Whether Kilimanjaro, Antarctica or Nepal: André Lüthi, travel legend and head of the Globetrotter Group, has been driven around the world for decades by his curiosity. He is always planning new trips – and still remains true to his roots in the canton of Fribourg.
SRF News: The summer holidays are over in many places, everyone is coming back to the office and talking about their holidays. What does the travel agency look like?
André Lüthi: It’s a bit different with us. Not everyone comes back from vacation in August. Our employees are on the road for up to twelve weeks a year. We see travel less as a holiday and more as a school of life and part of our job.
Desert, mountains, eternal ice: Lüthi’s passion is travelling
So traveling is your job. Have you always known that feeling of wanderlust?
Yes, even as a little boy. Of course it wasn’t the big wide world then. For example, I was interested in what was hidden behind the forest in the village. I often took detours on my long way to school.
After your apprenticeship as a baker, you hitchhiked to London and finally to San Francisco. Was that an escape from narrow Switzerland?
No, I wouldn’t say it like that. Although I did not agree with many things in Switzerland at the time, curiosity drove me abroad. The desire to get to know new people and cultures. The longer I traveled, the more I learned to appreciate Switzerland.
You cannot forbid people to travel. This desire to explore is in us.
You repeatedly criticize the travel industry publicly. But as head of the Globetrotter Group, you are part of it. That bites you.
You cannot forbid people to travel. This desire to explore is in us. But the way people travel now, and especially before the pandemic, is not good. We are trying to counter this trend.
Where is the problem?
You can fly to any European city for pocket money. Paris this weekend, London next. Travel has no real value anymore.
How are you trying to counteract this?
What we can do as a travel company is take responsibility. We try to create a sustainable travel culture. People should rather experience a country intensively for three weeks than fly to an all-inclusive holiday for a week three times a year.
But you don’t live by example, your Instagram profile is full of exotic travel pictures, you recently traveled to Svalbard and Africa.
I led a tour group in Spitsbergen. And as I said: I don’t want people to stop traveling. It’s things like the weekend trips to London or Barcelona that people should be more concerned about.
To you again. You are 63 years old and your retirement is approaching. Will you be going on a world tour when you retire or have you satisfied your wanderlust?
I’m not thinking about retirement. I probably won’t pull the plug when I’m 65. But I will structure my work differently. Give more lectures, inspire people and thus make my contribution to international understanding.
And you yourself. Where are you still drawn to?
There are still places that appeal to me, Russia for example. Even if it’s tricky at the moment. I would also like to visit places that I have traveled to a long time ago. I want to see how they have changed. Even at the risk of being disappointed because they are no longer the way I remember them.
What about your home country, the canton of Fribourg? Can you still be found there?
Definitely. I’ve lived in Bern for a long time. My mother still lives in Schmitten FR. I even go to the woods where I played cowboy when I was a boy. I’m quite sentimental about that, I really like being at home.
The conversation was conducted by Thomas Pressmann.