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Episode 8

Creative Strategies to Protect and Revive the Travel Industry Post-COVID

Cover Art of How Agencies Thrive podcast

About This Episode

July 22, 2020

The travel industry was hit especially hard during COVID-19 pandemic. We share insights into how to both protect and revive travel in these challenging conditions.

Mikey Sadowski | GM, Global PR & Communications, Intrepid Travel

Jason Laronde | Sales Director, StackAdapt

00:00

Transcript

Episode Introduction (00:00:00)

Our marketing was very much like that one, your last go collect stamps, you know, not, nothing’s all that and now we’re just like, hey, we’re safe. This is a safety stamp like, and then people like need it. That’s the thing. It’s about not being so rigid and, and being able to adapt, but also, as with everything in marketing, it’s not about what you want. It’s what your customers want. So by for us understanding what the customers want and being able to deliver that effectively. That’s the crux of effective marketing. So I think that’s just where everyone’s at is not. It’s not what you want to tell your customers. It’s what your customers need to hear.

How Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:35)

Curious to know what industry leading marketers are looking to achieve and the ever evolving digital landscape to how agencies Thrive podcast by StackAdapt is dedicated to helping the new breed of forward thinking savvy, lean and mean marketers win in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Time to thrive.

Vitaly (00:01:04)

Hi, everyone, my name is Vitaly Pecherskiy, co-founder of StackAdapt, and the host of How Agencies Thrive Podcast. Today we have an incredibly fun and enlightening episode with Mikey Sadowski from Intrepid Travel. What I loved about this conversation is like his deep understanding of the dynamics within the travel industry. He points out that travel is an important tool for wealth distribution, and cultural exchange. And it’s really a two way street with every person needs to ask is not only am I ready to travel, but also is the community ready to welcome me. Both Jason and Mikey are passionate travelers and passionate marketers. And I love hearing them banter, share stories of their travel and their insights on what travel and travel marketing will look like during the industry recovery and post COVID Now it’s time to welcome them.

Jason (00:01:56)

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining the StackAdapt podcast How Agencies Thrive. My name is Jason Laronde. I am a team lead account director here at StackAdapt. I’ve been in industry for about seven years variety of roles there started as programmatic analyst and work my way up to more of a sales focused role. But I’ve seen industry evolve. And I’ve never seen something like COVID-19, especially for some of the verticals I work in. So I’m very excited introduce my next guest today. Mikey Sadowski, or st kowski. Mikey is the North American Marketing Director and Head of Global PR and advocacy for Intrepid Travel. For anyone doesn’t know,Intrepid Travel is the world’s largest adventure travel company, writing sustainable small group tours in over 120 countries in all seven continents. So I’m very excited to introduce Mikey and have him on board. So thanks, Mike, for joining us.

Mike (00:02:41)

Thanks so much, Jason. It’s great to be here.

Jason (00:02:43)

Perfect. With that said, Mikey. You’ve been on target for about seven years now. You started as a marketing coordinator major way up to your current position now, how has the transition been from being the entry level position where you started to where you are today leading marketing efforts for a more strategic approach?

Mike (00:02:59)

Yeah, I mean, it’s it’s been a little bit, but an amazing journey to be honest. Yeah, just celebrated seven years back in January. I guess just I can give a little bit of insight into my kind of career path. I mean, I grew up in, in Toronto, and I studied actually at Ryerson University doing hospitality and tourism. And when I left that program, I was kind of really set on working in luxury hotels and kind of filling, fulfilling a little bit of like that Grand Budapest Hotel type dreams and became a concierge at a luxury hotel in Toronto, and I loved it like you know, as a 20, something just getting started in the industry, you know, got to kind of brush shoulders with a lot of celebrities and all these really cool things and, you know, was kind of on a very different path to becoming a hotel year. And then I actually went on a trip with intrepid travel before I started working there to Peru. And I was doing kind of as part of my academic research around sustainable tourism and community based tourism and the impact and intersection of local communities and tourism. And, you know, I just kind of fell in love with the whole concept of intrepid travel and what intrepid traveler stood for as a business. So I, you know, came back to Toronto after that trip to Peru, and I, I actually applied for the for the marketing coordinator job, and I didn’t get it. And I was like, Oh, well, you know, that’s, that’s annoying. So I kind of call back and I was like, oh, like what happened? And they were like, oh, like you didn’t have any marketing experience. And I was like, oh, like Fair enough. I guess that’s how jobs work. So I actually ended up asking to intern for the marketing coordinator. So that actually got started one level lower than that. And that was in January 2013. And you know, from there it was it was really just kind of letting my passion kind of fuel myself right. Right, you know, right for those first few years really starting to understand marketing and understanding. You know what, what our products stand for him, but because I had that kind of alignment personally, I found it really kind of, you know, really easy to put that added effort in to think really critically about or to pitch it and you know, started working up through our PR I had the opportunity to start our Instagram account, you know, had the chance to work on some of our really big first stories in the new year. or times and things like that. So, you know, it was a very kind of natural progression. And then for me it was, it was kind of at a time when we were fairly small in North America. So over the past seven years, as we’ve been growing, growing, growing to a point where as a 31 year old business up until COVID, we were growing at about, you know, 30%, year over year in North America, a lot of it is really just been, you know, finding, finding kind of ways to tell our brand story into, you know, what I saw on intrepid so many years ago, and let that passion kind of come through in our marketing and our storytelling.

Jason (00:05:30)

Well, that’s awesome. And kind of funny to think about starting as an intern for a marketing coordinator. When I started as a marketer, I would have loved work I did not want to do just a funny story overall. But let’s talk about that in trumpet. Let’s pretend you’re explaining the company as if you’re explaining to a five year old, how would you go about describing it and convinced me it’s, you know, the best way to travel?

Mike (00:05:51)

A five year old? Great, yeah. Well, I just like as you know, as a precursor, I would just, you know, intrepid travel is the world’s largest adventure travel companies, you kind of know that. And we’re also the world’s largest travel B Corporation. So you know, B corpse are businesses that kind of use their platform as a force for good some of the big C corpse like Patagonia, you may know and, and that’s a really key part of our ethos. But we’ve run kind of small group tours for an average of 10. Travelers in over 120 countries on all seven continents. And, you know, our kind of value prop is, is, is rooted in our mission to become the best travel company for the world. So we’re all about creating incredible experiences that are good for the people and good for the planet. If I were to kind of distill that down for a five year old, I would, I would probably go the route of kind of asking them like what they love most about their city or their town or wherever they live. And, you know, from them, you’d probably get, you know, thinking of a conversation with a five year old, you know, maybe their favorite ice cream shop, or their favorite playground or their favorite museum. And, and I’d kind of go back to them and said, Imagine you were in a brand new city. And what if I told you there was a way that you could find all of those places the second you got there, because you know, with Intrepid, all of our tours are led by local guide, who’s walk who’s essentially a walking talking guide book, you get to truly experience the destination, like a local, you kind of have a group of 10 friends, and it provides such a meaningful travel experience that you could never really have if you were just kind of going at it alone.

Jason (00:07:12)

That’s perfectly fine rule inside me. With that said, though, I’m kind of curious, you know, you mentioned Peru as the first experience, but have you had any more experience? And what’s would you say is the best travel experience with the company?

Mike (00:07:25)

Yeah, so it’s an amazing kind of perk for all employees that intrepid travel, we actually get a five weeks vacation and a free trip every year. So we kind of, you know, operate under the mandate that a well traveled team is actually good for business. And, you know, really making sure that we’re living and breathing those values by experiencing it. When I guess when they first kind of rolled out this program, the first kind of trip I took in terms of like our kind of like free trip employee incentive program was a 15 day trip to Mongolia. It was a three week trip kind of I was in I was in Mongolia for three weeks, it was a country that I knew pretty much nothing about. It’s one of the least densely populated countries in the world. And we were there for something called the natum Festival, which is kind of like Mongolia’s Super Bowl. So you know, it’s in this big stadium. And they they celebrate, you know, the three the three ancient sports during the gangers con Dynasty, which is wrestling, horse racing in archery. And it’s just, you know, a completely intense kind of culture, shock and experience. And it’s something so, so different to what you’d experience in North America. You know, you’d see kids on the streets, kind of riding their horses to go play basketball, they’d be on their iPhones, or riding their horses, like a, like a country that’s so rooted in their culture, but you know, still making that transition to the modern world. So, you know, for me, it was just a place that I knew so little about and was a place that was so different from home. And also a place that I feel like I could have never ever traveled to on my own. So it’s definitely an experience that kind of holds a very kind of special and unique place in my heart.

Jason (00:08:53)

That’s awesome. Yeah, I would never think to go to Mongolia is top of my list, but I just sold me on that one again.

Mike (00:09:00)

And a lot of people that’s the thing with the kind of there’s a higher barrier to you know, it’s like, right, we’re talking about places like you know, Antarctica use Becca Stan tent, like I did a cycling trip across Tanzania, like, these are places that for the average person, you’d never really think about just you know, going to air Canada’s website, booking a trip there and then just freaking out when you get there. Like there’s a very high barrier to some of these places. But with kind of like that kind of softer landing, it really lets you kind of get in and explore some really cool and untouched parts of the world.

Jason (00:09:28)

Oh, and I can imagine how that local tour guide is perfect for that because they give you that more. I hate to say the word again, but local experience that you wouldn’t get if you just looked at TripAdvisor and try to find the best tourist destination, right?

Mike (00:09:41)

Yeah, and when I like when I was in Mongolia, I saw like independent travelers that were trying to like hitchhike their way around, they didn’t speak the language. They looked miserable. I was like, wow, like not exactly jealous of that experience. So it’s Yeah, to each their own but I just think I’m it’s certainly a style of travel that lends itself so well to to a lot of people.

Jason (00:09:58)

That’s awesome. I didn’t want to kind of ask you and I think a lot of people tuning in will be curious about this and the elephant in the room is COVID-19. recording this in the middle of a pandemic, travel has been one of the many industries that got hit incredibly hard. When the lockdown started, I’m just kind of curious, what is some of the things your team has been doing with the uncertainty in the market?

Mike (00:10:19)

Yeah, I would say COVID has certainly impacted international travel in a way that we’ve never really seen before. I mean, just to even kind of paint the context of this like, and again, this is a bit of a moving target in terms of the the kind of stats and numbers behind it. But, you know, we look back at some of the major events over the past 20 years and how they’ve impacted travel, I mean, the terror attacks and a 911, which created you know, a very real kind of fear around flying mobility, global tourist era, international tourist arrivals that year were flat year over year growth. So 0%, essentially that year, during the SARS epidemic in 2003. slight decline if it goes negative 2%. Year over year, during the global economic crisis in 2009, international arrivals were down 4% year over year. And right now, in terms of what the United Nations World Tourism Organization is looking at scenario planning that the COVID 19 pandemic will likely impact international arrivals by negative 78%. So 00, negative four, and then negative 78. So that like, it’s kind of hard, like people that are throwing the cliche word around unprecedented, like, in truly every way, shape, or form, this is not even close to anything we’ve ever seen before. So yeah, that it’s kind of, there’s no getting around, and it’s had a massive impact on travel. So, you know, for us and for me, and for marketers, and people who are kind of going through this, you know, there’s there’s kind of like, you know, it’s a little bit of like a choose your own adventure, it’s like, what path do you want to take to try and rally through this right now. And for us, it was kind of, you know, there was a very real, I guess, workflow that we kind of worked through. And this kind of first thing was, I guess, to kind of focuses, so one is like, kind of looking at our customers and community. And then the second step was kind of looking at our product and purpose. So, you know, as a values led organization, for both customers, and the communities where we operate, you know, we had to make, we had a commitment to make sure that like, everyone was safe, you know, and we were taking care of them. And then from our community, like making sure that we were kind of, you know, going in and making sure that we were engaging with our travelers like, hey, we can’t travel now, but people are still missing a sense of, of that connection in the world, and people who like you know, who are used to being on a plane every three months, or even going on an amazing bucket list trip every year. So we really wanted to make sure that we had been kind of engaging with kind of our customers in that way. And then kind of as as things started to normalize, and we started kind of, you know, as normal as they could possibly bleep be, then we started thinking is like, Okay, well, how do we live our brand values and stay kind of relevant right now. And that’s when we really started looking at more of our product and purpose. So we started, you know, innovating on our products, talking about our purpose, we really kind of rallied around this value prop that, you know, travel can only rebound stronger, if it rebuilds more responsibly, and started really putting out marketing and messaging that helps kind of enable a healthier tourism industry in the future. So you know, focusing on healthy relationships within your value chain, focusing on more quality tourism versus quantity, tourism, and really kind of leading with that stance as a way for not only as marketing that we could stay kind of Top of Mind, but also really, really keep our value and brand prompt, you know, front and center. In terms of being you know, as we said before, the mission, I’m trying to be the best travel company for the world. So it’s, it’s like what the kind of the overarching thing? Well, we talk a lot about in our marketing team is like, this idea that like everything is a story. And it’s so important that when you kind of distill everything down and you create the narratives like Okay, so what’s the story you’re telling right now, and whether it’s you know, whether it’s a campaign or it’s, you know, if you’re in retail, and you’re doing like the winter line versus the summer line, wherever, all you you start at your story, and then everything else in marketing is how you tell that story. So for us, it was kind of two things. One, the first story that we were telling was with our kind of beat together campaign was, you know, how do we help combat physical distancing with online community, and we’re going to really enable kind of UGC and storytelling as a way to kind of bring people into our brand. And then the next story we were telling is travel can only rebound stronger if it rebuilds more responsibly. And with that as our value prop, how do we then do that? So we’ve started developing things around, open sourcing our animal welfare policy, open sourcing our climate data, doing webinars that kind of speak to a healthier and more sustainable travel industry. So we’ve kind of just really, really set the framework around the narratives around the things that we can control, really, really listening to the market, and then making sure that we’re telling a really, really concise story and not trying to do too many things.

Jason (00:14:40)

Oh, that’s awesome. And I think you’re right messaging is key right now. It’s not showing off like, how am I gonna be profitable during this? It’s like, How can I care for the people that are going to continue using my service? 612 18 months down the road? And based on what I’ve seen from Intrepid, it’s exactly what’s going on? Yep. Yeah. And really we’re kind of curious though, Um, you know, as we’re talking about this and our as we’re talking about COVID, and the pandemic, and how it’s been unprecedented, there’s been some restrictions that have been lifted. And we can use Ontario and Toronto as the example where we’re moving into a phase system where phase two, we can start, you know, start doing groups of 10, people can look at more localized travel. And I’m kind of curious from you, and talk a little bit about which markets could be anywhere in the world. Are you trying to restart your marketing efforts in?

Mike (00:15:28)

Yeah, so it’s interesting, because, you know, when this all started, and this, I think, for anyone working kind of in more of a global marketing role and has a lot of global scope within their businesses. When it all started, everyone was in the same boat, global lockdowns, global shut down to international borders closed. And that was kind of easy, because you’re kind of doing all your planning, you know, in line that everything is going to be happening at the same kind of pace and cadence and flow. And now what we’re seeing, just to your point, like, you know, even in Canada, BC has been much further along than Ontario, and Australia, as an example, Melbourne has gotten back into lockdown now after a recent outbreak, so the rest of the country is more open. But now Melbourne is back in lockdown. And then London has been building air bridges, and they can start flying to other parts of the world. So for us, we kind of like, you know, we’re keeping things fairly aligned, but then really had to get get fairly tight and regionalized, in terms of acknowledging that the world was just going to be very quickly in a lot of different places. So now for us, it’s kind of, you know, at the very, very top level, we’re kind of shifting our marketing around, I guess, to things that the product innovation, and then the 2021 bucketing, so I speak to product innovation, in the sense that we have to really understand how people are going to be traveling in the future and making sure that there’s products that actually align with that. I think, you know, Airbnb is a company that does this really well, I think, you know, but companies that really adopt good design thinking build very strong bridges between their product and their marketing teams. And for us, we’ve we’ve always really, really, really valued that relationship. So our product team has really been working on a product called intrepid retreats, which is essentially this idea of, you know, one central location and doing a lot of really cool and local and authentic experiences from from kind of one home base. So, you know, in a normal kind of, you know, situation with an intrepid ship, you know, you’d go, let’s say to Morocco, you’d go to, you know, Marrakech, then you’d go to the Sahara Desert, and then you’d go up to, you know, Casablanca, so, but in these kinds of instances, it’s like, actually, people are going to be a little bit more comfortable, unpacking one’s kind of being in a little bit more of that familiarity is going to be a really big value. So we’re talking a lot about getting our marketing efforts around product, that’s actually going to be you know, a really strong fit. And then the other the other issue was the core product, and how we’re going to go, they’re going to sell our product, and what kind of the runway and lead time is so so you know, in a normal booking environment, we’re looking at, like 100, day lead time, on average. And now for our for our core product, we’re looking at, you know, 300 days, or 400 days where people are looking a lot more to 2021 bookings. So a lot of our marketing is around how do we kind of promote and talk about 2021 bookings. And when we look at the kind of categories and products focus is, what we’re really seeing right now is kind of, I guess, these three things, there’s, we’re kind of categorize them as wilderness, travel, wellness, travel, and slow travel. So the slow travel kind of prescribes what we just talked about is a little bit slowing down to the pace, a little more control, you know, not necessarily doing as much and seeing as much and really just, you know, feeling like you’re really comfortable in your environment. You know, wilderness travel speaks to places that have a deeper connection with the natural world. So places like Antarctica, places like the Galapagos places where you’re not necessarily in you know, the downtown Tokyo or Beijing or you’re in, you know, massively massively densely populated cities and urban centers. So people are really, you know, curious about how Antarctica you know, a place with no permanent human residence, a place that’s, you know, always kind of given way to the natural environment is, is kind of really appealing right now. And then wellness, like, you know, places where we can kind of discount or discredit to the, you know, the toll that this has taken on so many people, you know, myself included, and a lot of people aren’t in our industry, for the need that, you know, we do need to look after ourselves and take care of our well being both mentally and physically. And, you know, there is, you know, when people are thinking about their travel experience, the idea of, you know, doing something like around like a cycling trip or a yoga trip, or something where it’s a little bit more like reconnecting and slowing down with their mind, body and spirit, I think, um, there’s a lot of appeal to kind of those experiences as well, which is awesome.

Jason (00:19:21)

And you know, it’s funny, you mentioned Antarctica, like, it’s some places you never think about going before, especially when you have opportunities, like you said, major city centers like Tokyo or Marrakech, some places that you can really find more experiences than you would in Antarctica. When you go there. There’s really nothing to go.

Mike (00:19:39)

Honestly, I was lucky enough to go on a trip to Antarctica, one of my first couple years I didn’t try but it is like one of the coolest things that you can possibly do. Like you gotta go down to the southern parts of Argentina. You’re living in like, you know, mountain towns in southern Patagonia. And then you literally hop on a ship for two days on what’s called the Drake’s passage and it’s where the, the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean meets the roughest waters in the world. And you literally go on an expedition to a continent that’s, you know, not overrun, it’s occupied. And their permanent residences are penguins and orca whales and seals. And it’s and you know, giant mountains and calving glaciers, and you kind of go down and you’re like, holy, like, you know, as the US, as a society have essentially built over every piece of vacant land in, you know, six continents. And this is one where it kind of is like, what happens if we just let nature kind of take over and let nature kind of thing. So it’s such a rare and amazing thing. But, you know, just, you know, in addition to kind of the point I was saying before, I think when we’re talking about is, you know, going to Antarctica next, or going to Peru, or going to Morocco, or going wherever, a lot of the conversation that we just need to keep in mind for everyone is that we’re so focused on like, when Canadians can travel, we’re so focused on like, when Europeans can travel or Americans can travel, but we have to really, really keep this critical conversation of like, when communities are ready to have travelers, it’s kind of like this, this idea that like travel is very much a privilege. It’s not a right. And this idea that, like, everyone’s like, Oh, I can’t wait to go to the Taj Mahal, like, does anyone even know what’s happening in India, or like, I’m so excited to go to Machu Picchu because I don’t even know what the COVID status is improved. So I think this is also really important recalibration of understanding that the, you know, travel is such an important distribution of wealth, and it’s such an important invaluable exchange of culture. But people are really starting to see that like, oh, like it is a two way street. Yes, it’s about where I want to travel. But it’s also making sure that these communities are ready to host travelers and that you’re actually going to be doing good by visiting.

Jason (00:21:31)

It’s funny, you mentioned that it’s so true. I never really thought about the community itself. And you see articles every time now where it’s like Europe is now open to Canada. So July 1, and Europe is an open for localized travel, but you never really think about, it’s like, oh, well, am I having a big impact when I actually land there versus you know, what I’m bringing back? Yeah, it’s kind of focused on making sure they don’t bring something back to their own country, they never really think about what they’re leaving there. Yeah, so very interesting way of looking at that. And I kind of appreciate it now, a little more than I was before. Awesome. And I kind of want to tie back a little bit, you mentioned this very quickly of a messaging. And it imperative, right? With no matter if it’s organic, or paid based on how you present yourself to the end user. It’s, it’s more important than ever nowadays, you see some brands that might not do it well enough and taken the wrong way, or whatever might be We even saw back in the day where COVID first started, a lot of brands were changed their logo to show show social distancing as a kind of a cool thing. Yeah, everybody, it’s like that, and everyone rushed with it and more of a meme now. But I want to pivot back a little bit and talk about generational profiles. So especially for travel, you can have anybody in the world traveling at any age group. So what you say to a baby boomer isn’t necessarily the same thing you’d say to Gen Z or Gen X, or in my case, a millennial, you need to be careful nowadays with how you say it, just for the same mention or reasons I mentioned before. Do you guys have any strategies in place to you know, accurately talk to the generations at large? And kind of talk me through that line of thinking?

Mike (00:23:03)

Yeah, so the, the idea, I mean, for us, like very much your point around travel is such, you know, travel is for everyone. And we really believe that, you know, we believe that travel at a healthy travel industry is one that’s inclusive, both from you know, race, body image, everything beliefs, like, like a travel industry is literally built on inclusivity and cultural acceptance. So, you know, for us, our focus around our kind of target segment is really around a psychographic profile. It’s people who have innate and innate curiosity about the world who you know, love authentic food, who want to travel in a way that celebrates local culture doesn’t commoditize it. So, you know, for us, we’ve kind of always been focused on the type of travelers that we’re after. Now, there’s kind of an added layer now with the pandemic, because what you’re kind of seeing is, you know, the kind of question that a lot of people are saying, in the travelers, like, who’s going to travel first, you know, who’s that first traveler, that’s gonna, you know, you know, going to kind of lead us out of this and really do it and there is a very real sentiment that it is going to be that younger generation that that kind of like, you know, that younger millennial, and even below traveler who’s, you know, feels like there’s a little bit more appetite for kind of not necessarily risk because I don’t think there’s ever going to be a situation where people should be promoting travel when it’s not safe. But we’re, you know, just statistically, like, there’s certain health concerns that are very much prevalent in the older generations. And I think there is kind of that, that kind of mindset. So there is those little small those smaller pivots, were kind of thinking about okay, what kind of price point are we are we going to start leading with some of our products are we going to start like, you know, there’s kind of more wins to be had about going stuff that’s a little bit more accessible and affordable in terms of our product mix, um, things that in terms of our imagery, like, are we going to kind of position younger travelers and some of our imagery and how we’re going to project our kind of brand image right now, acknowledging which kind of conversations and then that kind of also ladders up to the types of stuff we’re talking about. So like, right now, as we’re looking at, you know, more immediate bookings. We’re looking at potentially Europe bookings, we’re definitely looking at you know, the rest of the year type thing. That’s when we’re kind of skewing, you know, a little bit younger speak into that kind of younger generation, that adventurous generation. But, you know, we’re but by no means losing sight of, you know, the 2021 bookings, and who’s booking our Antarctica product in the future and things like that. So, you know, we’ve always, really, really built a brand on very inclusive marketing and speaking to everyone acknowledging that there is, you know, appetite for kind of risk and adventure and excitement in every kind of age and kind of demographic level. But there is a very real kind of underpinning right now that in especially in traveling in all markets, you have to identify kind of your rebound roadmap and say, Okay, who are the customers that are going to drive us out of this first, and then who are the customers that are going to get, like, keep us ahead in the future? I mean, once you kind of identify that you can really start building a lot of your visual identity and your your kind of marketing around that.

Jason (00:25:44)

You know, it makes sense and say good graphics, I think you’re right. Or kind of the way the future now that we can have a lot more data points on you know, whether they are more risk or more of a risk averse to travel versus, you know, whatever it might be there. But I’m kind of curious for like an average travel group that would participate in intrepids outings? Do you have a wide variety of, you know, people in age and gender? Or do you kind of have that typical user base that likes to participate in the travel?

Mike (00:26:13)

Yeah, I mean, we do have, so we have different product categories, like we operate on over 1100 trips. So you could imagine like, within that, there’s a little bit of, you know, something for everyone type thing. But you know, we have an 18 to 20, nines, dedicated product range, that tends to be, you know, a lot more kind of budget, hostel type camping, camping Safari, instead of lodge safaris, things like that. So obviously, that’s a younger skew. And then we kind of have our more comfort product, which is a softer landing, lot more forest, our accommodations, all private transportation, and that tends to skew to people with obviously a higher average household income, generally, people who are more retired age who don’t want to be, you know, changing locations every day and going on. It’s really like our like, long adventure and overnight trains in India and all that stuff. So it is a mix. I mean, at our core, we’re looking at an average age of around 39 years old. And we tend to skew about 65% female in terms of our trips, and about half of our travelers actually solo and independent travelers, so people who really, you know, and it’s a really interesting subset of releasing group that a lot of people maybe outside of the travel industry don’t really see. But, you know, for me as an example, like, I’ve worked in a travel company, and you know, something I’m really passionate about, but it’s very hard for me to find a friend who wants to go for three weeks to Mongolia, when they only get three weeks of vacation. I’m like, why don’t you take all of your vacation and come to, like, it’s a, it’s a bit of a tricky value prop. But for some people, you know, they they want that experience. So for me, I went to Mongolia by myself, but I was never by myself, I was with a group of people that I met who were from all around the world. And it’s really interesting, because I probably had that same mindset where, you know, I was looking at the travel kind of the group before we go, and I was like, oh, cool, like, a 27 year old from Australia, they’re gonna be my best friend and all this person they’re gonna be, but then, you know, I remember from a recent trip in India, you know, the my best friend, one of my best friends on the trip ended up being like a 68 year old woman who was from New Zealand, who used to be like a runway model. And she was like, teaching us how to like catwalk on the on the rooftop and new diaper. And I was like, In what world? Would I ever be traveling with this person. So, but it was like, it was awesome. And you learn so much. And that’s kind of when you like, open up, you’re, like, open up your mind and open up yourself a little bit more to, you know, understanding and meeting new people where I think you have such amazing experiences. So yeah, I mean, we do have that kind of, like core demographic as well. But I think for us, like, the best kind of stories are from people who maybe no normal circumstance, whatever find their way in a chip together and ends up making kind of memories for life.

Jason (00:28:32)

And that’s just amazing, we can kind of remove all sense of, you know, prejudice, and, you know, this person shouldn’t be traveling here and just take them as the person, they are elites. It’s just some amazing experiences. And you know, that story about your, your New Zealand friends. I was actually in Vietnam, and you know, same kind of style, where we were just traveling on our own doing our own thing there. But a lot of people there, you wouldn’t even imagine seeing there, you know, there was a lot of, you know, people, my parents age that were traveling, you’re walking on high end, and you know, doing the same kind of stuff that I would do, and we were chatting with a couple that were in their 60s as well. And we had an amazing conversation with them and just understand their life journey, how they decided to get there and, you know, not be able to step into my comfort level, I would never want to do that normally, and you know, seeing these people because kind of inspirational right that I hope I can do the same thing when I’m their age.

Mike (00:29:21)

Yeah. And I think and like, I think that’s one of the most special parts of travel. And I think that’s also, you know, what, what really is, is is hurting like right now for a lot of us. And I think, you know, especially and we won’t get political here, but talking about obviously, the political climate in the United States and things like that. Like, I think one of the worst things about this is the fact that people aren’t crossing borders. People aren’t, you know, meeting other cultures to the same level people aren’t, you know, learning and creating that cultural acceptance. And I think one of the worst things obviously beyond beyond obviously, the massive health, you know, tools and concerns is that fundamentally people aren’t aren’t seeing each other anymore. We’re not meeting each other. There’s not that new experience. We’re very insular weren’t thinking very much within the framework of our own borders. And I think that’s gonna be a really, it’s a really sad byproduct, I think it’s probably one of the most important things of traveling. So when people start thinking about it is getting out there and making sure that the world knows that we’re all like, you know, all part of the same team here. And I think it’s just an important thing that we don’t really talk about in travel.

Jason (00:30:16)

Yeah, and, you know, speaking with Canada, very inclusive culture, and we have a lot of people from all walks of life. So I sometimes think we take it for granted, too, that we have a lot of people from different varieties of life that we can chat to and get their experiences. But while countries don’t have that level of immigration, or what have you, so I can imagine it’s it’s definitely someone missed on a lot of times. You know, we are a marketing podcast, so it’d be killed if I didn’t ask you some marketing questions. And really, we would talk about kind of how you’re handling your marketing strategy nowadays. And the main thing being that there’s most likely a major decrease in tangible returns on your paid efforts or even your organic efforts. With that said, have you guys been pivoting your strategy based on the current climate?

Mike (00:31:00)

Yeah, I mean, it’s kind of like, I mean, not, you know, we always have to kind of just find things to grasp at straws to keep us like engaged and entertained, and fun things like that. So I think for us, like, there’s obviously a really fun silver lining on some level that we’ve kind of got to market without that like hyper hyper pressure and pressure of like performance right now. And really kind of focus on our brand hygiene and getting a lot of our really like, you know, getting all that storytelling stuff done. So like so for us, I mean, I was kind of speaking to it a little bit before. But you know, the very first thing that we kind of did was acknowledge that, like, the hard sell was gone, the hard sell was like completely out the window. And we really just had to focus on our current customers, and even buy any base level of customer acquisition that we could. So a lot of that what has defined our marketing over the past 234 months at this point in time, has been kind of putting our customers at the front of their brand experience. And I’ll kind of go into I guess a little bit what that means. But you know, our first campaign that we launched was something called be together. And D together was essentially a way for people to kind of share their kind of memories via kind of online letter writing and share not only in their memories and their experiences, but share letters to, you know, their tour leader that they met in, you know, Ecuador, or you know, their fellow group mate who’s on the other side of the world who they met on a tour last year, and just a way that we could really bring the art community and our existing travelers together to keep them kind of engaged and excited about travel. So we started publishing those letters, I guess, you know, in marketing speak, we could call that UGC. So we really kind of, you know, leverage our kind of UGC content and, you know, and that way, when we were talking about, you know, I remember, like one of our people were talking about a trip that she didn’t India, she was an 80 year old woman with amazing story. It’s on our Instagram page. But, you know, for us, we’re not going out and being like, oh, like, do you miss the Taj? Well, soon, you’ll be able to book our Taj Mahal trip and blah, blah, blah, we were, we were letting her tell the story and telling a brand story through the her eyes. And there are many, many instances of that. But we felt the way that if we had kind of handled our brand and our accounts over to our customers, then they would be the ones talking about our product, and they would be the ones doing it. And that was a really good way for us to kind of be very sensitive to the climate, and not make it about us. So we kind of kept that value prop going around, how do we kind of do this kind of on other people’s kind of terms. And, you know, we’ve been really starting to kind of use kind of reviews into things and everything like that. So now we’ve kind of entered, as we’ve mentioned, briefly into our next campaign, which was be responsible, and that was really around our brand values. So really saying, Okay, our product is what it is, people know that travel is not really an international travels in our thing right now. So we’re going to talk about everything that’s kind of around our brand, but again, it’s not going to be about us. So what we’re going to do is take a lot of our resources that we have and start talking about them. So we’re gonna, you know, we’re doing a lot of like PR pitching webinars, we’re doing a lot of like kind of social posting around a responsible business around giving other companies the tools to rebound with a climate policy and giving them the tools to rebound with an animal welfare policy for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. So we’re kind of coming out here and talking about our values, but under the lens of together, we can help the industry rebound more, more sustainably, and more responsibly, which has been great as well. So now, we’re kind of, I guess, entering this third phase, which is kind of like the product and the conversion side of things and where we kind of do things. So for us, like our kind of conversion, you know, rough kind of breakdown of where our customers come from, you know, we’re getting, you know, like around 35 40% type coming from Google, like for straight from Google Search kind of thing. So right now, we’re obviously making sure that, you know, we’re not going full spend and on the Instagram on the Google side of things, but we’re making sure that in critical places, like we’re talking about for where there is appetite for trips, you know, Europeans going to Greece, potentially Americans booking Antarctica 2021 We’re really like honing in on our top destinations and making sure that we’re kind of optimizing there. And then the other big source for acquisition is through kind of referral word of mouth. So making sure that we’re building out really strong and tight, you know, programs within our CRM within our mailing list, making sure that we’re starting to engage putting people on journeys, get people like understanding where they’re clicking through and things like that. So A lot of it right now is the game Wu talked about before is looking at the world looking at the globe, where are the travelers going? Where are the interests, start understanding their like click journeys and things like that. And we’re kind of building very individualized and pertinent journeys that will kind of get people to a point where we know that we have a lot, we have early opportunity to get people in London, traveling to Italy, and we have an opportunity to get people in Australia traveling domestically within their own countries, and then to New Zealand. So it’s very, very hyper targeted. And it’s very much less necessarily about kind of the catch all like travel everywhere in the world, it’s we know that these places are kind of we know that these are safe, we’ve kind of built our safety policies around it, we know that the borders are open. So instead, it’s distilling our 1100 trips, and 120 countries to maybe like top 10 trips in the top 10 countries, and just trying to create that focus and kind of win at a few things.

Jason (00:35:50)

Oh, and that’s awesome. I think, you know, you guys were ahead of the curve there when you started relying on your user generated content to push you know, their own message forward. And it really brings together like you said, that value prop that intrepid has of being that togetherness and understanding that, you know, we’re all in this together kind of thing. You know, excuse me, I kind of style it really isn’t.

Mike (00:36:12)

And it is and you know, I speak to I talk a lot about storytelling and marketing. It’s like a huge platform. And like, I think that there’s no separation, like storytelling is not just like content in blogs, like, everything is a story like from digital performance and everything, you just have to like really, really hone in on kind of the story. And but when you talk about kind of your creative and your brand and positioning, people, people need that reassurance of what other customers are doing. There is a very real kind of follower culture and in, you know, American consumerism, where, you know, it’s why it’s the reason why influences work. It’s the one reason why we use by people care about reviews by reviews are one of the most important things for so many companies in their product journey. So the next step that we’re really gonna be focused on anything else, is we need to actually tell the stories of these people who are traveling, like, Hey, this is someone she’s, she’s 30 years old, she’s lives in London, she’s now on a trip with us in like Italy, she booked like, we need to really humanize the brand and really humanize the context. Because right now, everyone’s there’s so much confusion of what’s actually happening. And we need to distill it down and be like, this isn’t us telling you to book this, we’re just we’re facilitating the information. And these are people that are already traveling, having amazing experiences and things like that. So it’s, you know, same thing with kind of, like, you know, even at a small local scale, like restaurants, like what is the story of the restaurant? How are you? How are you like, going to ensure safety and all these things in the restaurants that have really come out, use their channels be like, Hey, we’re this restaurant, we’ve put up these barriers, we’ve worked on these hours, we have these sanitation, these things, that’s great. Like, from a customer point of view, it’s like, Oh, that’s great. And then I see other people aren’t going and I see it around on Instagram. And I see you’ve made your due diligence, like, like that whole ability to tell your story around kind of your safety. And your product right now is ultimately what’s going to get people kind of more inclined to book first.

Jason (00:37:49)

Yeah, and, you know, I was actually going to ask about that safety kind of thing there. And it makes sense, right? Because when people see that, they’re, you know, some of that’s almost exactly like them is doing that same travel that they thought they could do, they find that they can, okay, I can start doing myself, I’m not as worried anymore. And they find that they’re able to, you know, least push out to everyone else and say, You know what, I’m going to travel and I’m going to probably go domestic instead of international, I’m gonna try this new thing I’ve never would have done before, because I’m seeing people just like me doing that exact same thing.

Mike (00:38:19)

Yeah. And that’s and that’s like, sometimes it can be like the less sexy kind of marketing and stuff like it’s like the technical like products, but it’s really important right now. And, you know, for us like our founder, he’s on you know, the the Executive Committee of the World Tourism, Travel and Tourism Council. So it’s this huge global governing body for tourism. And he actually helped develop the W TTC safety protocols, which obviously intrepid travel has very much been a signatory of and founding member of so for us, like, like, we have that stamp. And for us like that, we love chatting about like amazing trips, hiking, the Inca Trail, cool things like that. And now we’re just like, hey, check out our safety stamp, you know, we’ve kind of gone from like passport stamps to safety stamps, were like, our marketing was very much like that one or less, go collect stamps, you know, not things, all that and now we’re just like, hey, we’re safe. This is a safety stamp like, and then people like need it. That’s the thing. It’s about not being so rigid and, and being able to adapt. But also, as with everything in marketing, it’s not about what you want, it’s what your customers want. So But for us, understanding what the customers want, and being able to deliver that effectively. That’s the crux of effective marketing. So I think that’s just where everyone’s at. It’s not, it’s not what you want to tell your customers. It’s what your customers need to hear.

Jason (00:39:26)

Oh, and I love that. And, you know, I completely agree. And I really want to actually dive into that point about, you know, people that are, you know, either looking to travel a bit more domestically or national. Have you seen any really trends knowing that international travel is basically zero, as you said, minus 70%? Or whatever number it is, are you finding more people are now looking to book domestic travel within their own country? Or is it still just, you know, flat across the court?

Mike (00:39:52)

Yeah, so that’s a huge piece. I mean, like when we were kind of talking about this in the early days, and when we started building it, like we built a whole range of new products. on, you know, closer to home, and it’s like our kind of localized traveling. And we also do day tours and things like that. But, you know, when we were when we were like, you know, situation planning, I mean, if it didn’t exactly take like us, you know, a scientist or an epidemic, like, like someone who’s like specializing in epidemics to understand what’s happened here, like we were like, okay, so everyone’s at home in quarantine. Okay, so then the next step, you can maybe go walk around your neighborhood. And the next step is maybe you can go visit your, you know, your mom or brother who lives 10 minute drive away, then maybe you’ll be able to travel within your province and maybe be able to travel your country, and then you’re going to travel the world. So for us, we were sitting at the very, very end, right, so we kind of, you know, there was that whole thing around Yes, travel will rebound domestically first. And the thing is, especially in Ontario, and, you know, in much of Canada, like we don’t really identify, like going up to a buddy’s cottage is domestic tourism, but it is like, you know, spending, spending tourism dollars in businesses that rely on tourists, you know, think about Muskoka as a really popular tourism destination, no one really thinks about as a tourism destination, but their lifeblood happens in that Muskoka summer. And you know, the businesses really, really rely on that. So there is a lot of things where people, like will travel locally, I think where we have the opportunity, and it’s not necessarily our remit, but you know, for more local tourism businesses is, is actually framing that people coming up and traveling to Collingwood, or, you know, calling into Muskoka or the court that’s that actually is local tourism. And that actually is helping the the economy rebound. And if people actually knew that a cottage weekend was like, you know, we could create some Savior ism culture around that being like, you can come to a cottage and it would actually really, really help our community like, oh, well, yeah, call me Mother Teresa. Like I’m in kind of thing. So it’s, that’s the marketing aspect where we need to kind of shape the story that the rebound. And it’s critical that we need people to be traveling locally, because that’s actually going to help these economies rebuilt. So from a trend point of view, absolutely. It’s the local tourism side of things, it is traveling closer to home. And then beyond that, I think we spoke to it earlier before it’s it’s destinations that offer a much deeper connection with the natural world and less much less about major urban urban centers and urban environments. And I think as well, what’s kind of come to a head is, is really, really this focus on quality tourism versus quantity tourism, because we’re not going to go back to a model where, you know, we’re going to have millions and millions of people on Santorini huddled up like sardines in a tiny little island, we need to start recalibrating on what healthy tourism looks like and quality tourism. You know, it’s funny, because we talk about all these tourism destinations that are overrun with tourism, over tourism all throughout Europe. And then we kind of learned about physical distancing. And suddenly, it took like one week and everyone knew how to properly queue outside a grocery store, create six foot distance, we can easily queue people and create space. And we’re just like, like, that’s not the issue. We do know how to do these things. It’s just enforcing it and creating better restrictions around that. So I think as well, like there will be a slower reopening globally. And I think one of the really amazing byproducts was will be a shift to a more quality tourism industry instead of one built on quantity.

Jason (00:42:56)

Oh, and I absolutely love that. And, you know, I find nowadays it’s much safer for like, when February, January when I was planning on going to Vietnam, we were actually looking at you know, non touristy areas is something things we would Google and make sure that we didn’t spend our time in a place that you have to wait around for, you know, just access to get a picture of a certain…

Mike (00:43:16)

Yeah, yeah, right. But and literally what you’re speaking to like that from Utah, going back to marketing podcasts, we can talk about marketing stuff, but like that’s, you know, the digital kind of currencies like when the prolific like rise of influencers, an Instagram started like that was what travel marketing could be, all you have to do is, wait, how can I get you to take this absolutely fire selfie outside of Machu Picchu or something like if your company can facilitate that, that’s great. But now when you think about distilling it down into search into how you’re optimizing your website, how you’re working your SEO, what you just described non touristy places in Vietnam, like before that three years ago, four years ago, the opposite would be best Instagram photos. So there is kind of like a maturity of the traveler where like, and that’s kind of where I think it’s a healthy thing where this has kind of brought that to a head where people can start thinking is okay, who is the traveler? I’m going after? How do I go after, you know, the healthier travel to create a healthier travel industry? And how is your business optimized to facilitate experiences that now aren’t, you know, everywhere and are actually offering some unique and authenticity?

Jason (00:44:19)

Oh, and I’m excited to see the Antartica Instagram selfies that are going to come out.

Mike (00:44:24)

I’m for sure fire I don’t I don’t even remember. That must have I think there’s definitely was no Wi Fi on the boat. But I was like, it’s so funny because it’s such like a travel flex and it’s so funny. Like sometimes you just like have to just embrace it and it just, you know, whatever. It’s obnoxious, but like, there’s like there was nothing that wasn’t obnoxious about me just like casually posting an anti like, we were like, we were like cross country skiing across Antarctica. And I was like, you know, I think the caption was like, oh, like great day in Antarctica. I’m like, this is obnoxious. There’s nothing about this. It’s it’s kind of like hilarious and fun and honestly but like that’s that’s the thing. It’s like there is like, you know, we talk so much about travel like how The tourism industry and quality on thing, but like travel at its very base level is one of the most fun things you can do. And as long as you know, we’re facilitating an amazing and fun experience while doing it in a way that like helps people on the planet. Like that’s kind of our sweet spot, right?

Jason (00:45:12)

Oh, absolutely. And, you know, you pivoted perfectly into that last question I want to ask you, which was about the mission statement for Intrepid. And it’s come up a few times during this conversation. And, you know, it’s almost imperative nowadays for brands to have some type of mission for why they’re in business and why they’re providing the product they do. You mentioned a couple of already, but Patagonia century where we Parker all have these niche and give him back some certain ways, whether it be you know, planting 10 trees, if you buy a product, or you know, we’re donating to a specific charity, or we’re providing, you know, glasses for someone that needs to be able to see how important is it for you particularly to have that message like similar brands? And by extension, how important is it to even market that message to those users that might want to actually learn more about a transmission?

Mike (00:45:58)

Yeah, like, it’s everything. So I kind of, you know, we spoke to a little bit before, but yeah, you had mentioned Tentree, Patagonia. Both of those are B Corp organizations, intrepid travelers, a B Corp, so you know, that certification, which has been really important thing, it’s really made us a better business. But, you know, I can speak to a few examples. 2014 intrepid travel became the first global tour operator to ban elephant rides, at the time, and still very much to this day, unfortunately, like elephant rides is a popular activity, you know, people who think that going to Thailand or Southeast Asia and riding on the back of an elephant, it’s a good thing. And to a lot of them, they’re just travelers who just don’t understand and don’t have the wider context of how this is completely bad. Elephants are not domesticated animals, the ability to take a wild elephant and to make them domestic requires, you know, torture and a lot of really terrible things that most tourists don’t understand. So for us, we were making money on elephant rights in 2013 2012, etc. But we realized that we actually had a responsibility and obligation to do you know, as part of our brand ethos was to put a stop to this and we had to go first. And, you know, there’s that quote, the first through the wall always gets bloody. And sometimes you just have to go first and kind of see what happens. And so So for us, we lost, we lost money, like we got, we lost all that revenue that we were making for an elephant, right? We lost it. But our idea was that we are actually going to evoke change. And we’re going to educate travelers and because of that people are going to build trust with the intrepid brand. And know that intrepid travelers responsible tour operator, you know, Fast Forward one year to 2015, the Nepal earthquake happened, you know, a devastating earthquake rocked the entire country I country that’s very much built on their tourism culture through, you know, Everest region and Annapurna region, we came out pretty much the week, the week that had happened and said that we would donate all of our profits for all trips to Nepal for the next year, right back into helping earthquake recovery. That was our commitment. And we got people booking the poll, everyone wanted to kind of be part of that story. And it maybe wasn’t necessarily profit in that short term. But in the longer term, that’s just kind of the expectation, you know, 2020, this year, we were getting set to after become after being carbon neutral for 10 years, which, by the way, costs millions and millions of dollars. Yeah, we were getting set to become climate positive. So we’re actually going to offset and reduce more than we produce it the business. And, you know, the running theme here, I’m not here to like, you know, celebrate our accomplishments, what I’m here to kind of say is, all those three things were incredibly profitable decisions. Because doing good is good for business, and leading with purpose has actually been the most profitable thing we’ve ever done. And, you know, I’ve been speaking a lot to this, you know, taking it back to the marketing lens is that, you know, everything is a story and the best story wins. And when, for us, we aren’t just one of 100 tour operators that can take you to get an amazing selfie at the Taj Mahal. But we can do so in a way that’s provide solar energy to rural villages in India that provides economic empowerment through very, very localized experiences outside of the main tourist trail. And we actually can lobby the government in India for better gender reform and gender equality and tourism and get you the fire selfie at the town hall. It’s not an either or type thing. So for us as a marketer, when I’m saying, if you’re searching, you know, I want to go to Vietnam, I want to go to the Sahara Desert. For us, we we have to tell this story, one step below the product, and the story is the brand. So for us, when you when you’re looking at 100 places and 100 operators that you can go to the Taj Mahal and you see they just take me to the toilet, they take me the Taj, they took the Taj, but intrepid takes you to Taj, and does all of that. That’s really where you’re getting your differentiator. So for us, leading with purpose is not only the right thing to do, but it’s the right thing to do for our business. And it’s the right thing to do for the world.

Jason (00:49:23)

Oh, and you know, I love it. And when able to attribute that tangible profits, the reason why you, you know, the original reason being you want to do good for the environment, and then but at the same time, it’s good for the profit margin. It’s just a win win, right? And you don’t have to do either or to be profitable or just to be good for the world. It can be both, and I think a lot of people just especially companies that are looking to make a difference. don’t really see that as that opinion. And it’s great to hear that for you guys. Specifically. It’s worked very, very well.

Mike (00:49:52)

It’s worked extremely well and it’s a huge part of the retention piece. Like I say this to a lot of marketers and people who are trying to get buy in for more kind of social advocates See, and, and purpose work where, you know, when we first started doing like deeper customer research around how sustainability and responsible travel plays into our customer journey, it was oftentimes one of the, you know, 678 reasons someone booked with us for the first time, but it was always one of the top three reasons they booked with us again. So you know, now the consumers I think are demanding it a little bit more, I think you’ll definitely see sustainable responsible and you’re kind of policies around purpose being a top five reason people book in the first place. But when you talk about the life, the lifespan of the customer and the long term value of a customer, that’s where you’re getting repeat, because people understand and people have no reason to take their business elsewhere, because they found a place where they own literally love the product, but they love the mission, and they love what they’re doing. And that’s when you turn an average employee into a loyal or an average customer into a loyal customer. And then when you turn a loyal customer into a loyal advocate who’s actually growing your business for you. So I think there’s a huge bit on the acquisition side of things, but even a bigger side on the ability to scale and grow your business from a retention point of view as well.

Jason (00:51:00)

And absolutely, and you know, some most travel companies are looking for ways to retain customers. And I think it is answered for a lot of them. Just being that brand for them there. With that said, Mikey, we’ve been talking for about almost an hour now and you know, talk for three or four hours more about this, because I’m really conversation, you know, we’ve chatted a lot about building that story building that user generated content to make sure that people understand that you’re there for them when they need to be there and not just there for when they ready to book you’re there. 24/7 and all the you know, the stories behind why you do the marketing you do. And the result of that. So I think we’ve had a lot of good talks here, I want to throw it right back to you. If there’s anything else you want to add on about where that’d be introverts mission, where you guys are doing or any suggestions you have for travel companies out there that are kind of looking around and have zero idea what to do. Do you have any advice for those travel marketers that are looking for an answer?

Mike (00:51:51)

Honestly, just for all travel marketers right now my advice really would just be to hang in there, like it’s been a really, really tough road, I think we’re starting to see some some, you know, some level of normalcy returning right now. But honestly, the biggest thing is to kind of look after your people look after your team. And the biggest thing is also just to think about kind of the communities that you’re traveling to and making sure that you’re telling a very complete story. I think right now, like the best thing that anyone can do marketers in the travel space or beyond, is really, really have really strong focus around what you’re doing, understand how your brand adds value, adds value to the world adds value to your customer. And I think if you can create kind of focus around that and define your value prop, you can, you should be able to really make it out of here. But make sure along the way that you’re taking care of yourself and taking care of your team.

Jason (00:52:36)

Mike, I love it. I think it’s a great way to end the podcast. And I really appreciate you taking the time today. I think a lot of people can relate to what you guys are doing. And you know, you’ve made intrepid customer to me just based on this conversation. So I’m excited when I can traveling Antarctica and take that selfie.

Mike (00:52:51)

Awesome. I can’t wait. And thank you so much. I really appreciate the time and it was a great job.

Jason (00:52:56)

Awesome. Thanks, Mike. Appreciate it.

Mike (00:52:58)

All right. Thank you.

Episode Outro (00:53:00)

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