TRMN 625 - AFA Pitch

Welcome everyone.

Thank you for joining me today.

I'm Jenelle Visser, a student of Royal Roads University Social

entrepreneurship class.

I would like to first acknowledge that I am tuning

in today from the traditional unseated lands of the musk

William Squamish and slobber tooth First Nations.

My pitch is directed towards members of counselling networks and

associations who I hope to partner with in developing my

enterprise. So, to my fellow classmates, please try to put

yourself in the mind of a counselor to set the

scene first.

Some real talk.

We've all been through some shit.

Excuse the language, but as counselors, I'm sure you know

this is true better than anyone.

Over the last pandemic year, as covid cases have been

on the rise, our mental health as a society has

been doing the opposite.

In a recent survey, over half of Canadians said they're

feeling increased stress or anxiety as a result of COVID

19. After a year of pandemic stats, Canada also found

that 24% of Canadians in 2020 reported poor or fair

mental health, which is a huge increase from 8% 2

years prior, and there are concerns that there will not

be enough mental health resources to meet the demand.

Steven Taylor, who is a clinical psychologist and professor at

UBC, said that while many people may bounce back from

the mental toll of lockdown, so self isolation and uncertainty,

many more may develop lingering problems.

And we don't have mental health resources for managing on

that scale.

So while your industry as counselors has been growing this

last year, I work in the tourism industry, which means

my industry has effectively been in hibernation.

And while I have undoubtedly baked a lot of bread

and watched a lot of Netflix, I have also spent

much of my time building up this idea of how

it can help by doing what I do best and

have built my career on which is taking people on

adventures. So my idea is to create a tour company

based in British Columbia that is developed intentionally with this

in mind, to design travel experiences that help people get

away from it all while also helping them learn how

to get through it all.

To give them a jump start on the journey to

better mental health and to go home after the trip

with a fresh perspective.

So before I get too much into the details, I

want to let you know why you're here.

I want to partner with members of counselling networks and

associations like you and like yours for a few key

reasons. First, to give our travelers a clear path to

post trip follow up in a structured counseling setting if

they decide to continue their healing journey alongside a professional

after the trip.

And secondly, if you believe in our mission, you might

also know some of your clients for whom this type

of experience would be particularly helpful.

And I hope you would consider recommending us to them.

And finally, when the time is right, we will be

needing counselors to come along our trips as counseling co

guides to help facilitate our programs.

So I hope you would consider being one of them.

So who is going to come on these tours?

Our market research has confirmed there is a growing market

for adventure, uh, wellness travel, meaningful travel experiences that pair

adventure and wellness.

And while this travel is considered high yield tourism, which

means these travelers are willing and able to spend on

the experience.

For example, domestic wellness travelers spent 178% more on average

than the average domestic traveler.

This becomes important for our model, as I'll explain in

a little bit.

And finally, much of the growing market for adventure wellness

is among women in particular the solo female traveler.

With this in mind, we asked ourselves, Who among our

mostly female adventure wellness travelers will these experiences helped the

most? The answer, after consultation with therapists like yourselves, is

people in transition.

So people struggling with our relationship ending grieving the loss

of a loved one dealing with a career transition and

the pandemic has only thrust more people into transition.

A divorce rates have spiked in Canada since the onset

of the pandemic.

Health care workers in particular, are suffering from burnout.

And a lot of people are just struggling with heightened

anxiety and depression while adjusting to this quote unquote new

normal. Now it occurs to me that some of those

struggling with transition maybe most benefited by this experience, but

they may also be least likely able to afford it.

I'm thinking of one of the most difficult statistics to

come out of the pandemic, which is the rise of

domestic violence in lockdown.

So how amazing would it be to be able to

send women who have escaped a violent situation and are

trying to figure out how to start again on a

trip like this?

But who is going to be able to pay for

that? That's why, as part of the foundation of our

business model, we're planning to capitalize on the general high

Spend target market of wellness travelers to put a percentage

of every ticket sale into a sliding scale fund so

that we will be able to offer certain folks like

these women a lower rate to help make sure no

one who needs to be on our bus gets left

behind. So let's talk about the trips.

What are these trips going to look like?

First of all, the tour design, we're bringing together principles

of adventure therapy, eco therapy and wellness.

In every aspect of our trip itineraries, we want to

have an adventure therapy element.

So getting people outside, putting them in challenging situations in

order to help them build up self esteem and have

the physical experience of overcoming something, I'm talking challenge courses,

surf lessons, maybe even bungee jumping, then eco therapy.

Psychotherapy is growing field, showing the mental health benefits of

just getting outside into nature.

And we are going to be finding some beautiful nature

for our groups on these trips and NBC.

It's not hard to do.

And finally, the concepts from the field of wellness I'm

talking, relaxing in hot springs, guided meditation, yoga on the

beach during sunrise.

So who's thinking, When do we leave?

We're not stopping it, simply taking people to beautiful places

to do some nice activities.

We also plan to develop intentional, therapeutically informed programming to

take place over the course of the trip in a

workshop format, I will be working with clinical therapists and

experts in adventure therapy to develop this programming and figure

out the best and most natural way to work it

into the trips.

We want to send people home not just with the

epic instant photos, but also with some tools to help

them keep doing the important inner work that they've started

on our trips.

And maybe some of them will come to some of

you to continue that journey and the format of the

trips most of the adventure therapy and wellness tourism out

there right now, particularly in BC.

A single location based What that means is you go

to one place on a wellness retreat or to a

challenge course to do adventure therapy.

But what we want to do is slightly different.

We want to take a small group of travelers on

a road trip.

Essentially, we believe that the magic of the group has

a role to play in this type of experience.

And actually, market research has shown that particularly right now

in the wake of the pandemic and the social isolation

that we've had to endure many of our adventure wellness

travelers. While they want to book a trip on their

own, they don't necessarily want to be alone when travelling.

They want to be in a group of like minded

travellers, so we're putting them in a group with experienced

and compassionate and highly trained guides to help facilitate that

experience. And we want to do it not just in

one place, but on the way because, as the saying

goes, it's not about the journey but the destination.

And finally we're also considering having some trips particularly just

for women.

Uh, for those travelers who may feel more comfortable doing

this in a female lead female only environment Mhm.

So I hope that gives you a bit of a

picture of what we're planning to review.

What we're asking for you to do is to partner

with us as an organization first, to provide a streamlined

way for our travelers to seek poster follow up with

you in a professional counseling setting, uh, second, to recommend

us to your clients if you have particular clients that

you feel would really benefit from this experience and finally,

that you, as an individual, might consider joining our roster

of counseling co guides when we scale up in the

future. So I want to leave you with some of

our beautiful destinations that we have in development as a

little bit of flatter for dreams as you go.

And to thank you so much for your time.

Here are a few references to leave you with, and

finally I invite you to check out our website, and

if you have any comments, please just leave them in

the in the foreign post below, and I'd be happy

to respond to them.

Thank you so much for your time

TRMN 625 - AFA Pitch

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