On January 7, 2017, the Global Hiking Club held a launch event and thank-you reception for its GlobalTrekkingClub website in Beijing, themed "watch." Tina Qian Haiying, founder of Banff (China), Xu Qiuli, Managing Director of Liyou (Beijing) Culture Media Co., Ltd., and Yu Binping, CTO of Gome Online, among many other industry and non-industry guests, were present to show their support.
According to Zhao Yang, the website’s founder: “Globaltrekkingclub is the world’s first community-based platform website dedicated to global in-depth self-guided travel. It brings together a group of self-guided travel enthusiasts who are credit-based and eager to explore the world. The website helps travelers break free from generic travel routes, offering some of the most beautiful in-depth travel destinations around the globe and connecting them with services from the most authoritative local guide companies, making global in-depth self-guided travel more accessible.”
At the launch event that evening, Zhao Yang, who has previously worked at Bearingpoint, Accenture, and IBM, shared his motivation for entering the field of “global in-depth travel”—as a passionate global in-depth self-guided traveler, he had encountered issues such as “foreigners not understanding China’s outdoor routes, lack of authoritative Chinese information for many international destinations, and being scammed by guides.” As a result, he decided to team up with friends both in China and abroad to establish this website, aiming to provide more convenient and professional travel services for global in-depth self-guided travel enthusiasts.
In addition, Globaltrekkingclub has partnered with Carlo Christian Spano, one of Hollywood’s top documentary directors, to create the "Wild Planet" documentary series featuring the world’s Top 10 hiking routes. It is reported that the first season, "Gondogoro LA in the Heart of Karakoram," was shortlisted for the 2016 Banff (China) Outdoor Film Festival, the German Golden Tree International Documentary Festival, the Pakistan Calling Film Festival, and the Nepal Pokhara Mountain International Film Festival. The second season, "Distant Shangri-LA," was also filmed in October 2016 across seven provinces and cities in China and is currently in post-production in Italy.
Guests at the event showed great interest in the launch of Globaltrekkingclub. One guest noted: “While outbound travel has become increasingly easy, in-depth self-guided travel still faces many challenges. Third-party services in areas such as customized in-depth travel itineraries, global travel companion matching, quality of local guides, and experiences of foreign customs and cultures are almost non-existent. We hope that after the launch of Globaltrekkingclub, these issues can be improved.”
For industry insiders, there is even greater hope that Globaltrekkingclub will bring about new changes to the industry. Whether group travel, thematic travel, or customized travel—no matter how they develop—they all cater to mass tourism demands. The self-guided travel community, by nature, carries distinct individual characteristics. After traveling across the country and around the world, global in-depth self-guided travel represents a future-oriented trend. Globaltrekkingclub is forward-thinking in responding to this demand by building an international community platform based on values and shared interests, undoubtedly opening up a new chapter for the travel industry.
Attendees revealed that Globaltrekkingclub has already begun building a membership club system and looks forward to the company providing more convenient and high-quality global self-guided travel services for travel enthusiasts.