Jeremy Jauncey loves Filipinos & a Filipina

Actually, she’s half-Filipina, and he won her over after a visit to the Philippines with a box of ube polvoron.

Latest Bench hottie and social media’s most followed globetrotter Jeremy Jauncey told members of the press at a lunch hosted by Ben Chan at the Bench Tower in Taguig that he met his girlfriend Natalia Lalonde through social media but only saw her in person after a trip to the Philippines. Via e-mail, she had given Jeremy a deep bucket list to do while he was in the Philippines, where he was shooting a  campaign for the Department of Tourism. And when he returned from the land of her forebears, he brought her ube polvoron, which she once said she liked in a post on Instagram.

To make the long story short, between Jeremy and the polvoron, Natalia was charmed. And so was Jeremy. He was now smitten with Filipinos, and eventually, a Filipina.

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At 32, Jeremy is the founder and CEO of Beautiful Destinations (BD) — the award-winning creative agency behind the world’s largest travel community on social media. With over 13 million followers from across 180 countries, BD continues to celebrate the different people, places and cultures of the world. To date, the BD Instagram alone has an impressive 8.7 million following, showing how Jauncey has managed to build what some might consider his own social media empire. With monikers such as “The hottest male traveler on the planet” (The Daily Mail) and “Instagram’s hottest globetrotter” (The New York Post), Jauncey is quite the jetsetter, encouraging everyone to get out there and to go on their next great adventure.

He was quite taken by Filipinos, whom he describes as “warm and cuddly.” On his first day in the Philippines, two of them went to great depths to make him comfortable.

On a trip to Kawasan Falls outside Cebu City, Jeremy lost his shoes during a hike down the river.

“It’s a beautiful waterfall, all the way down is a series of rivers. You wear a swimming vest and you swim down the rivers. The funny thing is I lost my shoes, my shoes went off down the river and I was walking on bare feet. And there were these two little boys, probably this high, about five years old who came up to me and pulled my shorts and pointed at the river and then pointed at my feet, and I was, ‘Yeah, I’ve lost my shoes.’ They jumped back in the river and got my shoes back to me.”

That solicitousness, even to a stranger, went down the depths of Jeremy’s well-traveled heart. As founder and CEO of Beautiful Destinations, Jeremy has seen the world. But he remembers most  the smiles that light up the destinations.

“That’s what Filipino tourism actually really means. That was an experience for me in the culture of people. We went to El Nido in Palawan, everyone smiles, when you’ve seen the place and you’ve been there — that was incredibly beautiful but when you’ve seen the reactions of people when you talk about these places, that’s what Beautiful Destinations is here for.”

At a time when people are excited to hit the road or to hop on a plane to have their own unforgettable summer, this team-up between Jeremy Jauncey and Bench is a much-needed reminder that if there was ever a good time to discover our own country’s hot spots, then this would be it. In line with Bench’s #LoveLocal advocacy, Jauncey is working with the brand to encourage Filipinos to love local destinations, and to rediscover the beauty that’s been around us all along.

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A former rugby player who still exercises every day (and how!), Jeremy started his online jaunt around the world in 2004.

“So the original idea was, back in 2004, we were recreating a place where people would come to on social media that celebrates all the beautiful things that are happening in the world. People can come to one place to find a story about travel. So back then, social media was so ignored. So we thought, could we bring these (destinations) to the people? Could we share these photographs to celebrate the world? So that’s how it started”

From being a social media account, Beautiful Destinations has become a brand.

Because Jeremy celebrates the Philippines in his work, and presumably, in his life now that he has met his girlfriend’s Filipino relatives, Ben Chan knew intuitively he was a role model for Bench’s #Lovelocal campaign.

How does it feel to be signed up as Bench’s endorser?

“It was very humbling. It really is. I think I’m very grateful, I think it’s the first big campaign that I’ve done in Asia. Everyone I met in Bench is really with the same set of values. This is very, very personal. Family is so important to me, in Beautiful Destinations we work for a cause as family. So much of what I believe is the beauty of the world, celebrating with local people, being positive, joining and exploring the world with each other.”

Jeremy’s favorite places in the world are those that give him the same rush in person as they gave him in pictures.

“So for me, the most impactful places that I value the most are the ones where I’ve seen in an amazing image of that inspire me and take me a million miles away, and then when I go see it for the first time it gives me that same rush.”

He’s had that rush in Santorini in Greece, in Cape Town in South Africa, in New York and London, where he grew up. His father is from Scotland, and his mother, from Colombia. He has a younger brother, who works in Beautiful Destinations with him.

Though he’s a certified globetrotter, there are still places he hasn’t been to like Chile, Peru and Argentina.

This is one guy who has certainly gone places, without his success going to his head.

Travel tips from Jeremy

1. First one, I think you have to go out into the world expecting and understanding that inherently people are good. Inherently travel is good. And it doesn’t matter where you land, people will always have your best interests at heart if you put that out — I think that’s the most positive thing, especially today when the media is just consistently telling us stories, about isolation and that have us bringing up walls and not celebrating each other’s differences.

2. I’d say the second is being open-minded. And not planning. Most of my life when I travel, it’s focused on an itinerary. But I’ve found that the best experiences come when I deviate.

3. Maybe the third thing would relate to the idea of paying it forward. I’ve always found that if you go to a place, to an environment, and you give something of yourself to that place, whether it’s helping other people out or just spending time doing things you wouldn’t normally do, the universe generally finds a way to give it back to you. You become rich with experiences.

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