S2E4: The Contiki Journey - Connecting with New Generations in Global Travel
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Ready to gain valuable perspectives on Contiki’s adaption to new generations, inclusive marketing, shifts in consumer behaviour (including sustainability) and the transformative power of travel for young people? Well let us introduce you to Natasha Lawrence, the esteemed Commercial and Product Director at Contiki, for an engaging discussion on her fascinating career journey and unique perspectives on the resilience of the travel industry. Prepare to explore the core of Natasha's start in hospitality and her admiration for Red Carnation Hotels, understand the nuances of how Contiki and the Travel Corporation navigated the challenges of the pandemic through innovative strategies.
Natasha shares her journey into the travel industry, highlighting her formative experiences in hospitality and her deep admiration for Red Carnation Hotels and its CEO, Jonathan Raggett. Her passion for travel and new opportunities ultimately led her to Contiki. She discusses the innovative strategies employed by the Travel Corporation and Contiki to remain competitive and relevant throughout the pandemic's challenges. Natasha reveals how Contiki has evolved to meet the changing demands of new generations, emphasizing the importance of inclusive marketing strategies targeting diverse audiences, including the LGBTQ+ community. The conversation also covers significant shifts in consumer behavior, including the increasing influence of sustainability initiatives on travel choices, using the inspiring example of a unique initiative empowering women to become gondoliers in Venice. Furthermore, they explore the transformative impact of technology on customer relationships and the broader industry landscape, concluding with a discussion on the profound role of travel in the personal growth and development of young people.
Curious to explore the evolving landscape of youth travel and gain insights from a dynamic leader at Contiki?
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Connect with Our Guest: www.contiki.com
Speaker 1: 0:16
Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Travel Trends. I'm Dan Christian and today I have the great pleasure of introducing you to an outstanding rising star in the travel industry, someone I highly respect and admire and had the privilege to work with for a number of years. Her name is Natasha Lawrence and she is the commercial director and product director at Kentucky. She's based in London and she's taken the time to speak to us today. Welcome, natasha, great to have you with us.
Speaker 2: 0:41
Hi, dan, so great to join you today.
Speaker 1: 0:44
How is life in London this summer? You've got a nice summer day. It was a rainy day. How are things there in London?
Speaker 2: 0:50
Intimidant, as is normally the way. So yeah, we've had moments of greatness already this summer and then pouring rain, so we're just getting ready for another great British summer.
Speaker 1: 1:00
Absolutely, and you guys just had your big TTC 103 celebrations last week, as I understand and look like it was a terrific celebration.
Speaker 2: 1:07
Yeah, we just had 103 years of the travel corporations, so we had around 400 of our colleagues join us in London and three days together, a day of volunteering together, a day of conferencing and then a phenomenal gala dinner at the end. So, after sort of probably two and a half years of teams conversations with a lot of these people, there was lots of hugging and connecting and talking about normal things and normal life, rather than those digital calls we've all got used to.
Speaker 1: 1:38
Yeah, that's wonderful, look terrific, and I know how much we were looking forward to TTC 100 and, for all the reasons that got pushed back and delayed, so it was wonderful to see that it finally went ahead and everyone got to be together and obviously you being a key part of that, because your background is interesting, because I know most people, many people, were staying at Red Carnation hotels.
Speaker 1: 1:54
For those people listening to this may not be familiar with it, but Jonathan Raghett is actually going to be one of our guests as well, someone you've worked with, because your background is quite interesting. And I want to start there because you actually started in hospitality and, as you know, with this podcast, I'm really focused on being able to share travel stories and outstanding colleagues and individuals in the travel space that are making a difference. And you are with sustainability, of course, and you've obviously had a huge impact on Contiki, the product development of that brand, the marketing and the positioning, and so I want to talk about all of those things, but I'd love to start with your background. So how did you get into hospitality and what drew you into the travel industry in the first place?
Speaker 2: 2:31
Yeah, I think it's probably a story similar to many people where they end up in their early 20s not entirely sure what they want to do with maybe a degree or college degree or university degree. So I'd studied English literature and language at university and I was thinking to go.
Speaker 2: 2:49
The options for me at that stage were a lot of my fellow students were going into law or teaching or something like that, and I kind of had a moment where I took a long look back at my very short career to date and realised what I'd really loved, and everything I'd loved up into the age of 21, 22, had been hospitality.
Speaker 2: 3:09
I'd spent my summers, my university summers, my after schools, in bars, restaurants and hotels working and I just loved the buzz of it.
Speaker 2: 3:19
I loved the energy, I loved the teamwork, I loved the customer service, I loved the learning about the food, the beverage, the different ingredients and for me, I suddenly had a moment where I thought I may have gone away and studied, but actually I think that's what I want to do. So I went through a process where I started applying for all of the graduate schemes with all the big hotel brands. So I went to IHG to hire and I stumbled across a company called Red Carnation Hotels and applied for them all and at the end of those recruitment sessions it was far and above and beyond Red Carnation had impressed me the most with the recruitment process. The workshops that we'd done, the time that they'd taken really to talk to us about the brand and what it meant and what they stood behind, and it all just had a phenomenal impression on me. So when the job offer came through. That was where I wanted to go and that was my first proper job, as we say, and Jonathan Raggett was my first proper manager.
Speaker 1: 4:26
It's fascinating and it's amazing when we look back at our careers and you're still like and myself to. It looks like we're still in full flight with our careers, but still, when you look back and you trace it, you can see the people that you've met along the way and the impact they've had on your life and your journey. So, just for a moment, jonathan he obviously is an outstanding industry colleague as well and we'll ask him his questions and people who, depending on your listing this, you may be able to go right away and listen to that episode. But what was it like working with Jonathan in those early days? And because one of the things that I was talking about was in your 20s and 30s, it's actually the best time in your life to find a great boss and learn as much from them. And is that essentially what happened when you were working with Jonathan?
Speaker 2: 5:08
Yeah, I mean, I think it definitely stays with you in your 21 and the managing director comes to welcome you for the graduate recruitment day. That doesn't happen at IHG or Hyatt, put it that way, and so having that level of seniority in your day to day is has a lasting impression and it wears off on you in terms of the kind of manager you want to be in, the kind of boss that you want to be, and how involved you want to be with your team and the encouragement that you want to give them and the amount that you want to know about their lives and their ambitions and who they want to be and develop as. So I think it definitely, and that's the travel corporation through and through right. So that management style in the, in the culture that they have here, was something that I wanted to replicate as I grew and as I went through my 20s and hopefully something that I've built, continue to build upon, sort of you know, 15 years later.
Speaker 1: 6:05
Absolutely. That's great what I was preparing for our conversation today and looking your background. Obviously we know each other really well, we've worked together for many years, but we're always learning new things about people and I didn't realize the ERB background also included a core and Hyatt and even the concept of owner side asset managers, which I thought was an interesting way to phrase some of the organizations that you've worked with in those early days that are much more corporate in their approach. So obviously what stood out to you was the warm hospitality and much more close involvement of the managers in the business. So I thought, on that note, it might be worth transitioning so we can always come back to Red Carnation. But you then made a transition into tours. Tell me a bit about that, because how did that come about? What brought about that interest and that next opportunity, which is essentially how you ended up at Kintiki today?
Speaker 2: 6:57
Yeah, so I've done sort of, as you mentioned, 10 years in the hotel business, loved it Fast paced, it's competitive, it's data driven, it's trend driven and I spent some time working at both ends of the spectrum.
Speaker 2: 7:16
I'd worked in luxury brands as well as budget and mid-market, so I'd had a really good sort of, I guess, 10 years basis in the hotel business and for me, it was I wanted to kind of open my world up a little bit more to the travel industry in the some of its fuller parts, I guess, and I'd understood about tour operating and touring a little bit, but the opportunity to work with Kintiki and really design the product more fully and design the experience more fully, I think that appealed to my like, that sense at the beginning of my career where I really wanted to make a difference on the traveler or a difference on the customer and you know you're not just saying right, you're welcome. This is a hotel as a commodity, right, and a tour is an experience. And it was that idea that I could play a fuller part in planning and designing and curating that, that traveler experience. I thought let's go, let's move in 2018. So I jumped from the hotel business over to tour operating.
Speaker 1: 8:20
And Kintiki. What a terrific brand to be a part of. I think most people are familiar with who Kintiki is, but for those people that might be listening to that, they're the uninitiated. So you don't live in Australia, you don't live in, and many Americans still. But maybe if you just give a brief overview of Kintiki for anyone listening to this that aren't familiar with the brand and the product experience of Kintiki, yeah, and to jump into touring and into Kintiki was obviously the icing on the cake, because Kintiki is the world's leader in youth travel.
Speaker 2: 8:50
So we put together group experiences, which really calls social travel for young people all over the world. So we operate in six continents. We've been operating since 1962 and the concept is we bring young people together to experience the world and travel, so they could be from Australia, from New Zealand, from the UK, from America, from Canada, from all over. They come together with that single desire to often make their first big trip solo away from home. Come with. You know the nerves, the anxiousness of having to take that first transcontinental flight solo, joining a group of people, and all of that development. From then they get into this group and then we we get deliver the Kintiki experience, which is often and don't want to sort of use hackneyed phrases but often a life-changing experience for a lot of people at that pivotal point in their life. So that's what we offer.
Speaker 1: 9:53
That's terrific, natasha. I think it's important for everyone to understand that Kintiki has been around since 1962 and one of the quiz questions I'm going to ask you later is about the founder of Kintiki and, as you know, I had the privilege not only to work with the brand, but in two different occasions I also had the very kind opportunity to potentially run that brand, and I never saw myself in that role, but I'm was a big advocate for Kintiki and it's a talent institution. I mean the people that have gone through that brand and have graduated, if you will, to other brands within the travel corporation. That is certainly a great feeder brand of top talent and there are some terrific talent in the brand. Obviously you're one example Adam Armstrong, the the CEO, as well, and there's many great mentors in that brand, dave Hosking being a terrific example for me and for you, who led the brand for many years and has been around since the very early days. So, yeah, let's talk a little bit about the evolution of the brand then, especially in your time, because the part that stands out for me and one of the one.
Speaker 1: 10:51
There was many reasons I wanted to speak to you and have you on the podcast, but one of the reasons that I did was that during the pandemic, when we were spending a lot of time rethinking the business based on how travel was going to come back and this is still a great passion for me it was then. It is now, which is the impact that it was going to have on people's buying behavior, booking habits, and I find that endlessly fascinating and so we were doing a lot of work then to try and anticipate what the comeback would be. Of course, there was a couple of false starts just by virtue of restrictions being lifted and you know, as you just pointed it out, it really took two and a half years. And now we're back and businesses as good as it's ever been, or better. But a lot of the work that we were doing then was about trying to evolve the brand, improve technology and really make sure that, when travel did come back, that the TTC brands were well positioned, because market share was definitely going to be up for grabs, with brand loyalty being reduced, especially in airlines, as an example.
Speaker 1: 11:48
But talk through some of the things that you had worked on and I'll just highlight one example, but you can obviously speak better to this than me but when we formed an elite team of top talent throughout the travel corporation. You were obviously core to that and really stood out head and shoulders when you contributed and came to any of those discussions, prepared and raised a lot of terrific ideas that then were broadened across the group. So and one of them was around this concept of product development and bringing product to market and no longer being focused on the seasonality that we had come used to many of us being in the travel industry for a long time the brochure cycle of getting ready to create product, put it in a brochure, then it goes on the website. You were a very strong advocate for being able to release product to market and continually testing and trying new things. So I'd love if you kind of talk about some of those experiences and maybe now too, what's worked, what you've seen that has validated your approach, because I'm sure there's several examples of that.
Speaker 2: 12:48
Yeah, it's been a big journey with Kintiki. Obviously they've got a history that predates both of us by significant years and they've been running some phenomenal products across the world. But I think what happens is that the brand has to, like many, many legacy businesses, reinvent themselves for that generation that come of age. And the generation that come of age for Kintiki travelers are turning 18 every year, so that's about being having a very nimble and experimentation first mindset when it comes to then wants, their desires, their requests, their needs as young travelers. And so I think what the couple of things we did and I guess where, if I think back and diagnosed where we were, our issues back before the pandemic was that we were operating one way but probably marketing another, and our operations and our product had sort of what was a little bit felt, a little bit dated in some respects, and it hadn't evolved along the lines of the really really cool hotel hostel chains and great youth and millennial focused hotel brands coming out. Some of the dining and food offerings were potentially a little bit dated as well, and yet the marketing was really really upmarket and really really aspirational. So what we wanted to do is lift the experience on our on-trip and be more realistic about what the experience was like when booking. So we had a massive audit. We looked at all of our accommodation partners, all of our food and beverage partners. Where we were taking people out in the evening, we needed to offer a lot more choices that weren't just the classic let's take them to the pub or the bar. This generation are drinking less and less, and good for them, and we needed a lot more active and activity-based so kayaking, hiking, walking, running and we needed to integrate more of that in the product. We definitely needed to look at our accommodation partners. We work very closely and are very aligned with brands like Generator, selina, a&o Hostels, wombats these really cool hostel brands that have had have had, ahead of the pandemic had a fantastic run of things, expanded very fast, and we're a big investment arm for many asset managers around the world. So they've had a great run of things and we've just sort of spruced up and made our product forward, thinking in terms of that generation that are coming through now, which is Gen Z, but then coming up Gen A after them.
Speaker 2: 15:36
In terms of particularly the seasonality point. Yeah, I mean the tour operator model has been around probably since the grand tour of the late Victorian period, I imagine. And so we've got some history in the industry and some of it just wasn't translating to the digital consumer-facing business that we were aspiring to be. You know, we don't book so much through travel agents now. We do 70% of our business direct with our customers, and so we had to kind of flip the narrative and some of the language that we use around for example, definite departures or load factors or so all of those sort of internal jargon that we have we probably we assume that our trade partners understand it because that's their job, but the consumers definitely don't.
Speaker 2: 16:26
And one thing that we did was only put one season's worth of product on sale and think that everybody was just waiting for our Europe release or our North America release or Africa release, when actually people weren't shopping like that.
Speaker 2: 16:40
They wanted to shop and look at and research their holiday well in advance, and so we needed those dates out there for planning. And that's been a good success, because we've seen this year, you know, both extremes of the lead time curve max out. So we've got people booking four days out, which is a white knuckle ride around here, but then we've got people booking 14 months out, and so our average has actually landed around the same spot, but we've got much more intense extremities at both ends. So, and being able to capture that business for someone who's you know if they're leaving university or leaving college, they often know exactly when they want to travel and they are prepared to book. Even though you think you know people think young people fly by to see their pants that's definitely what we see. You know they're planners, they're organisers, they know what they want, they know they do their research and they're very well organised when they get into destination as well.
Speaker 1: 17:42
Well, there's so much there, Natasha, I want to actually go, sorry, no, no, please don't apologise. Quite the contrary. There's so many parts of that that you've mentioned that I want to go in different directions, but one in particular is this concept around limited edition trips, and so, as you know, the acceleration team was doing quite a bit of work with a company called Dharma last year, and we still are engaged with them, but they were focused on introducing new brands around influencers like Eric Konsna with Looking FC and Spirited Stories with Perno Ricard. So, for me, I love the concept of creation, I love the idea of creating a new brand, introducing it to the marketplace, seeing what the pickup is, and there's so many elements to that marketing positioning. But the product is obviously essential. The experience.
Speaker 1: 18:26
I think one of the things we both know that is core to the travel corporation's 103 year history is operational excellence is paramount, and I've said that on stage no shortage of a dozen times, I think over time, because it's easier to market a product when you're very confident in the delivery and you know that people are going to have a great experience staying at a red carnation hotel, traveling on a Trafalgar or an Insider contiki trip, and so, but people now, as you highlight, are changing their travel behaviour, and sometimes they're following influencers or they're wanting to travel with celebrities.
Speaker 1: 18:57
We've seen all the products that celebrities are now promoting and how successful they've been. Ryan Reynolds is obviously one of my favourite Canadian talent, and you can just see the impact of celebrity on businesses, and there's no shortage of examples. And so when you have yoga trips, you're following a yoga instructor, and again, some of those things that were really successful for Dharma. I'd love to understand how you've adapted the contiki brand, because I know you're a big advocate for not only new destinations and new experiences, but also approaching the product portfolio and coming up with ideas, and we both know sometimes they work and sometimes they don't right, but the key is to try, because when they do work, that's why contiki has been around since 1962. So maybe, if you wouldn't mind, give us a few examples of some of the limited editions, some of the concepts you've had that have now come to fruition.
Speaker 2: 19:46
Yeah, and I think the four and a half years or so that I've now been in tour operating, the one thing you realise is that we're not the tour operating sector unless they're super, super specialised and there's a lot of amazing specialist operators there but we're in mass market. We offer brilliant trips all around the world. But what I would say about our travel trends is that they take longer to absorb in a mass market operator than they do for FIT travel for individual travellers. So sometimes when I read the Megatrends report or read the Future of Travel Trends report, I sometimes think great, that is probably going to take five or six years to hit us, and we're a youth travel company. So some of the things I'm going to mention now are hardly revolutionary, but they are probably revolutionary within the setting that we operate and what we do in terms of the group or social travel.
Speaker 2: 20:41
So we've done some influencer co-marketed trips which, as you say, you know we at our core. We're an operations business. That's what we're best at. We operate to an incredibly high standard across the portfolio of brands. So when we do our influencer co-branded trips, we always have our team there, we always control all the operations, we always contract all of the components. So the one that we did recently we've done a vegan food, vegan food explorer trip which was through Eastern Europe, which was kind of to debunk the myth that all you could eat is goulash when you went out into Eastern Europe and that was a really, really successful co-brand, with us as the operator and the brand partner and then two influencers on the trip kind of talking about vegan lifestyle, veganism and travelling as a vegan traveller Really awesome experience.
Speaker 2: 21:37
And you know these are opportunities for sales, yes, but the way that we think about it also is their opportunity to reach new audiences, to bring in new sessions to the site, to reach different people that we wouldn't have reached without our own organic marketing.
Speaker 2: 21:56
So they have different metrics than just purely to fill the train or the boat or the coach or whatever we're operating in.
Speaker 2: 22:06
We also big, exciting trip that we have run this year is our Pride departure and we shot that, we shot some assets for that in Barcelona and Madrid and we're really proud because it was the first shoot that we've ever done with a totally LGBTQI plus cast and crew. So we had all talent from the community, all the videographer, everyone from the LGBT community. It was just a real celebration of kind of the different styles of travel that we can do and when we got to run the first trip, you know it was a real mixed bag of backgrounds and, yeah, sexualities and lots of people who were just travelling with a friend and wanted to be an ally. But it was just an amazing way for us to try different, to get to different audiences, because there are people looking for a specific style of trip and whilst, as you say, our core product is rock solid and been operating for a long time, we've been mad just to rest on those laurels for the next 103 years because I don't know, we've got to keep experimenting and testing out new concepts.
Speaker 1: 23:27
Absolutely. That's terrific, especially the Pride festivals. With Danny Guerrero, who I spoke to, had the privilege to speak to recently, and he runs a company called the Cultures Group and he's done a great deal of educating me on better understanding how to market to the LGBTQ community and also trying to focus on diversity and inclusion, and, although I consider myself to be quite progressive, there's so much I've learned from him and obviously a lot that I've learned from you on product and other aspects of the business as well. Now I'd love to start talking about some of the additional trends you've seen that are more broad. Clearly, you've highlighted a number of elements of how Contiki has evolved, but I'd love to hear just what you're seeing more generally, because you travel extensively and you get a chance to visit with suppliers and vendors and obviously you're staying close to the pulse of what travelers want.
Speaker 1: 24:22
You mentioned the example with hostels like generator hostels. You saw what was happening there and you clearly wanted to make sure that you brought that into the Contiki brand. So I'd love to I think one of the terms that you coined, which I'm an 80s guy, so it was back to the future and so because there was this interesting question of like the other side of the pandemic, how much has changed and how much goes back to being the same. And I can tell you from speaking to our good friends at Tor Radar. They were surprised to a certain extent when I spoke to Christian of how much went back to what people were doing before. They just hadn't done that trip. They're rushing right back to it. In other cases it's changed significantly. So I'd love to see, or hear from you rather, what you've seen has changed in consumer behavior. Are people booking longer trips or people booking bigger trips? You know bucket list has always been a theme for me and for many people, but what have you seen that, as travel comes back, are the changes in consumer behavior.
Speaker 2: 25:18
Yeah, and it's difficult to be able to say whether these are long term trends to stay or whether it's a short term anomaly, but this year is set to be a phenomenal year for the industry. I think throughout, and I think that's what I've been up from most people who I talk to they can't. They're not stressed about lack of bookings, but stress of how to operate it. That's our new, different challenge, which was very different to the challenge that we had two and a half years ago, right, so the things that we're seeing this year are longer trips for sure. I think that you know that sense that travel could all get taken away from us again is still a pervasive thought and a pervasive opinion. So people are going bigger. We're seeing, rather than people take that 10 day break, they're taking that 14 day break. Our average trip length is increased by about three or four days versus 2019.
Speaker 2: 26:20
And the other thing that's wasting this this year and talking about this summer and, in particular, the European summer, is that you know, air in and out of Europe is more expensive than it was in 2019, particularly if they're traveling in the next couple of months, and we thought that would have a detrimental impact on our sales, which was the worry when we realized that, you know, there was less capacity out there and what capacity was left was premium priced.
Speaker 2: 26:49
But a trend that we've seen is people are thinking and I get, as you say, travel a lot and I jump on our trips and I go and speak to our travelers as much as I possibly can In Amsterdam a couple of weeks ago, and the amount of them who turned around like it was so expensive to get to Europe, I just thought I might as well do two trips, and that was obviously music to our ears. So they are coming in on expensive and expensive tickets and saying, right, I've paid to be here. Now, let's make it count. And you could have that from the Americas and from the South Pacific, from the Australians and the students as well. So I think, multiple trips and longer trips this year and, yeah, those big ticket trips, I think probably that will be a 2023 phenomenon and we'll start to settle into those trends that we were working towards, pre-pandemic from next year. But you know, we've all had a tough few years, so we've got to make hay while we can, definitely.
Speaker 1: 27:50
What about destinations, since that's always been a big focus and destinations are always shifting and changing, especially with what certain cities tried to do during the pandemic to better position themselves, like Amsterdam or Venice, for the tourists to come back. So a number of places took that opportunity quite wisely, whether it be sustainability, which again, definitely something I want to talk to you about. So, because one of the great marketing campaigns I see the travel industry and its entirety in looking at how do we create more opportunity, a blue ocean? So it used to be G-Adventures versus Intrepid, and even when I was at G-Adventures I had gotten Bruce the book Blue Ocean Strategy, and the very concept of that, of course, is actually just convincing more people to travel and to consider any brand in our group rather than just thinking about it as a zero-sum game. And so Intrepid, of course, has a great marketing campaign. It's launched a great marketing campaign. The travel is back for good, and I just love that concept because obviously it's double entendre, right, it's exactly what you said it's back and it's here to stay because everyone wants to be able to, and it's back and you can travel in a positive, sustainable way.
Speaker 1: 28:53
So I would love to ask you about sustainability as a trend, because one of the things that we know it's important, but have you seen that change with consumer behavior? So some of the things that you're an advocate on? I mean, you sit on the sustainability team, so you're personally and professionally a strong advocate for that. But I'm curious to know and it's part of the struggle that I've always had with how best to market sustainability is whether or not people will choose to travel sustainably. It almost was a checkbox that people wanted to know that companies were sustainable or were responsible, but how best to position that. So I'd love to see what get a better understanding of what you're seeing from speaking to travelers today about how important that is, because my thought, of course, is that the younger generation are that much more conscientious of our planet and the impact that climate change is having and making sure they travel with companies that respect their values.
Speaker 2: 29:46
Yeah, I mean our generation are, as we always say, the ones that are going to have to clean up the mess that generations before have made. So the Kintiki travelers today are certainly more influenced by, and more likely to buy from, brands that represent their values and their societal goals and aims, and they are certainly spending a lot of time. We see it from the traffic to our website when it comes to where we talk about our sustainability strategy, et cetera. Now, I don't think it's a huge, I don't think it's top in terms of the buying consideration factors, but I think, as you say, it's something that they want to know, that we've covered up for them, and that's sort of the approach we've taken with our how we tread right strategy. So we have 11 goals that we've set out to achieve by different timeframes over the next sort of 10, 15 years, which are all laddered up into the sustainable development goals, and as a brand and as a Kintiki and as a wider business, we are all working together through product operations, marketing, to achieve those. So the Kintiki traveler is wanting to know that we've got a say on this, we've got an opinion and we've got a mission on it, that we have a stance. Then, when it gets to the on-trip experience, right, so on-trip, how do we integrate that to the actual product delivery? So, on all of our trips, I think the learning that we've had is that we try and do one make travel matter experience per trip and that is a term that we have trademarked which is a travel experience that gives back in a positive way to the communities of the destinations that we visit. So now that's pretty easy to do in certain parts of the world.
Speaker 2: 31:35
When we travel through Asia, when we travel through Africa, we can find some amazing, immersive, beautiful experiences, whether it be with wildlife or whether it be with local artisans A little bit more tricky in some of the developed places. So I mean some examples that we have, and some of my favorites are Venice. So everybody wants to do a gondola in Venice and everyone's done it and realized that sometimes, I'm afraid to say, it can be a little bit of a disappointing experience. So we work with a company who are all about teaching women to become gondolieres. So this is a company that actually, rather than go and sit on a gondola, you can learn the very basics, because it's very hard very basic skills to be a gondolier through Venice and that's just an experience that when we work with this non-for-profit because they're about bringing the next generation through and those generations from a different background we can do something a bit different.
Speaker 2: 32:39
So what a cool experience for our travelers in Venice. Just to say, like everyone goes one way, we do something a little bit different and at the same time, is giving back to a non-for-profit in the city. Those are some of the ways that we integrate it on trip in a way that it's really fun and positive, rather than sort of serious and somber, which sometimes it has to be as well. But that's probably our learnings.
Speaker 1: 33:07
Totally.
Speaker 1: 33:07
That's very cool. I'm keen to put you on the hot seat with the quiz questions in a moment, but I also wanted to make sure that we cover any other trends that you're seeing, because you are certainly one of those people in the know and at the forefront and many people listening to this are either. Many people obviously have been in the travel industry, so they'll be genuinely interested but also people who are getting into the travel industry, which is, you know, many brands have had the challenge of trying to recruit post pandemic, and so, as business comes back, there's lots of roles and a lot of people who left the industry during this time have chosen not to come back. They've gone into other industries for the out of necessity. They haven't come back.
Speaker 1: 33:42
So part of what I wanted to do with travel trends is also be able to speak to them the number of people that reach out to me for opportunities in the travel industry and try and figure out how do they get into the travel industry. So I mentioned that because of trying to make sure that you're aware of the trends, to figure out how best to position yourself, whether it's digital or now AI or and not. We have to speak about technology as such, but I just love to know if there's any other trends that you're seeing that would be worth highlighting to a wider audience.
Speaker 2: 34:09
Yeah, I mean I can put. I'll give a couple, probably from a technology perspective. First of all, is that that needs to. You know, and tour operators have probably been the slowest compared to other sector colleagues, but you know, our travelers can be booking a you know, two and a half thousand US dollar trip and still not want to speak to us in the pre departure journey. So they can go on, we can deliver them all the information they want online.
Speaker 2: 34:38
They'll then search, like what happens on a contiki in Spain, on YouTube or TikTok. They'll do all their discovery through maybe not even our own channels, but someone else's channels. They'll understand the brand, they'll understand our positioning, they'll ask their, they'll ask their online communities. They'll book the trip and still they're not spoken to us. And we have a contact center set up to service all of our inquiries that's open 24 hours a day, and so I'd say one thing we're seeing is just less interaction. Pre trip, they get on trip and they still have the same great time. But if you cannot deliver your brand digitally and if you cannot explain your proposition even you know that is a trend that's going to affect everybody, because our average consumers 21. So we, we feel everything first, as I say it's going, but that's going to be coming down the track, that that lack of customer relationship pre trip.
Speaker 1: 35:36
What about along the same lines I was just going to ask you, just because it's the likely on the same lines as social media as well, when we talk about social media before, and how quickly became Snapchat, tiktok and that, as you say, marketing to a 21 year old is substantially different than it's ever been before, because everyone lives in very much their own bubble, and so how do you break into that bubble? So, yeah, if is there anything else to highlight on that front with what you've seen, or how best to connect with younger consumers.
Speaker 2: 36:05
Yeah, I think, when it comes to social media, it's not kind of what you put out, it's how you manage your community. That I would say we live our, our strategy by, because we are not just a content output machine. You know, luckily for us, we have amazing content made for us 24 hours a day by people traveling all over the world on our trips. So really, it's about communicating in a in a one to one way wherever possible with our travelers, because they love the interaction with us online. They love, whenever we are talking about, you know, re sharing their content using UCG whenever possible, commenting on their vlogs that they spent hours making on our travel experiences on YouTube, and so I'd say we're not like a broadcast brand, we want to be a conversational brand with our audience and then we learn more about what they and vice versa. Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1: 37:01
No, another really good example. Thanks for sharing those. It's now time to put you on the Hanseat if you're ready for your rapid five question travel trivia.
Speaker 2: 37:10
Uh oh, here we go.
Speaker 1: 37:12
And this very much came from living in Australia going for pub quiz nights, which I know are popular in the UK as well, and so it was designed to have a bit of fun and our producer, zach, who's hanging out the background in the green room. He was on the first episode and he got one out of five and ever since then he listens in the background and he squirts himself, and he's done better on everyone else's than he did on his own. So we will give him another chance at some point, but I've obviously customized these for you, given your background and experience, but nevertheless, let's see how how you fare. So let's start off with one that should be fairly close to home for you the raft that sailed from South America to Polynesia in 1947 by a name Thor Hyerdale. What was the name of that floating raft?
Speaker 2: 38:04
Was it the Kintiki? By any chance.
Speaker 1: 38:06
It was indeed not spelled the same. Of course it's K-O-N-T-I-K-I. But yes, that is correct and I understand from Dave that was actually not how John Anderson named the company. But obviously some people, definitely an older generation, are familiar with that. But is there any more to that story that you know?
Speaker 2: 38:24
I don't, other than it is with the K and it's unrelated.
Speaker 1: 38:27
Yeah. So now let's transition to the founder himself, john Anderson, of course, a guy from New Zealand, he's 85 now and he wrote a book about Kintiki, about the founding of Kintiki, and I want you to tell us what the title of that book is.
Speaker 2: 38:43
Two Seats Left.
Speaker 1: 38:46
Well done. Only Two Seats Left, which I find fascinating. I think I'm good actually.
Speaker 2: 38:54
The thing is behind the. That would throw a brownie point.
Speaker 1: 38:59
Okay, can you show us a copy of it for those who Can you read it?
Speaker 2: 39:03
No, it's by my bedside table.
Speaker 1: 39:06
Okay, I do have a copy. Oh, Zach is now sending a message saying too easy. There you go, Zach. She's already at two out of five. She's already doubled your score.
Speaker 1: 39:17
The thing I find fascinating about that is that, working with TourRadar, one of the things that they wanted us to do with Kintiki and all of our all the travel corporation tour brands at the time was to be able to show how many seats were left so they could create the sense of urgency. And so they do that actually on their website today. But really that's a concept that was created by John, put up on hostels in the early 60s, and if anyone takes the time to read the book, they'll understand that there wasn't just two seats left. They actually he hadn't sold any seats. The only way he actually was able to convince people to travel was that there was only two seats left, which again is just extremely clever marketing for a scrappy startup to learn from today to get into this business that that concept stays true to this very moment, that that drives consumer behavior. So that's why I had to ask you that one.
Speaker 1: 40:08
Sorry, Zach, if you thought that one was too easy, All right, we'll move on now from Kintiki related questions, but something that might be closer to home for you, and I'm going to give you multiple choice options for these next two. So the first one is how many museums can be found in London, England? Is it 75, 100 or 170?
Speaker 2: 40:29
170.
Speaker 1: 40:30
Well done. Impressive that one. I thought maybe you'd go in the middle of the 100, but no Staggering.
Speaker 2: 40:36
Well, there's a lot of strange museums in London. How many?
Speaker 1: 40:39
have you been to?
Speaker 2: 40:41
Oh yeah, 20. But there's like a museum of childhood, there's a museum of shoes, so I was like there's got to be a lot.
Speaker 1: 40:51
Yeah, Now this is more on the top deck of sustainability. I was born in England, as you know, and I've raised in Canada, and I always found it fascinating. When I was a kid I'd look at maps and I'd always look at the population of England, population of Canada, and when I was young it was 25 million for Canada and 50 million for the UK. Canada just hit 40 million and the UK is 65. But I would look at the number of people and then the amount of land, and I always found that fascinating because in the UK there was like 10 people per square kilometer, Whereas in Canada everyone gets two kilometers, two square kilometers of land, If you were to divide it up evenly and separate everybody. But the one thing that always amazes me when I'm back in England, despite how large the population is and how relatively small the island is, is how much green space there is in the UK. And so that's my question for you is what percentage of the UK is woodland? Is it two and a half percent, 12.7% or 22%? Good question.
Speaker 2: 41:52
Dan, it's quite topical at the moment because of the debate in the UK is whether we build on this green land that's been basically preserved, but woodland 22%.
Speaker 1: 42:06
I know it's tough.
Speaker 2: 42:07
Well, there's a lot of Scotland with not much, and if you watch the latest David Attenborough Wild Isles it looks like a rural paradise. So I'm going 22%.
Speaker 1: 42:17
I'm sorry to say it's actually 12.7% Sorry about that one. I didn't mean to lead you astray, with that number being higher, like the last question, but even still, that's a significant amount of a relatively small, well-populated country that has been amazingly protected as woodland, so Zach will be pleased. He's going to be a sigh of relief. Now what are you going to say, please?
Speaker 2: 42:42
I think London's got the most amount of green space per capital city I think I've heard that fact before because they've preserved the park so well over the years of town planning and city planning.
Speaker 1: 42:51
All right. Well, I'm going to give you a chance to redeem yourself, because I'll ask you a bonus question. But I know you're an avid cycler as well, and my first cycling question and I'll throw you the bonus one is that how many days does the Tour de France last? Is it 7, 14, 21 or 28? 21. Yeah, well done. And then the last one, which is a bonus question, and I'll give you four out of five, or four and a half out of five is what year was women's cycling added to the Olympics? Was it 76?, Was it 1984? Or was it 1994?
Speaker 2: 43:25
Well, the Tour de France FEM only came back last year, so that's the women's Tour de France. So it's not very progressive as a sport, unfortunately. So I'm going to go 94, I guess.
Speaker 1: 43:35
Well close, it was 84. Slightly, but nevertheless, it just always amazes me, having been raised by a single mom, and these things always stand out to me that are just like amazing that women didn't have the opportunity until a certain point. And when we look back, it's unfortunately, in many cases only in recent times. So I thought that that was interesting. But you were an avid cycler, so I want to know where you're off to next.
Speaker 2: 44:00
Well, it's a good question because I'm off next a week, tomorrow, to the Italian Domeites, so off to do a one day event there of about 160 kilometers but about 5,000 meters of climbing. So I'm a bit nervous about that one, I have to say. It's going to hurt a bit, but it'll be fun. It'll be fun.
Speaker 1: 44:25
Oh, that sounds incredible. I'm sure you'll do just fine. Yeah, that's terrific.
Speaker 2: 44:29
As fun as 12 hours on the bike sounds, it will be fun.
Speaker 1: 44:32
Well, I think that if anything highlights your tenacity, your determination, and you can take away from that with what you bring to the team, to the brand, the business, to your friendship. So it's been great to stay connected with you, and congratulations, of course, on the birth of your son recently. Thank you, that's terrific news as well. So nothing but personal and professional success. So I think very highly of you. I really appreciate you taking the time to speak to me and I wish you every success going forward and look forward to seeing you again at some point this year. But I'd love to leave the last word to you, natasha. So any last parting thoughts for our audience or suggestions for them.
Speaker 2: 45:15
Thanks, dan. I love speaking to you and catching up with you today. It's been great to stay connected, I agree.
Speaker 2: 45:21
But I think the one thing I would leave with people after the tough, tough time of the last three years in the industry is that we've got to bring back young people on trips this summer and some of the travelers who we've carried over the last 18, 15, 18 months, let's say, were in lockdown for their SATs, a-levels, university graduations, college graduations.
Speaker 2: 45:50
So they've kind of like they had lockdown for the most pivotal points of their life and they were coming back to us on trip having we've been slightly different, taking longer to warm up, taking longer to connect with their peers, a little bit less self assured, like lacking a bit of self confidence, and just to leave it on a hopefully an uplifting if slightly cheesy point. You can see the power of travel when you see the end of those trips from the beginning, from the nervous 18, 19, 21 year olds were locked down for two years to the like, happy, confident, aspirational people, after sort of two weeks of being out there in the world, traveling independently, getting to know new people. So I think that gives me hope for the future of the business, but also for traveling in general.
Speaker 1: 46:39
That's a lovely way to end our discussion today. Thank you so much, Natasha. Good luck with your cycling trip. Thanks everyone for listening. We'll see you on the next episode. Bye for now.
