‘The underlying ethos in this business is to be positively disruptive in the marketplace.’

We recently had the pleasure of speaking to Travelsphere’s Managing Director, Alastair Campbell, who shared with us his compelling journey during 25 years in the travel industry, beginning as a small entrepreneur, to running a legacy brand.

About Travelsphere: With over 50 years experience in the industry, Travelsphere is the UK’s number-one tour operator for escorted tours. They offer a vast range of holidays by air, rail and coach to more than 70 countries around the world. After being acquired by G Adventures in January 2017, the tour operator has shown constant growth by introducing initiatives like its ‘Rock Solid Guarantees’.

About Alastair Campbell: Alastair Campbell is the Managing Director of G Touring Limited, which operates both Travelsphere and Just You. Since starting the role in January 2017, Alastair has focussed on bettering the consumer experience whilst keeping the company legacy alive and strong in an increasingly competitive market. His extensive knowledge of the travel industry and an interest in innovation and technology position him as a true market leader.

We’d like to start by getting to know a little more about you. Can you tell us about your journey to becoming Travelsphere’s Managing Director?

25 years ago, I set up a family tour operating business in Scotland with two of my brothers. At the time it was launched it was called Haggis Backpackers (now HAGGiS Adventures) back in the days when backpacking was about putting your life on your back, for inbound travellers to Scotland.

We started off with a few yellow minibuses with help from family and friends and from there we grew a tour company in Scotland — which led to creating one in Ireland and owning some independent hostels. Around 2001, our businesses were purchased by the Travel Corporation Group and I stayed working for them.

Circa 2003, I took over running a European tour operator called Busabout, and I ran that alongside the businesses that I’d created, until 2009. From January 2010 through to July 2015, I was the global brand leader for a business called Contiki Holidays, based out on the Channel Islands. I did that for four years or so before moving back to Scotland and bizarrely ended up being the managing director of this company called Tennent Caledonian Breweries.

After about 18 months, I got a phone call set up between myself and Bruce Poon Tip, founder of G Adventures and the owner of Travelsphere and Just You, who I knew a great deal about because I‘d worked in the same kind of space as him. We spoke on a Tuesday in the late afternoon, by Thursday I was in Toronto, and within 10 days I was walking through the door here [at Travelsphere], so it all happened very fast.

The attraction for me was not only that Bruce was looking to expand his portfolio of businesses, but was also Travelsphere as a brand. Although it has been around since 1977, the legacy of the business goes back to 1962. When you have an amazing brand like that, which has been around in the industry for so long with such a strong reputation, it is an incredibly exciting prospect to help bring that brand forward into its new future. I consider it a privilege to come in and lead a legacy brand and I’ll see what I can do to help move it forward.

We’d also like to congratulate you for being shortlisted for the ‘Best Escorted Tour Operator ’ at the 2018 British Travel Awards. Could you tell us a bit more about how you’ve managed to position yourselves so well? What differentiates you from your competitors?

Great question. The benefit of having such a strong legacy brand is really underpinned by its reputation, which has been built on delivering excellent customer service, so that’s a great starting point.

Everything we do comes back to the customer and how we can deliver a better service to them. One of the things in the travel market which we are acutely aware of is that consumer confidence is such a key driver as to when people make a choice about their tour operator.

Having that legacy and reputation for excellence is great, but we can’t just rely on that. So we went out and looked at how we can actually boost confidence and get customers to focus in on that. One of the things we did was introduce a guaranteed departures policy — if a customer books a tour with us, from one of our brochures, no matter where it is in the world and no matter how far ahead it is, we guarantee it will actually operate. It sounds obvious from a consumer perspective, however, it’s actually quite abnormal in the tour operator space, so that’s something that has made a real difference.

The feedback we received when we did a bit of research was that consumers worry about fluctuating economic markets — are they getting good value for their prices, or are they better waiting till later? In response to that, we came out with a guarantee that says regardless of when you book your tour, we will guarantee that it is the best price you will get — so if you commit early, you get the best price.

A common theme we see is the evolution of technology in the sector, for example, more advanced CRM systems. How has technology played a part in Travelsphere’s success? Do you have examples of this?

From Travelsphere’s perspective, we’re absolutely on a journey as far as technology goes. One of the things you see at Travelsphere is that we’re managing to leverage not just what we can develop and change in this business at a local level, but we actually work very closely with the G Adventures technology team based out in Toronto.

We are looking at how we will change our whole technology platform as we go forward. If we come right back to the central focus, which is having the customer at the heart of the business, that same focus should apply to the technology strategy.

From that point of view, we leverage information for both marketing and customer services. We have a new CRM system coming in and are days away from launching a new telephony system which will be integrated into it. So all of that is part of the journey which we’re actually right on at the moment. What is absolutely core to our strategy going forward, is to drive customer service through technology.

In your experience, what have been the most significant changes that have affected the travel industry in the last 5 years?

We can see lots of different trends, some strongly driven by marketing messaging and people trying to open up segments. Everybody thinks they’re a tour operator nowadays, but if you get to the heart of what a tour operator actually is and what it really does, it’s to provide that complete package from home to destination and home again.

What we see in the marketplace are aggregators that drive the message that they’re tour operators and the positive thing about that is all of their marketing has to be entirely about the delivery of highly local, authentic and experiential products. From that point of view, it’s great for us, because when the consumer sees that and wants that kind of experience, nobody is better placed to deliver that than traditional tour operators.

As time has progressed, the consumer is a lot more comfortable in making bookings on their own, doing their research and taking the responsibility for themselves for their holidays. Do you think this trend will continue or do you think there will always be a space for traditional tour operators?

I think space absolutely exists for traditional tour operators, and strangely enough, I actually think there’s a growing opportunity. I think the market goes through cycles.

The modern consumer is looking for a highly experiential experience, a sense of community, and to share that experience with other people — genuinely the best way to share that is to go as part of a tour group. From that perspective, tour operator places [in the market] are assured. Interestingly enough, having heard feedback from the retail travel market, they’re also seeing that trend coming back around.

Since we are powered by Kantox, we always ask a question regarding one of the major challenges companies face: currency management. Is this something that affects your business and what do you do to mitigate this?

We deliver products to over 60 destinations worldwide, so currencies are obviously a key thing for us. We monitor them on a daily basis. When we’re putting together our financial plans, we’re looking at how much we’re buying in different currencies. For the most part, we’re a UK outbound operator, meaning our core currency from this business is GBP, so that’s what we’re watching more closely. There are upsides and downsides, depending on fluctuations.

We certainly have some hedging policies in place and without question, we build it into some of our pricing strategies. I guess the real advantage of being part of an international group of companies now is that it’s not just about us as a GBP-based company, but functioning as part of the G Adventures group, who are selling worldwide and engaging in multi-currency selling and buying.

There’s a much greater opportunity for us to hedge our currency using the group function. A large part of what we do in terms of hedging and treasury management is managed by our group financial office in Toronto. I love currencies, I see them as a great opportunity.

We would definitely agree. An interesting perspective presented to us in one of our recent interviews was that despite acknowledging currency fluctuations as an issue, what affected their business more strongly is the fluctuating purchasing power of a customer’s home currency in relation to that of their destination currency — is this something that you see as well?

There’s no question that the relative value of the destination currency is absolutely relevant. If you were to match the GBP to USD and put it against passenger numbers going to the States, you will definitely find a trend, we’re very conscious of that. If we thought there was going to be a change in the perceived value of the destination currency against GBP, we would actually build that into where we should focus more of our marketing- there is definitely an impact. It has to be reasonably significant for it to have a proper impact but we have certainly seen it happen in the past.

Currencies are also closely related to economic and political perceptions of the destination, you can’t separate the two. Russia is a classic example: tour operators are all watching closely how the World Cup is going to go, what the relationship is going to be like between Russia and the Western nations etc. Those kinds of factors definitely have an impact aside from the pure currency side of it.

What exciting developments can we expect from Travelsphere in the future?

From a consumer point of view, we are going to continue delivering on what we have started. It comes down to delivering exceptional value for money and great service. If we continue doing that we’re going to drive the repeated customer loyalty, which has always been a cornerstone of the business. I think purely from a customer experience, one of the things that excites them is how we actually open up new destinations or develop new types of products that don’t exist in the market.

To summarise, the underlying ethos in this business, following our acquisition, is to be positively disruptive in the marketplace, and ultimately that’s to the benefit of both the business and the consumer.

Originally published at www.kantox.com on August 23, 2018.