GAP Adventures

As the world’s largest adventure-travel company, Canada-based GAP Adventures takes more than 90,000 people on over 1,000 different trips each year. Small groups use local transportation and guides to maximize authenticity and reduce expense. T+L Trip pick NEW Finland Winter Activity Week and Igloo Village. Go dog-sledding, then relax in a log cabin or an igloo.

Just as impressively, GAP has used this enormous reach to make its nonprofit arm, Planeterra, into an extraordinarily effective community-building entity. Since 2003, Planeterra has spent more than $500,000 on projects that include investing in rural cataract-surgery clinics in Tibet, establishing a women’s weaving collective in Peru, and purchasing a boat to bring Ecuadorean students on field trips to the Galápagos Islands. Meanwhile, hundreds of travelers have taken to the road on Planeterra-run voluntourism trips that embody the company’s mission to promote environmental responsibility and a connection to locals.