NEWS TRAVEL WEEKLY BUSINESS CONTINUED FROM THE BACK
30% of total sales,” he said. “We saw the acquisition of Travelsphere and Just You as a great opportunity to move into a new area of the business, which is more traditional. “We started defining
ourselves as a small-group adventure company, but I was adamant that we transcended that. We should not be defining ourselves by group size or the type of vehicles we use. “[The acquisition] is a great opportunity to see if our philosophy will work with other brands and see if we can be as disruptive in that space as we have been in our own.” Poon Tip admitted there had
been challenges in integrating the new brands, but said the change of atmosphere in the companies’ Market Harborough office was like “night and day”. “The businesses had been
in trouble for some time, with the cruise brands holding back the tour operations,” he said. “The team has been through a year or two years of constant downsizing and the company had been acquired and chopped and changed. “We recognised there was a
need for some immediate TLC and in some ways it was like getting an abused pet – you have to give it a lot of love and also prove you are there for the right reasons.” He added: “There was still a
need to downsize and there was a lot of upheaval, but the whole tone of the office is great under the new leadership. We still have a lot of work to do, but it’s a really positive place to be.” Referring to plans to revive the heritage Page & Moy and Swan Hellenic brands, he said: “We have done some market research and the response for Page & Moy in particular is off the charts. It’s our intention to bring them back, and we are now analysing what form they will take.”
Travel Weekly Business Breakfast: G Adventures boss Bruce Poon
G Adventures ethos based on ‘sustained happiness’
Companies should empower staff to engage freely with customers and embrace social media as a communication tool, according to Poon Tip.
He said the creation of an identifiable company culture was critical to success, with customers increasingly drawn to brands with which they can connect. “Your people are your greatest
evangelists and you empower that by not restricting how they engage with their customers,” he said. “We introduced social media
breaks for our people to talk about our company culture and ethos – if you are selling services then you are selling an idea and a philosophy.” He added: “In the future, people
will buy things from other people and not from brands. It’s no longer one-way communication through commercials – people think of a culture connected to a brand and that has changed in the past 10 years. “When two companies have a
similar product then the one who is more social will always win. “Just look at the challenges
posed to Nike by Under Armour,
LINE-UP: Lucy Huxley (left), Travel Weekly, and Bruce Poon TIp with sponsors Deepak Joshi, Nepal Tourism Board, and Lucia Rowe, A-Rosa
“In the future, people will buy things from other people and not from brands”
which has entered the same space, but with a completely different approach to its brand.” Poon Tip said the G Adventures ethos was built around a concept
of “sustained happiness” created by delivering in four areas: the ability to grow, the ability to be connected, the freedom to make decisions and being part of something greater than yourself. He added: “This approach
allows us to recruit and retain the best people, and it is also passed on to our customers who can expect to be part of that culture when they travel with us.”
Poon Tip says agents are ‘core part of our business’ He added: “If someone wants
G Adventures will continue to increase its investment in the travel trade, which remains the “core of its business”. Poon Tip said: “I’m a real
believer in the traditional travel professional, and we have ramped up our support in the past five years, which has contributed to some fantastic growth.
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travelweekly.co.uk 24 May 2018
“We need our partners to prepare people properly for their trip”
“Our industry has become
very commoditised, but we sell quite a complicated product and need our partners to prepare people properly for their trip.”
to go to Nepal, they need an expert to talk them through it, which is why they [agents] are core to our business. “We are preferred suppliers
for almost every travel agent in the world, and I am very proud that we are the current holders of trade-voted awards in all our key markets.”
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