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Geoff Manchester and his friend Darrell Wade thought there was an untapped niche in the travel industry. Their company, Intrepid Travel, now caters to over 100,000 travellers a year
In 1989 Geoff Manchester and Darrell Wade thought there could be more to organised travel. They were disillusioned with overpriced, overly-regimented group tours, and believed travellers should be experiencing a more realistic version of the countries they were visiting.
They started Intrepid Travel with the vision of offering sustainable adventures to locations which were less well-known in mainstream travel circles.
Mr Manchester, the company’s managing director says that it was about offering travellers a more authentic experience and allowing them to see “a country as it really is, warts and all”.
He says an essential component of Intrepid is “not isolating travellers from the reality of how people live in that country.”
Reality it seems, is incredibly popular.
The company has grown from a revenue base of zero, and now turns over $120 million. It has nearly 1,000 staff and caters to approximately 100,000 travellers a year.
Intrepid also has locally based companies, or joint ventures in 22 countries and offers more than 800 different tours across Europe, Asia, Africa, The Americas, The Middle East, Australasia and Antarctica.
The growth has not gone unnoticed. The company topped the BRW Fastest Growing Companies List in 1996, and featured in the top five again in 1998, 1999 and 2001.
“We have had a very fast rate of growth,” says Mr Manchester. “We’re a bit too big now to continue growing at that rate.”
He says that despite the travel industry’s propensity to grow and contract based on world events and trends, Intrepid Travel has remained largely steady and consistent.
Measuring success
Mr Manchester however, doesn’t just measure success by growth. Customer and staff satisfaction are also key benchmarks.
“Our number one measure of success is our customer feedback. We have a system whereby our travellers can go online and give feedback after their trip.
“We tend to get feedback from 50 per cent of our customers and our feedback average is a rating of 4.72 out of five, which we feel is very, very high.”
With such high satisfaction ratings from a quality percentage of customers, Mr Manchester says the company has a high level of repeat business.
“First time travellers don’t necessarily know about what it is that we do. But when they’ve travelled with us, they learn about it and want to come back again.”
Despite the importance of returning customers however, Mr Manchester says new customers are essential for any successful business.
“For the company to continue growing, you’ve got to be bringing in new business all the time.”
The company’s other measure of success is staff engagement and happiness.
“We regularly measure how our staff feels about working for the company, their roles and everything that comes with working here.”
Unusual offering
A large part of why the company has found such success, is their product offering.
Mr Manchester says Intrepid Travel offers products which are in demand in the evolving tourism industry. Essentially, Intrepid is offering people what they want, when they want it.
“The market has been moving towards what we do – experiential travel – for some time now.
“We have a really big focus on our customers and what it is they want. We want to provide the services that they really need, they want and they find desirable.”
Currently, the company’s most popular destination is Vietnam – “that’s grown year on year to become the biggest.”
Travellers who use Intrepid also frequent Australia, Peru, India and Thailand.
Yet, the destination Mr Manchester would like to see grow in the future is Burma.
“We used to run trips to Burma but we stopped in about 2003 due to the political situation there,” he says. “We’ve just gone back there this year and demand is way beyond our expectations.
“It would be great to see that continue to grow over the next few years, because the people there who are involved in tourism, suffered enormously when it stopped.”
This genuine care for the people involved in all levels of the travel experience has become a key component of the company’s appeal.
Mr Manchester says it’s not a marketing ploy – and was never employed simply to attract revenue – but if it drives people to use Intrepid Travel, then everyone benefits.
“The ethical side of travel takes quite a bit of investment for us. We have people working specifically in that area. But the investment is good because people are attracted to a company that does those things – a company that doesn’t just do it for marketing purposes, a company that does it because they believe in it.
“A lot of our business is now built around the ethical way we run our company.”
Mr Manchester concedes that in some cases, travellers may be able to organise a trip more cheaply than if they were to use Intrepid – but says in many cases, it could be false economy.
“We’re offering travellers the chance to experience these countries as they really are. We are offering them the experience in a safe and secure environment, in a way which can be efficient for them.
“You might be able to do it more cheaply backpacking, but it takes you much longer to organise than it does booking a trip.”
As all the little costs and expenses build up, Mr Manchester says you may not actually end up saving money by doing it yourself.
Indeed, travelling with Intrepid can give travellers the opportunity to visit places they may not otherwise see.
The company takes tourists to Bhutan, a landlocked country in south-east Asia. Bhutan used to restrict tourist numbers, but now just requires all travellers to visit with a local licensed tour operator or international partner.
The country is one of only a few in the world which has never been conquered or occupied by another.
In 2000, Bhutan got its first television set and internet cafe. In 2004, it was the first country in the world to ban the sale of tobacco products.
Mr Manchester says locations such as Bhutan continue to grow in appeal for the modern traveller.
“There are a lot of people who have travelled extensively and are now looking for much more obscure destinations. People who have travelled a lot want something new and different.
“They like the idea of going somewhere that’s ahead of the crowd – but it’s also about learning about a country’s culture and history and experiencing a different sort of place.”
Looking forward
Mr Manchester says his plans for the future focus on developing new and interesting products in the experiential and adventure travel areas.
Intrepid will also look to expand its customer base.
“We’d like to create products which people who’ve travelled with us before will like – but also products which might attract new markets. We’d like to open up to new types of people that we don’t necessarily attract right now.”
Yet, with such exceptional growth and expansion, how does the modern day Intrepid Travel compare to Darrell and Geoff’s visions for it in the late 1980s and early 1990s?
“It is pretty well achieving our vision,” says Mr Manchester.
He says the company’s growth and profitability, combined with staff and customer satisfaction levels, closely align with his initial plans for the company.
“We also feel we’ve succeeded in terms of being a responsible business, in the sense that we ensure that what we’re doing is sustainable.
“We put a lot of effort into sustainability and that was very much a part of what we wanted our business to be – sustainability and giving back to the destinations that we make our living out of.”
