Outdoor Index, What Drives Us?

Glaciar Balmaceda y Serrano / Photo: @patagoniaplanet.

The tourism industry is crowded with intermediaries external to the localities where the services they sell are provided, with these often keeping a part of each sale much greater than and above the limit of what is considered sustainable for local operators, not even coming close to any kind of mutually beneficial and regenerative relationship with suppliers, local communities, the environment, and the entire tourism ecosystem in general. This is where at Outdoor Index we have always been clear about the tremendous opportunity that exists as intermediaries to contribute back with our management and business model to the aforementioned agents. That is why we are a B Corp, and below we will explain our 4 pillars and how we impact tourism, its localities, and communities, working from the inside out. 

Kayak Faro San Isidro / Photo: @kayakaguafresca. 

Thanks to the development of intelligent computer models and appropriate local knowledge, we guide the management of our wide variety of tourism providers towards greater quality and sustainability of their own and their surroundings, while improving the tourist experience in search of a win-win-win (Tourist-Outdoor Index-Provider).

"The shift towards conscious tourism is a shift towards responsible decisions, both for tourists and operators."

We are a different tourism agency, based in Puerto Natales, connecting tourists with local adventure providers throughout Patagonia, through educational and informative management towards the protection and conservation of nature, managing a more conscious and responsible tourism, and the interaction with adventure as a resource for personal growth.

Flyfishing / Photo: @lakutaia_lodge.

We have 4 fundamental pillars, and here we express our purpose. What drives us:

1. Diversify to protect.

Our wide range of outdoor excursions has always set us apart, fully covering the places where we work. We promote lesser-known places to decongest the already well-known ones and thus protect attractions that have been affected, eroded, due to their over-demand. It is an indirect but very important form of conservation, and above all, it is crucial in the experience of a different trip.

Do you help conserve with a different trip? The number of corners to contemplate in Patagonia is infinite, the opportunities to find that WOW moment are around every corner, behind every tree. Your decisions and the places you visit or choose not to visit are a significant way to conserve, which is why we will always promote new destinations, new routes, new providers, new places.

Mountain Channel / Photo: @patagonianfjords.

2. Be agents of change for conscious tourism.

Tourism has environmental, sociocultural, and economic effects. It moves and interacts within these three factors actively. Our purpose is to be agents of change and educate towards responsible practices on these issues.

An agent of change is an active, persistent, and focused role. The shift towards conscious tourism is a shift towards responsible decisions, both for tourists and operators. A conscious approach allows you to value a trip from the narrative, to increase your capacity for amazement, to allow your trip to transcend by giving it a purpose and teaching, and that stays with you for much longer than the trip itself.

3. Promote adventure as an experience of personal change.

Active interaction with nature is a tremendous resource for challenges, and it is the challenges that push us to go further, to leave our comfort zone, and to test our capacities, decisions, our head, and our mind, to be able to visualize and perhaps integrate a better version of ourselves.

An adventure can be a transformative, transcendental personal change experience. The best lessons are learned from a crisis. For some, that crisis or challenge may be a half-day hike, and for others, ice climbing. For some, a kayak river descent, for others, an 8-day trekking expedition. Helping you transform your trip into an experience of personal growth is a priority.

Magallanes Reserve / Photo: @Patagoniamtbtrails.

4. Activation of tourism ecosystems.

When visiting a place as a tourist, it is important to consider that your visit not only represents an income for the guide with whom you will take a tour. It is very important to consider that you will also contribute, for example, by shopping at the local grocery store or perhaps refueling. You will visit a local products and souvenirs store, and thus your visit becomes a complete activation of the entire tourism ecosystem.

We want to constantly be activators of these ecosystems, generate movement in the entire environment and tourist chain of each locality, promoting local and small business consumption, generating exhibition, and also promoting through collaboration. In this way, we promote local culture from local development for endogenous social conservation, from within to outside.

We are proud of our pillars and our business model; nature has changed our lives, and we want it to change others' lives too. We believe in conscious and responsible tourism, in Chilean operators and entrepreneurs, and above all, we thank nature because in it and thanks to the values found in it, we can generate transcendental moments for people, seeking to be better ourselves, better with those around us, and better for the world.

Our purpose is towards people like you, and only thanks to that does it have its effects on nature and local communities. We want many people to know about our pillars and about the new ways of traveling, with purpose, contributing. If you are interested in being the first to know about news and/or special offers, follow us on our social networks, but above all, we invite you to subscribe and become part of our community and its benefits.

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