Our Comissions and Business Model

Outdoor Voyage is a marketplace platform working with and commercially supporting The Outdoor Journal, an independent journalism media business. As a booking platform, we take a small commission whenever a traveler books a trip with one of our onboarded partner operators. We do not charge our partners or customers any other fees, and all operators are treated equally, regardless of their commercial size, social media reach or geographic location. We are dedicated to developing a sustainable and ethical company that benefits the local communities involved with and impacted by the activities we feature. Our primary impact goal is to facilitate for a natural transference of wealth from travelers’ origin countries to the actual destination and region where the travel is performed.

Today, an average of 40% to 60% of what travelers spend is retained by travel agents or large businesses in the travelers’ home markets, rather than actually reaching and benefitting the destination. Our goal is to ensure that most of the trip spend goes directly to the destination, specifically, the local communities that stand to benefit the most from foreign travelers

Unlike many other platforms, we work hard to cut out the middlemen that so often redirect the flow of financial resources away from benefiting local communities. We work directly with operators on the ground and charge a flat commission that covers our payment processing, inventory management, and marketing activities. Operators can then price accordingly and our customers have peace of mind knowing they are helping local communities manage their environment in a way allowing them to perpetuate their activities over the long term.

Our founding was catalyzed by The Outdoor Journal, a media business that delivers an annual, high-quality print magazine dedicated to outdoor adventure, adventurers, destinations and industry views, as well as an online version geared more to immediate news issues. Both of these efforts derive some revenue from traditional advertising models as well as subscribers.

However, our goal is to scale operations to a large number of yearly bookings yielding adequate revenue to additionally sustain independent media at The Outdoor Journal, eventually negating any dependence for survival on third-party advertising. This will allow us to bring stories to the masses without advertising, sponsored content, or other hanger-ons that can easily siphon off the authenticity of many modern media platforms. We want to keep independent, unbiased journalism alive, and when you book or host through Outdoor Voyage, you aren't just supporting the travel industry and the local economies, you're supporting hard-hitting independent journalism, too!