Our Second Year at PURE

It’s the weekend after the end of PURE 2015 and I am still in Marrakech. For four days we got to immerse ourselves into the world of travel and discovery. For four days we got to meet people from all over the world talking passionately about their destination, lodge, country or activity. Whether it’s a couple organizing trips on a catamaran around Italy, the owner of an exclusive property in the Dolomites or a passionate skier that organizes heli-skiing trips in the Alps, you have it all at PURE. And these are just some examples from Europe; the whole world is there!

Our working table…introducing Romania!

This year the topic was living a rich life. What does living a rich life mean to you? We all answered the question and some got to be on stage and talk for 30 minutes about what makes their life rich. From Braam Malherbe, a South African who, among other things, ran the whole Great Wall of China (more than 4200km) in a single attempt to raise money for children from Operation Smile, to Jimmy Nelson, the Dutch photographer who went to unheard places on the planet to capture portraits of 35 disappearing tribes (the project is called Before They Pass Away), to Zita Cobb, the co-founder of Fogo Island Inn.

Fogo Island Inn stand

It’s about Zita Cobb that I want to tell you more. She left an impression on us, became an embodiment of our own dream, and is our inspiration for moving forward with everything we do at Beyond Dracula. As a Fogo Islander (Fogo Island is a Canadian territory just East of the Canadian border) she had a successful career as the CFO of one of the main US tech companies, her fortune being estimated at $69 million; in 2000 she was among the 4^th best paid female executives. There were no limits or constraints to what she could do in life, choosing to do absolutely nothing being also a feasible option. From all the possibilities, she chose to return to Fogo Island and do something for the community that was left on the island after cod fishing was no longer a way to earn an income.

She created the Shorefast Foundation, build the Fogo Island Inn, and in 10 years created a business that does more than generate profit; she created a business that feeds back into the community, its culture and people as many resources as it can do to help preserve it and also develop it further. During her talk at PURE she spoke about creating a social business; but it was not in the typical sense where an NGO develops a business idea to become sustainable and independent financially. Neither was it in the more common sense where a business that is already profitable starts giving back by creating a foundation or by integrating means of giving back into their products or services. She spoke about a social business where the business is created from the start being mindful of nature, culture, people.

“Nature and culture are the two great garments of human life. […] You have business and technology as servants of place…By definition, if you put place in the center then you’re going to put human community in the center, and then all of your actions are optimized for that, or at the very least are mindful of that.” Zita Cobb

This is what we found refreshing and extremely inspirational. Personally, for years I couldn’t settle with the thought that business and everything else have to be separate. In travel this separation makes even less sense. I don’t believe one can be in any travel related business and not care about nature, people and culture. It’s the reason people travel, it’s what leaves a mark, it’s what should matter just as much as running a successful business.

In a country as experiential as Romania where people both expect and are surprised by landscapes, local life, and the taste of tomatoes, we are a business that needs to keep safe and look after our nature, culture, and people. We’re a young team blessed to work in a country like Romania but also responsible for keeping it in the center of what we do as we go about our daily work, every time we welcome a guest, with every trip we organize.

See you next year in Marrakech!