What to keep, change, do in a crisis (and why we should give a sh*t)

Sonia Beck­with’s tiny Aus­trali­an eco­tour­ism oper­a­tion Live Nin­ga­loo faced an exist­en­tial crisis in 2020, like so many travel & tour­ism busi­nesses glob­ally did (and still do). In this “Good Tour­ism” Insight, her second, Ms Beck­with shares the value of caring — a lot! — and how she har­nesses and sus­tains it.

When my part­ner and I foun­ded our micro tour­ism busi­ness Live Nin­ga­loo in 2016, we were full of beans, determ­ined to chal­lenge the long-held belief that mass tour­ism is the only way to carve out a sus­tain­able exist­ence in the tour­ism exper­i­ence sector.

Our small group mod­el was a stra­tegic decision. It allowed our staff to learn more about each guest dur­ing the book­ing pro­cess and through­out the day, and gave them the oppor­tun­ity to tail­or mes­saging mak­ing the exper­i­ence much rich­er for individuals.

We called it the “Give a Sh*t Factor”. Ours is high. Main­tain­ing our level of care every day for sev­en months on tour and 12 months in the office took great effort. It was drain­ing but the res­ults were stag­ger­ing. By the start of 2020 (pre-COV­ID-19) 50% of our cli­en­tele came dir­ectly from refer­rals. We had enough interest to diver­si­fy our products. And we were the busiest (and most expens­ive) oper­at­or in the region.

Anec­dot­ally we also learnt that our guests were mak­ing more con­scien­tious pur­chase decisions after their exper­i­ence with us. They were try­ing dif­fer­ent things to reduce their foot­print. And they kept a fin­ger on the pulse; remained con­cerned about the health of Nin­ga­loo Reef (where we operate).

Then COVID-19 happened. It was the most chal­len­ging time, but we wanted to stay true to form and treat guests indi­vidu­ally; hold their hands through the can­cel­la­tion and refund­ing pro­cess. It gave us an oppor­tun­ity to talk to them indi­vidu­ally too. We begged our cli­ents to take a gift card or rebook. Over 40% stuck it out with us.

Also see Sonia Beck­with’s first “GT” Insight
“When the odds are against you: How a small tour oper­at­or sur­vived 2020”

The pro­cess tem­por­ar­ily broke me. I felt I was swirl­ing in an emo­tion­al sea of unknowns. Waves that once felt exhil­ar­at­ing and even calm­ing at times (think wash­ing over the beach) became waves of doubt that threatened to cap­size everything we had built. 

It forced us to go back to the draw­ing board.

With crit­ic­al reflec­tion we real­ised our sus­tain­able oper­a­tion wasn’t nearly as sus­tain­able if one of us was taken out of com­mis­sion. We needed both of us to be focused, 100% of the time, to keep it going. We had an everything-on-the-table moment in which we brain­stormed ideas about what we needed to:

• keep to main­tain our “why”, 
• change to keep us safe fin­an­cially, and 
• do to thrive in the long term.

Here were our main takeaways:

1. No one can take care of us like we can 

We had to apply the “Give a Sh*t Factor” to ourselves and our busi­ness as well as our guests and cus­tom­ers. It was our respons­ib­il­ity to reach out to the gov­ern­ment bod­ies and organ­isa­tions rep­res­ent­ing our industry. Even if we weren’t offered a seat at the table, we were at least able to put our foot in the door or occupy enough space in the room to spark discussion. 

It’s easy to identi­fy prob­lems but it takes effort to illus­trate their impact with num­bers and to come up with poten­tial solu­tions. I would recom­mend tak­ing time to col­lect your thoughts in writ­ing and reg­u­larly com­mu­nic­ate with as many rel­ev­ant people as pos­sible to keep them updated. The pro­cess will also help you work through any changes you need to make internally.

2. Be prepared to do things differently

We iden­ti­fied that we spend a heap of time in the office. COVID forced me to gain extra employ­ment so all of the time I pre­vi­ously alloc­ated to keep­ing things tight and right wasn’t going to be avail­able. Through brain­storm­ing we came up with ways to spread the work among our staff to main­tain our ser­vice stand­ards. We opted for a com­bin­a­tion of adding more struc­ture around fixed items (such as account­ing), shar­ing the load intern­ally, and hir­ing a vir­tu­al assist­ant to cre­ate more band­width. We also took time to scrub our sys­tems and determ­ined that with a few tweaks we could save time through reor­gan­isa­tion and auto­ma­tion. We use Monday.com a lot, but sev­er­al oth­er pro­ductiv­ity apps are on the mar­ket (Asana, Trello, etc.).

3. Try new things

Try­ing new things is scary, espe­cially in a post-COV­ID envir­on­ment, but if you can’t try them now, when can you? So long as you approach the new thing you’re imple­ment­ing stra­tegic­ally and with thought­ful­ness, go for it! You may dis­cov­er some­thing amaz­ing comes from the switch. 

Also see Grant Char­les­worth’s “GT” Insight
“What trav­el­lers want post-COV­ID & how to pre­pare your tour business”

For us it was decid­ing I was going to take on anoth­er job. In addi­tion to the extra income that has kept us going through a volat­ile time, step­ping away from tasks we could del­eg­ate and out­source has allowed me the space to focus on things I want to do with­in our busi­ness rather than things I have to do. It may not be a new thing we keep forever, but it has been a good move so far, and will likely remain so for the next 18 – 24 months.

4. Rest

The only way to con­sist­ently offer a great product, no mat­ter the industry, is to take adequate time to rest. It’s some­thing we have been ter­rible at. Daily bal­ance doesn’t exist for us. A highly sea­son­al busi­ness means we go-go-go when the sea­son is on, and catch up on everything else in the dry time. 

We’ve found it help­ful to block out real down time between the waves to rest and reset through­out the year. We’ve also learnt the signs of what fatigue looks like in ourselves, in each oth­er, and in our staff in order to head it off early. For example, as soon as I’m feel­ing unin­spired or lack motiv­a­tion, I work in imme­di­ate down­time. It has been such a saver to curb fatigue once I real­ised what it looked like for me.

5. Practice being vulnerable and brave

The “Give A Sh*t Factor” now bleeds into every part of our lives. It requires us to be inten­tion­al about our thoughts, actions, and what we say. Do we make mis­takes? You betcha we do, but that really isn’t the point. Embra­cing who you are and your “why” is so import­ant, and learn­ing how to trans­par­ently com­mu­nic­ate your pur­pose pre­vents slip ups and allows you space to work on a prob­lem if a mis­take does occur. The meth­od also forces us to bet­ter our best; to push for great, not just get­ting some­thing over the line. It’s why people trust us and want to spend their money and time with us, and we take it seriously.

The points above have kept our pas­sion alive and strong through one of the toughest peri­ods of our busi­ness and will keep us tick­ing along well after.

Bot­tom line: if you don’t give a sh*t, you shouldn’t be here.

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): A Live Nin­ga­loo tour group encoun­ters hump­back whales. Photo by Nin­ga­loo Avi­ation & Jac­ob Hill 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.”