When the odds are against you: How a small tour operator survived 2020

From the excit­ing pro­spect of a break­out sea­son to the exist­en­tial threat of bank­ruptcy, 2020 was a tur­bu­lent year for small Aus­trali­an eco-tour oper­at­or Live Nin­ga­loo. In this “Good Tour­ism” Insight, Sonia Beck­with shares how she and her part­ner fought to keep their eco­tour­ism dreams alive.

In Decem­ber 2019 we pre­dicted that 2020 would be our best year yet. After build­ing from a mea­gre start in 2016 with only one cli­ent, we anti­cip­ated selling out our entire 2020 whale shark sea­son (mid-March to July) and see­ing 30% growth in our hump­back whale sea­son (August 1 to Octo­ber 31). We had planned to bring on two full-time salar­ied staff for the first time, and scale into oth­er product offer­ings by the end of 2020.

COVID-19 changed it all.

With­in a 15-day peri­od we stood down our entire staff (none of them qual­i­fied for Job­Keep­er, an Aus­trali­an gov­ern­ment sub­sidy to help employ­ers retain people dur­ing COVID lock­downs), can­celled our entire sea­son, and wondered how we were going to carry on.

We were unable to refund all of the guests at once because we had just come off four-and-a-half months of off sea­son. (In remote and region­al West­ern Aus­tralia we are used to drastic sea­son­al swings but we always bounce back into the black with­in the first month of a new season.)

What were we going to say to our cli­ents? What were we going to do? How were we going get through this?

Hav­ing reflec­ted on 2020, sev­er­al things stick out that helped us sur­vive the year:

1. Act like the brand you’ve talked about and built 

Or more simply, stay on brand. It sounds basic and even clichéd, but when the world is upside down it’s easy to react instead of be thought­ful. Before mak­ing busi­ness decisions, my part­ner and I have always treated Live Nin­ga­loo as a per­son who has a seat at the decision table. It’s helped us bring our brand to life over the years and we used the same tac­tics when craft­ing mes­saging. Ques­tions that helped us shape the lan­guage were: “How do we want people to feel when inter­act­ing with Live Nin­ga­loo? What would we want people to say about Live Nin­ga­loo if we weren’t in the room? What will allow Live Nin­ga­loo to sleep at night?”

2. Learn to embrace vulnerability, communicate transparently

Using refund­ing as an example, we decided to tell our guests we didn’t have money to repay them all upfront but that we had a plan to do so even­tu­ally if that is what they reques­ted. We encour­aged them to instead take a gift card or book our fol­low­ing sea­son because that is what we needed to sur­vive. For us this wasn’t about what we were leg­ally oblig­ated to do, but rather what we wanted our brand to stand for. We decided to approach refund­ing logic­ally, pri­or­it­ising the return of mon­ies from the earli­est tour booked, in our case March, fol­lowed by each tour after that. Tak­ing that approach, we found that more than 40% of cli­ents decided to stick with us. We gave them clear ways they could help us and what our plans were. Many were happy to help once they real­ised we were here to stay.

3. Identify areas where you can be proactive and work on them

When the sky was first fall­ing, it was hard to identi­fy what to do and when. Then we real­ised we just needed to cre­ate some space and time to get our thoughts togeth­er. A quick news­let­ter updat­ing our cli­en­tele, alert­ing them that we would be in con­tact soon was all it took to slow the ini­tial com­mu­nic­a­tions from cli­ents so we could for­mu­late a short and a long-term plan. Time to think is import­ant. Take it.

4. Identify what your real problems are and solve them

Ever won­der what all of those mem­ber­ships you pay for are for? Now is the time to start learn­ing and then com­mu­nic­at­ing with all of them. We reg­u­larly con­tact all levels of gov­ern­ment and mem­ber­ship and tour­ism organ­isa­tions to update them on spe­cif­ic prob­lems we are facing along with poten­tial solu­tions. Tak­ing the time to do this con­tin­ues to be an evolving pro­cess. No one will know what you face bet­ter than you. You have to engage the pro­cess if you want to see results.

5. Know your numbers

For many, the less flashy side of busi­ness is the report­ing. Make sure you are basing decisions on what the num­bers and data show. It’s more stra­tegic and allows you the most long-term flex­ib­il­ity. If you are unclear about what that means for you and your busi­ness, there is free assist­ance with the small busi­ness devel­op­ment centres with­in each state [in Aus­tralia] and many of the mem­ber­ship organ­isa­tions you are already plugged into can help with resources or put you in touch with people / organ­isa­tions that can help you.

6. Be a helper

You won’t always be able to move moun­tains, but there is always some­thing to do that can be help­ful. It might be as simple as a quick call to let a col­league know you are think­ing about them.

All of the points above got us through 2020 but will also be what we employ for 2021. None of them are revolu­tion­ary. The point is that small steps often lead to large momentum. Tak­ing small steps con­sist­ently is key in the new envir­on­ment and will be the dif­fer­ence between sur­viv­ing and thriv­ing in the end.

What do you think? Share a short anec­dote or com­ment below. Or write a deep­er “GT” Insight. The “Good Tour­ism” Blog wel­comes diversity of opin­ion and per­spect­ive about travel & tour­ism because travel & tour­ism is everyone’s business.

Fea­tured image (top of post): Turtle, Nin­ga­loo Reef, West­ern Aus­tralia, Aus­tralia. Image by Chris Jansen sup­plied by Live Nin­ga­loo.

About the author

After adven­tur­ing in Aus­tralia, in 2016 Sonia Beck­with settled with her part­ner in remote Exmouth, West­ern Aus­tralia to start eco­tour­ism com­pany Live Nin­ga­loo.

Born and raised in the USA, Ms Beck­with has worked in all sorts of roles, includ­ing com­mu­nic­a­tions, pro­ject man­age­ment, cus­tom­er rela­tion­ship man­age­ment, and gen­er­al man­age­ment in the not-for-profit, private, and cor­por­ate sectors.

In her own words: “It’s my per­son­al mis­sion to help oth­ers move the needle every day in their tour­ism and busi­ness endeav­ours. I’m inter­ested in bring­ing people to the table who would nor­mally not dine togeth­er. I believe in strength­en­ing com­mu­nic­a­tion between like minds and oppos­ing views, then find­ing a way to work togeth­er to achieve something.

“If you are a mover and shaker you’ll like me, if you aren’t, you’ll at least be entertained.”