The Ventourist

Go beyond

From there, she began designing active journeys that combine cycling, local gastronomy and a carefully curated wine selection, weaving intimate itineraries where every stop is designed to gift quality time and shared happiness on the island where she grew up.

In 2024, Carlos Martínez Abad joined the project, bringing over two decades of experience in active travel and a long career at Backroads. His arrival marked a step change: the project wanted to mature, to grow in destinations and disciplines without losing the select, close-knit feel that had already made it a benchmark for curated cycle tourism in Mallorca, with an excellent reputation and satisfaction levels well above the average.

The challenge was twofold: to define strategically the brand that already worked and, at the same time, to prepare a repositioning that would be scalable to new destinations and disciplines, capable of positioning itself as a select active travel operator in Spain, speaking peer-to-peer with high-end hotels and partners.

• From the Economy perspective, we read the business potential beyond the foodie niche: source markets with high purchasing power, partnerships with upper-upscale hotels and a model that could be replicated in new territories and active disciplines.
• From Emotion, we saw the need to name what was already happening intuitively: the delicacy with which Mar and Carlos care for each guest, the way the landscape becomes an intimate setting rather than a sports theme park.
• From Environment, we defended a travel pace that is respectful towards the destination and the places their routes pass through, far from the extractive logic of mass tourism.
• And above all, we safeguarded Balance between business, experience and place, avoiding any decision that might grow one of these dimensions at the expense of damaging the others.

The strategic reading was clear: the brand had to go beyond the “active trip” label and become a promise of quality and connection. Quality in the pace of the journey, in the choice of hotels, routes and restaurants; connection in the bonds that are created and in the quiet imprint that each experience leaves behind.

What mattered was no longer the line drawn on the map, but how you travel it: a blend of local knowledge, native culture and outdoor spirit that is sensitive to the surroundings and to time shared together. From this came the core idea Go beyond, turned into tagline and strategic compass: going beyond the trip, beyond the map and beyond the activity itself, inviting each traveller to write their own story from a more authentic and refined point of view.

Changing from Foodie Cycling to The Ventourist was, above all, a business decision. The new name opens the project to other disciplines — hiking, running, water sports and new forms of movement — and to future expansion models, even franchise-based if needed.

It gives a name and shape to something Mar and Carlos were already doing: designing active journeys that go a little beyond the route, where the destination passes through you and leaves you slightly different from the person you were when you started. It is also a brand prepared to generate community, to hook and retain, and to evolve into a true love brand where it is not only about travelling, but about making the journey your own.

It is a voice that guides without imposing, that knows the secrets of each destination and shares them naturally, like a good host who connects traveller, place and local community. From this perspective emerges one of the phrases that underpins the narrative: Your ride, your story.

On the visual side, we worked with the idea of a “second skin” that blends with the landscape. The identity speaks of movement from a place of calm: that instant when time seems to pause and allows for a deep connection with your surroundings and with those who travel with you. In contrast to the visual noise typically associated with sport, we chose a serene, timeless aesthetic, where the landscape takes centre stage and the human figure is minimised.

• From an Economic perspective, the new positioning and name give them a clearer story to justify higher-value itineraries, negotiate better-aligned collaborations and open new destinations and disciplines without diluting the proposal. The growth in revenue, the move towards larger groups and the high share of international guests show that the brand now captures better the real value of what Mar and Carlos offer.
• On the Emotional level, the verbal and visual identity align what happens before, during and after the trip: guests recognise the same tone on the website, in operational communication and in post-trip follow-up. This coherence helps explain why all individual guests are repeat travellers and why groups choose to come back, strengthening satisfaction, recommendation and loyalty.
• In terms of Environment, the brand framework helps them be more intentional when choosing local partners, group sizes and travel pace, favouring family-run hotels, local restaurants and routes that contribute to the destination rather than exhausting it. The move towards better-curated, slightly larger groups allows them to maximise impact for guests while keeping a respectful footprint in the places they travel through.
• And above all, it reinforces Balance as a decision-making principle: Mar and Carlos now have a shared system to evaluate new ideas, destinations or collaborations, accepting only those that respect both the level of care their travellers expect and the character of the places they move through. At the same time, this brand system becomes a clear tool to scale both the business model and the internal culture, aligning team, processes and ways of working around a shared way of understanding travel.

For Mandarina, this project confirms our way of understanding hard tourism branding: when a brand is built from the business model, the people and the place, it stops being just a logo and becomes a decision-making system that opens up commercial future without renouncing the sensitivity that gave birth to it.