When you travel to destinations and communities that genuinely want — and need — tourism, you can feel it.
Cruising into the community of Kampong Phluk — a “floating” village in Cambodia built mostly on stilts to accommodate for the fluctuating water levels of Tonle Sap lake — our tour boat passed countless smiling faces, wildly waving children and warm calls of welcome. At the end of the route, as we paused to take in the beauty of the lake, a small boat brimming with snacks and beverages pulled alongside ours, the man inside offering all manner of refreshments for purchase.
In destinations like Kampong Phluk, tourism represents a way for the village to maintain its unique way of life, improve its infrastructure and support its residents — shaping individuals and the community for the better, while also offering a more meaningful type of travel for visitors.
This experience encapsulated the basic premise that drives G Adventures’ annual GX event. Now in its fourth year, GX brings together travelers and industry professionals for destination discovery, authentic connections with locals and immersive opportunities that leave a positive impact on communities and visitors alike. It all culminates in the GX World Community Tourism Summit (held on World Tourism Day), highlighting the work of G Adventures, raising funds for its nonprofit, Planeterra, and focusing on how tourism can act as a force for good.
Here’s a closer look at this year’s GX Cambodia trip, and how travel advisors can get involved for 2027.
How GX Works
This year, from Sept. 23-28, roughly 600 attendees from around the world joined GX Cambodia across nine “tracks.” These groups spanned media and content creators, travel advisors, supplier partners, G Adventures and Planeterra staff, industry leaders and travelers. Tracks followed the same itinerary for the most part — with staggered timings and some differences in hotels, restaurants and smaller stops to keep from overwhelming local partners — before everyone came together at the end of the trip for the summit.
G Adventures founder Bruce Poon Tip at the GX Cambodia World Community Tourism Summit
Credit: 2026 G Adventures/Lucas Kschischang“Coming out of COVID-19, we took all these events that we ran all over the world and brought them together in this new format,” explained Bruce Poon Tip, founder of G Adventures, of the inspiration behind GX. “With the first one, we didn’t even know if it was going to work. Nine tracks and our entire community — we were defining the model on the fly.”
The template proved viable, and the event now draws impressive bids from prospective hosts, as well as hundreds of participants from all across the industry and the globe.
Travel advisors, for one, can pay to join the itinerary, or win their way through a G Adventures incentive. Through the Change Makers program (which last ran from November 2025 through May 2026), for example, 10 of the highest-booking U.S. agents from their regions earned a spot in Cambodia, with five more “wildcard” entries awarded, as well.
The Road to Cambodia
After previous years spent in Peru, India and Jordan, the 2026 installation of GX made its way to Cambodia — but not without a few bumps along the way.
After announcing Morocco as the host for this year’s event, the team was a few months into the planning process when inventory limitations and other factors made it clear that they were going to have to make a tough decision.
“It was high season there and hard to get hotel space,” Poon Tip said. “We were going to a place where tourism was booming. It didn’t feel right.”
Having seen the impressive impact that the event can have on bookings — Poon Tip says the company’s sales to Jordan spiked 134% after last year’s GX — the team knew it wanted to bring that momentum to a destination more in need.
Welcoming locals greeted the GX group in Kampong Phluk.
Credit: 2026 G Adventures/Lucas Kschischang“Cambodia’s tourism is down right now,” Poon Tip said. “And when we decided we were going to pivot, we had a discussion about how it would be a great place for GX. So, even though they never came to us [about hosting], we went to them. It was the first time ever, because we accept bids every year for GX. But it was the right decision.”
Poon Tip says that once the G team got Cambodian officials onboard, the destination “came to the table with so much in kind,” waiving visa and site-admission fees for hundreds of attendees, offering hotel discounts and even providing police escorts as a caravan of buses made its way from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap.
Community-First Experiences
A primary focus of GX is to highlight Planeterra Community Partners, all of which represent communities, social enterprises and tourism initiatives that create opportunities for economic advancement, skill-learning, cultural preservation and entrepreneurship.
GX Cambodia kicked off in Phnom Penh, where participants visited the Silk Island Community Centre to see silk-weaving in action and meet the artisans keeping the tradition alive. The center supports some 330 women, most of whom learned their skills from their mothers and will pass that knowledge along to the next generation.
Weavers showed off their silk-making skills at the Silk Island Community Centre.
Credit: 2026 G Adventures/Lucas KschischangOther tour stops in the city included the Royal Palace complex and the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, a memorial site housed in a former interrogation and detention center of the destructive Khmer Rouge regime.
From there, outfitted with government-stamped “delegate” badges and led by an all-day police escort, our group made its way toward Siem Reap.
A key stop along the journey was the ancient temple complex of Sambor Prei Kuk, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that significantly pre-dates Angkor Wat yet receives far fewer visitors. Hidden within the jungle, the site includes a slew of highly photogenic stone structures draped in bright-green moss and cascading tree roots, as the earth slowly reclaims the ruins. It’s a spot guaranteed to make any visitor feel like they are channeling their inner Indiana Jones or Lara Croft. Even better, the complex supports Sambor Prei Kuk Community-Based Tourism, a collective of seven villages that offer homestays, meals, transportation, guide services and crafts.
GX Cambodia attendees visited Sambor Prei Kuk, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that significantly pre-dates Angkor Wat.
Credit: 2026 Chan Roeurt HanOver the following days in Siem Reap, we visited Angkor Wat — transported by Tuk Tuk Lady, a pioneering operation that creates job opportunities for female tuk tuk drivers — floated our way through Kampong Phluk and visited Spoons, a restaurant that trains young people to work in the hospitality and food-service industries.
A noteworthy highlight for the media track: While visiting Angkor Wat, our group was joined by Bradley Gordon, an American lawyer and legal advisor to Cambodia’s Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, who shared fascinating insights on his work helping to recover Cambodia’s looted artifacts. In good news for travelers, Gordon will join groups on G Adventures’ National Geographic Signature Cambodia itineraries, starting in January 2027.
No visit to Siem Reap is complete without a stop at Angkor Wat.
Credit: 2026 G Adventures/Lucas KschischangNews From the Summit — and 2027’s GX Location
On our final day, all GX attendees gathered for the World Community Tourism Summit, listening to thought-provoking sessions led by industry leaders, as well as updates from the G Adventures and Planeterra teams.
Among the news announced at the summit was Planeterra’s new Community Positive Framework, an initiative that will gather community input meant to better define, measure and improve tourism’s local impacts — based on the perspectives of those actually experiencing them.
G Adventures also previewed Bazaar, a new digital platform launching in the spring of 2027 that will serve as a hub for “micro-community travel.” The platform will provide a space for small, highly engaged communities to connect around shared passions or identities and, ultimately, host or join group trips.
The summit culminated in the highly anticipated announcement of next year’s GX location: Brazil.
“Two weeks before this GX, we still hadn’t decided on next year,” Poon Tip said. “But a region in Brazil put in a last-minute bid to contribute, because they wanted it [to be there] so badly. So, we’re pretty excited.”
Looking ahead, Poon Tip says the priority is to build on the existing momentum of GX, and the good that it can do for destinations.
“I’m hoping that, in the future, we can show our ability to build projects that we leave behind [after the event],” Poon Tip said. “We will continue to grow GX. We’ll continue to support community tourism where it’s needed.”
