In the competitive Most Outstanding Tour Operator category at this year’s National Travel Industry Awards (NTIA), one company stood tallest. But it’s how it stood together during the tough times that made the difference, says Chimu Adventures Managing Director Chad Carey.
Considering this was the first NTIA since 2019, how special does this year’s award feel?
Really, really special. I remember someone saying to me when I started in the travel industry, telling me, “Anyone can operate a good trip in favourable conditions; it’s what you do when the chips are down that really shows what kind of operator you are”.
Covid was obviously a huge test for the entire industry, so to be recognised by our peers as a company that has done well under such trying circumstances is, from my perspective, the highest accolade that we could receive.
Retaining that knowledge and experience is going to serve us so well in the coming 12 months as strong growth hopefully returns.
You had some stiff competition. To what do you attribute your win?
What I think we did well was to rally the Chimu team together to find solutions to the seemingly endless challenges we had during Covid.
For me, the primary driver of what we did during Covid was to try to retain our team, and I’m so grateful that we’ve managed to do that.
At the start of the pandemic the question was “How do we get our clients home?”, and by working together we managed to be the first organisation to repatriate stranded travellers back to Australia.
Next, we realised that many of our partners in South America didn’t have the financial support that we were lucky enough to have in Australia. Again, we brainstormed and decided to support our very own James McAlloon’s walk across Australia to help raise funds for those in the travel industry that were less fortunate than us. That was hugely successful and helped to support 1,200 families in South America who had lost their travel incomes.
Finally, we collaborated to find a way to generate revenue during a period where it seemed almost impossible to do so.
Fortunately our sister business in New Zealand (Viva Expeditions) came up with the idea of doing flights to the Southern Lights, which was connected to our core business of visiting polar regions.
Having flights take off and land in the same cities also gave us a way to deliver intercontinental trips without having to worry about state border closures.
We used that template to find other scenic flights that were related to our core business. This included Antarctic scenic flights, a South Pole Flight and even an Antarctic Eclipse flight (which unfortunately didn’t go ahead because of Victorian lockdowns).
How has the pandemic changed the way you operate?
Clearly Covid protocols have changed operations over the past few years, but I don’t feel that this will be a lasting change.
I think the most important change we’ve had as a result of the pandemic is to create the management structure to be able to make fast and creative decision making and be able to react dynamically.
That structure is something that we can use outside of a pandemic emergency setting too and I’m hopeful it will help us to ensure that we can continue being a market leading and innovation focused business well into the future.
Where to now for tour operators and the industry more broadly?
A trend we’re noticing post-pandemic is that people appear to be looking for travel products that offer something different, more unique. I don’t think cookie cutter operations are going to be successful in the coming years and those that lift their game with innovative and enticing product are going to be the longer term winners.
We’ve recently altered a lot of our South America product with this in mind and I think this will be a continuing focus – to try and find unique experiences, which people return home raving about.
The same goes for our Antarctic operations, where we’re developed some unique experiential focused product such a dedicated photography product and wider range of kayaking product than any other operator in the industry (this includes both day use and longer kayak programmes).
Longer term, the most important issue that we all need to deal with is carbon reduction. I know most of us have been trying to reduce emissions for some time, but the real elephant in the room still continues to be how we reduce our vehicular emissions as an industry.
Unfortunately, we don’t’ have real solutions to these issues just yet, but I do believe we’re on the threshold of this becoming a reality. Within the next few years, any operator that isn’t moving towards lower emission vehicles is going to be left behind.
What do you love most about the travel industry?
Clearly the people. We all love travelling, hence why we work in this industry. But as we all know, travel opens people’s minds and helps us see the world in a different light.
Being able to collaborate with partners with similar outlooks on the world is just an amazing thing that we have.
Coming from another industry prior to Chimu, I know from first-hand experience that the open minded world view that we share isn’t something that we should take for granted.
For more information, chimuadventures.com
