The Travel Growth Podcast

Riva Bacquet is the COO at SA Expeditions, a virtual travel company that specializes in curating bespoke, privately guided travel experiences to the Americas and increasingly to other destinations around the world.

She is a strong believer in the power and responsibility of travel to create positive change, and she takes a unique purpose-led approach to business leadership and team building. Trips created by SA Expeditions are designed not only to benefit travelers but everyone impacted by them, from local communities to the people in the business who run them.

As someone who is clearly hugely driven by personal development, Riva has so much to bring to the table in this conversation.

We go into depth on B Corp and the journey to get there, benefits of doing it and why B Corp is important. I’m personally fascinated by this as it’s a journey we’ve embarked upon with SEO Travel and I love hearing about other people’s experiences with it.

This ties into a wider conversation about purpose and what drives the growth of SA Expeditions which is not your typical travel business, from its virtual initiatives to its direction which is starting to veer towards becoming a tech company and an ‘uberised’ form of travel.

She has some excellent tips for women in business and hunting balance as a mum, changing paths from being a DMC and what made her take a punt on a couple of guys setting up a new travel company many moons ago.

I loved everything about this conversation. There is direct, actionable advice based on Riva’s experiences, thorough, educated insight into business and travel twinned with a nice dose of idealism, and also plenty of humility to show that Riva doesn’t feel she’s got it all worked out despite having achieved so much already.

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John O’Ceallaigh is the founder of Lute, an agency that provides consultancy, branding and content-creation services to luxury-travel businesses.

He was previously the luxury travel editor at the Telegraph Media Group, overseeing all their luxury travel content.

He continues to write for some of the leading luxury travel publications internationally, including the Financial Times, The Times, Departures and Robb Report.

John’s insight into the world of luxury travel is fascinating and comes from someone who has now seen it frommany different angles.

We discuss some of the incredible experiences he had during his time at the Telegraph, such as being the first to stay in the world’s first fully underwater hotel room as well as getting to the core of what makes good travel writing (and what doesn’t!).

John shares some excellent tips on how to get coverage in the kind of publications he’s worked at, and how to deal with journalists in an effective and respectful way, which includes the difference between pitching staff writers vs freelancers.

There is also some very practical insight into branding and what that means in the real world rather than just what colours you use on your website or what your logo looks like.

But the thing I enjoyed most in this conversation was how candid John was. He’s a straight talker and doesn’t pull any punches when explaining how he works which has clearly been a big contributor to his success. And he has some very surprising insight for budding travel journalists…

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Peter Banks is the Managing Director at Rudding Park, a privately owned luxury hotel with destination spa in Harrogate, Yorkshire.

He’s been at the helm of Rudding since the beginning, overseeing the launch and a raft of updates and improvements over the years that have led to Rudding winning award after award.

I have a strong personal connection to Rudding, with my brother having got married there and also being a very happy customer after many visits to the hotel and spa, so it was fascinating to sit down and speak to the man behind it to try and uncover some of the secrets to its success.

And boy does Peter deliver!

He’s a hugely entertaining storyteller and unsurprisingly has some very illuminating experiences to draw on after a long career in hospitality. From behind the scenes antics at hotels to the behaviour of the general public, he’s got plenty of material!

We talk in depth about how to build a culture of care and very practical actions you can take to do that in your own teams and businesses, from the recruitment process all the way through to the day to day management.

We also cover Peter’s thoughts on how Rudding approaches its brand, why cash is everything and some fascniatnig insight into how TripAdvisor works and what Rudding did in the past to gain success there.

Whether you’re an established hotelier, work in hospitality or just run a business in the travel sector I think you’ll find this fascinating. I did simply as someone who uses hotels!

This one is quintessential Yorkshire from top to bottom, with Peter even getting a cup of tea delivered mid conversation. So put the kettle on, relax and enjoy me talking to Peter Banks!

benefit from on many levels, whether its practical business advice or the empathy that comes from someone sharing their personal challenges so openly.

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Thank you!

Becky Harris is one of the co-founders of Viaventure, a DMC in Central America where she worked between 2001 and 2016.

Since leaving she has set up a range of businesses, from SaaS products like Squirellfish to Travel Kinship, her consultancy for DMCs.

I’ve known Becky for many years and she’s never been short of ideas or enthusiasm for business and is a wonderful person always looking to help others, as the nickname ‘Mother Teresa’ testifies which she mentions when we speak!

We go down all sorts of rabbit holes in this chat, including keeping focus, challenges with the traditional sales approach and what to do when you leave the business that has been your life for 15 years.

We also talk about the unsexy side of business, with Becky the new self-proclaimed queen of systems! It’s much more interesting than it sounds I promise!

Becky is a very open person and she shows a huge amount of vulnerability in this conversation about the challenges she faces as a single mum, dealing with a loss of direction and how imposter syndrome can overcome you.

But the main thing that came out of this for me was the depth of knowledge Becky has from her experience. She’s obviously got bags of practical knowledge from running a business for so long, but it’s also clear how much time she’s put into personal development over the years and she brings so much value here that people can lift and use for themselves.

It was a pleasure to spend this time with Becky and I’m super grateful to her for everything she shared which i’m sure anyone listening can benefit from on many levels, whether its practical business advice or the empathy that comes from someone sharing their personal challenges so openly.

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Thank you!

Nick Pulley founded Selective Asia in 2005, a tour operator that creates unique trips to Asia in a sustainable and meaningful way.

Nick is the founder of One Bottle at a Time, an initiative aimed at reducing the amount of plastic used throughout Asia by working with local NGOs.

He was also the behind the launch of the first ‘half moon’ parties in Koh Phan Ngan (which he insists are far better than the ‘full moon’ version!).

I met Nick last year when he reached out to me after we announced our 100% initiative to find out more around the thinking behind it. We’ve since had many discussions and I’ve learnt lots from him and his approach to business and travel which I’m really excited to share with you today.

We discuss how Nick got into travel and immediately had a desire to run his own business, how he defines success and what it means to be an entrepreneur.

But the main topic is something we both have in common which is moving our businesses to being self managed organisations and the benefits that can bring. We’ve both been working on this over the last year and this conversation highlights lots of the actionable things Nick has done that I think are super interesting and might well prompt you to delve deeper into the topic for your own business or the business you work in.

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Tom Bodkin is the founder of Secret Compass, an organisation that pushes the boundaries of what is possible, taking people, brands and organisations to corners of the earth which many say isn’t feasible.

Tom was an Officer in the Parachute Regiment for 6 years, and commanded on operations in Afghanistan in 2008 and 2010, working alongside Afghan security forces. He’s also a qualified Jungle Warfare Instructor and has spent lots of time working in Africa and the rain forests of Brunei.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and loves ski-touring, snowboarding, mountain biking and kite-surfing, all the more when it is done in the world’s wildest places.

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Zakia Moulaoui is the founder of Invisible Cities, a social enterprise that trains people who have experienced homelessness to become tour guides in cities across the UK.

Zakia and her team have empowered countless homeless people to create unique tours of their home cities to give visitors an experience that wouldn’t otherwise exist.

She has spoken at TedX, is a guest lecturer and Invisible Cities was awarded the accolade of ‘Best Tour’ in Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel list in 2021.

We discuss the journey that led to starting Invisible Cities and Zakia’s experiences with the homeless that led to that previously.

We also cover her experience in a startup incubator and the benefits that brought, some amazing guerilla marketing examples that Zakia used with Invisible Cities, as well as going into depth on social enterprise and the benefits of taking that path with your entrepreneurial spirit.

This is a really inspiring episode from a truly inspirational woman. I hope you enjoy it!

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Nick Kershaw is the founder of Impact Marathon, an organisation that uses the power of running to uplift communities and empower runners all over the world.

Since 2015 they have raised $1.2m for grassroots organisations where they tackle The Global Goals in those communities, and have organised races in 5 different countries and built a community of more than 400 runners.

In this conversation we discuss the thinking behind making a true impact, Nick’s clear desire to keep improving himself and how travel businesses should be approaching their work in a world that is becoming more and more demanding of social and environmental awareness and action.

We also cover community, the importance of empowering others, growing their team in a distributed way around the world and how Nick turns up in new countries with sometimes no connections and goes about building an event.

Marketing is also included of course, with Nick’s thoughts on cultivating word of mouth and some discussion around influencers, partnerships and what is at the centre of good marketing.

Nick is a thoroughly nice guy doing wonderful things and if you've enjoyed the podcast so far you'll definitely like this one. A fitting end to season 1!

Enjoy!

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Melvin is the founder of TravelDudes, a global community of experienced travelers who dig deep to find the best travel tips to share with the world.

Travel Dudes has amassed a Twitter following of more than 250,000 people and has similarly huge numbers on Facebook, Instagram and other social media channels.

Melvin is at the forefront of the conversation around influencer marketing in travel and partners with clients to create engaging content that reaches an audience of over three million travelers each month.

We cover a lot in this conversation, from building your dream team to valuing your investment in content and marketing to ensure you get the best possible ROI.

Melvin is a strong proponent of using partnerships to grow and we cover ways you can do that, especially in the early stages when you don’t necessarily have a big audience. We also get into the power of video and ways to use that for both social media and on your own website.

There are loads of takeaways in this one from one of the original travel bloggers.

Enjoy!

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Ben Simpson is the co-founder of Easol, an e-commerce platform specially designed for selling experiences and made specifically for experience creators.

Before this he grew and sold an events business, worked at an ad agency and ran adventure travel experiences before founding Easol, successfully taking it through the YCombinator accelerator programme in Silicon Valley and attracting $4.5 million investment to help the business grow.

Ben shares the kind of golden nuggets in this conversation that you would expect when you understand his back story.

Firstly, he helped grow Rough Hill, the UK’s largest millennial events and marketing agency, from a bedroom startup to 2,000 events a year with more than 2million customers and employing more than a thousand people across the UK. Then sold it to Chime PLC after working with huge global brands and soaking up the experience that came with it.

He then launched and ran Rise with his wife Lisa, a winter snowsports festival in France, helping it double in size over the first 3 years to more than 5,000 attendees, before running other adventure travel experiences in the Sahara desert and Swedish archipelago as part of Beyond Adventures. Frustrated by the lack of tools to run and grow their experience business, they decided to build their own software.

And so Easol was born.

Ben and Lisa took Easol through YCombinator, the best-known startup accelerator in the world, and rubbed shoulders with the best of the best in Silicon Valley, soaking up knowledge at every turn.

They are now coming out the other side, growing the business and using everything they’ve learned to develop a product they love and they know their customers need. Having now raised $4.5million they are looking to make an impact.

Our conversation covers everything from how to create a great brand to hiring fantastic people. And, of course, we delve into the YCombinator experience and the many, many learnings that have come from that.

If you like hearing stories about people doing business differently then you’ll love this one. I certainly did, and I’ve got pages and pages of takeaways that I’m going to implement with our work at SEO Travel.

Enjoy!

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Thank you!