Beyond Travel: How Black Tomato Ignites A Passion For Storytelling Through Immersive Experiences

While solo travel can provide a fascinating perspective on the world around you, sometimes it’s best to leave the planning to the experts—and few companies exemplify this as well as Black Tomato. Officially founded in 2005, this esteemed travel company sets themselves apart from competitors through a set of carefully-curated itineraries that value memorable experiences, opting to provide participants with a truly unique array of activities rather than just check off the typical tourist sites.

Since its initial launch, the company has compiled a diverse array of excursions that range from culinary deep dives across Morocco to adventures in the frigid depths of Chilean Patagonia—and best of all, each trip contributes to Black Tomato’s efforts to protect our planet from further harm, with company initiatives spanning from purchasing carbon offsets to aiding in reforestation efforts. For Forbes, co-founder Tom Marchant provides insight into what makes Black Tomato unique from other travel companies as well as some of the recent developments within family and group travel across the industry.

What are some of the core competencies that set Black Tomato apart from other tour companies?

Everything we do is driven by our values as a company as our mission is to create remarkable experiences that thoughtfully connect our clients to the world, inspiring them to explore it with curiosity, humility and a sense of wonder. Creating remarkable travel moments and rare experiences that inspire is central to Black Tomato’s DNA, and our innovation is fueled in part by extensive research conducted by our team and in creative collaboration with our vast network of partners around the world. As a travel-obsessed group, we are constantly seeking out these extraordinary experiences through boots-on-the-ground research, identifying the best guides and local experts and always test-driving ourselves to ensure they are inspiring, thoughtful, seamlessly delivered and smartly cadenced within an itinerary.

Tell us about Black Tomato’s family and group travel offerings.

Multi-generational family travel is one of the most important segments of travelers at Black Tomato and one that we have significant expertise in creatively concepting and executing. Since our founding in 2005, our employees’ families at Black Tomato have grown along with our many returning clients. Multi-generational family travel now accounts for nearly 60% of our bookings.

To captivate this burgeoning segment of our business, we’re constantly looking for innovative new ways to capture the imaginations of family travelers with itineraries and experiences designed to inspire. As with everything we do, we track booking trends and listen to our client’s specific needs and desires, which in turn help shape our offerings. In early 2021, we saw firsthand with our own families and our clients, that one painful vestige of those locked-down lives was the increasing reliance of children being glued to screens, stemming from a combination of long months of homeschooling, shuttered lives and inability to travel and see the world, which in turn made families experience-deprived.

As multi-generational family travel in 2021 accounted for over 40% of our business, we saw a space to innovate and grow. While it was ticking along behind the scenes and started taking shape two years prior in 2019, we launched Take Me on a Story to unearth meaningful experiences that engage children and reignite a passion for learning. The collection debuted with five immersive itineraries inspired by beloved children’s stories set in destinations that form the backdrop to these iconic tales. Many of these were stories we collectively read together when hunkered down inspiring us to bring these fanciful worlds and tales to life, whether swapping hedgehog for mallet on the croquet lawn during an interactive tea party inspired by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, learning survival skills, dog-mushing and listening for the Call of the Wild in Alaska or trekking through Greece for our soon-to-launch Hercules itinerary.

Why did Black Tomato choose to launch Hercules for their latest TMOAS adaptation? Why now?

We believe that Greek mythology has a unique ability to captivate children, sparking their imaginations whilst teaching valuable life lessons around courage, perseverance and humility through its powerful storytelling—values that I hope to impart to my own daughters. Greece holds a special personal memory in my heart—I’ve shared unforgettable moments there with my girls and am thrilled to undertake this adventure in a place they love while helping other families create their own treasured memories ahead.

The trend of clients seeking out educative experiences outside of the classroom continues to bubble, and this new epic pilgrimage is designed to celebrate the many life lessons Greek mythology presents while igniting children’s curiosity for the world through the ancient hero’s journey.

If you could pick a trip or destination based on a great book, where would you go and what book?

My favorite books capture a sense of place. Pretty much all of Hemingway is utterly inspiring in the way that Hemingway takes readers into the very soul of a place, but in particular, The Sun Also Rises stands out for me. The spirit of Paris and Spain that he captures in his writing is utterly electric and true to each destination.

Why are literary-inspired experiences important to Black Tomato?

Literature is about escapism, and so is travel, and there is a compelling way to connect the two. In so much great literature spanning decades from classics to more recently, the setting—or in many cases multiple destinations—is such a powerful component that subliminally, even without realizing it, it makes you want to immerse yourself in these places and with these people from wide-ranging cultures and lifeways. For us, it’s all about planting the seeds in the minds of people who want to travel this way and bringing these experiences to life powerfully and authentically. These are important inspiration points and there’s a real joy in bringing these to life for us and sharing them with others.

What has the feedback from guests been in response to these trips?

The feedback has been extraordinary and exactly what we hoped it would be in inspiring future generations of readers and parents alike. Seeing literature stoke this passion for travel is truly meaningful for us and being able to immerse families ‘behind the pages’ has brought excitement, inspiration and thrills so these coming to fruition and delivering more than what is expected is hugely gratifying.