more innovative travel designers and boutique hotels are discovering unique ways to showcase their destinations. They tell local stories of community, people, culture, nature and wildlife, history and food to inspire and encourage travellers to visit and enjoy all their destination, tour, or hotel has to offer.
Amit Jaipuria and Postcard
Amit Jaipuria founded the state-of-the-art travel platform Postcard with a vision to inspire a new generation of mindful travellers through storytelling. The company aims to unite global voices for responsible tourism and empower them with the tools to educate and inspire travellers about their people and lands.
The invite-only platform encourages luxury hotels and travel designers to apply to feature in the comprehensive Postcard directory. If accepted, they are included within either the Postcard Hotel or Postcard Tour directory. The hotels and tour companies then publish local stories on the Postcard platform to inspire travellers to book a stay or tour with them.
Amit explains, “Postcard’s mission is simple: to build the world’s largest collection of stories of people and places. To do this, we bring together a global community of like-minded travel writers, designers, hotels, industry groups and tourism boards, and invite them to collaborate and publish local stories from their land.”
Postcard offers travellers an authentic online platform and newsletter to be inspired by like-minded travellers and their stories from the real world and connect with companies that support local communities and promote responsible tourism.
“As society moves towards the Metaverse realm, we wanted to create a place to showcase authentic local stories of people and places; offering people a way to travel with meaning, rediscover themselves, build empathy and stay rooted. We do what we do because we believe mindful travel and storytelling have the power to inspire people about the real world; and to help them appreciate the diversity our planet has to offer.”
Sustainable Travel is Vital
Interestingly, well over 80 per cent of travellers believe sustainable travel is vital and believe they have to act now to save the planet for future generations and be committed to travel more mindfully. They are increasingly seeking support from travel designers for their knowledge and place a premium on problem-solving, particularly for longer journeys and experiential travel. Travellers are placing more importance on details and travel with ease by booking in advance with tailored community-inspired packages instead of staying in a hotel or resort. Individuals are still keen to travel but are understandably more cautious and seek reassurances and personal and local knowledge.
One of the Postcard Tours is a conservation success story in Botswana. The country celebrates the oldest bloodline of the hunter-gatherer tribes and the most ancient migration route of Africa’s largest elephant population. The well-reputed Golden African Safaris highlights how the proper management and preservation of protected land can significantly contribute to national, local and community economies. Various countries are connected and form a progressive government policy of community engagement that supports wildlife and wilderness conservation and anti-corruption policies. Postcard unveils untold stories of Botwana’s wildlife, people, wilderness areas, culture and history. Visitors can delve deep into the future sustainability of the country’s natural resources and what drives communities to protect them.
This is just one of the hundreds of stories shared and tours on offer through Postcard, all similarly impactful and memorable – what travel should be all about.
