How to grow your travel business to a year-round experience, wherever your customers may be

In 1986 Philip and Cathy Guest started Freewheeling Adventures in Hubbards, N.S., as a part-time lifestyle business. Passionate about the outdoors and life by the sea, the couple focused on how to fuel their desire to live without compromise while doing something they loved. Before launching their business, Philip worked as a marine biologist, which took him away from family and friends for extended periods of time, so he turned to woodworking to generate income while the pair developed their business plan. Their passion for cycling evolved into a business that helps travellers experience destinations across North and Central America, the Caribbean, Europe, and parts of Asia. In 2008 National Geographic ranked Freewheeling as one of the best travel adventure companies on Earth.

The focus is simple: The Guests don’t just sell a trip, they also strive to offer an extraordinarily active experience. Freewheeling will take groups to Japan’s Noto Peninsula in time to see the cherry blossoms or guide them through Venice, Florence, and Normandy’s D-Day beaches.

The Guests began with van-supported cycling tours and have added sea kayak, kite buggy, and inner-tube options to return the fun aspect to travel. “While ours is as an inbound industry that welcomes people to our shores or shows locals their own backyards—a focus we developed long before anyone coined the ‘staycation’ moniker—few people have considered their tourism expertise as an exportable skill,” says Philip. “However, some regional entrepreneurs have gone down the road to bolster their revenue base by working offshore and expanding their calendar.”

The winter season provides 10% of Freewheeling’s income. That may not seem significant, but this cash flow “keeps the wheels turning” while the Guests develop their upcoming summer season. “We keep an office going year-round,” says Philip. “In the off season we do a lot of marketing, promotion, and sales, and we offer the occasional winter trip as well.”
Keeping the office going through the winter allows the Guests and their staff to research new markets, which inspired them to launch tours in Mexico, Costa Rica, and Israel. While these countries are popular, Guest admits that the business, which caters to baby boomers, has plateaued over the past two years. He puts that down partly to the economy (their main client base is shifting from Americans to Canadians) and lifestyle. Baby boomers want to keep fit and are interested in exploration but don’t want a punishing itinerary.

Anyone who remembers demographer David Foot’s seminal work, Boom, Bust & Echo, will recall his prediction that aching joints would impact leisure pursuits, with the boomers switching from tennis to golf because it was easier on the body. Guest says a growing number of clients want a short bike ride, which is changing the product mix.

“We still like long distances, but our clientele is asking for shorter ones,” says Philip. “It’s a challenge because you have to connect the inns. The other challenge for cycle tours is increasing traffic volume everywhere in the world.” Trying to avoid it means constantly seeking new frontiers to explore and new ways to do it. Freewheeling also offers van-supported, joint-friendly walking tours.

While Freewheeling tours the world, Charlottetown-based MacQueen’s Island Tours, through its Wow Cuba division, has a more targeted focus; since 1993 it has specialized in outdoor adventures in Cuba. It appeals to two market segments: people seeking an adventure holiday and those looking for a relaxing winter break. Partnering with state-owned Havana Tours, MacQueen’s has become the main adventure company on Prince Edward Island.

Among MacQueen’s strengths is its ability to sell a complete package: airfare, accommodations, and adventures with Canadian paperwork. “Because of the unique restrictions forced on Cuba by the United States, all financial transactions occur here in Charlottetown,” says owner and operator Gordon MacQueen. “That makes it easier for Americans and others to discretely visit Cuba.”

MacQueen opened his bike shop in 1976 and struggled to find the right balance of selling bicycles in the summer and something to carry the business through the long winter. He sold wood stoves and pool tables, operated a youth centre, and worked as a U-Haul agent. Then in a bit of holiday serendipity, he saw an opportunity to take modern bikes to Cuba and begin a winter cycle-tour program there. “Our bicycle-tour business pretty well defines us in Cuba,” says MacQueen. “We do tours from November through April, and this year we sold out practically every tour. We have since expanded to do yacht charters, fishing holidays, and dive holidays.”

While MacQueen was discovering his future in Cuba, New Brunswick hotelier David Armstrong found an opportunity 145 kilometres away in Key West, Fla. In 1990 Armstrong built the 33-room Granite Town Hotel (which he has since sold) on the highway between Saint John and St. Stephen, N.B. He quickly realized that most of the traffic passing his property was heading to P.E.I. or Nova Scotia. “I wondered how we could keep them here an extra day,” says Armstrong.

The solution was to found The Outdoor Adventure Company (OAC) and offer day-adventure packages of whale watching, hiking, cycling, and sea kayaking to give travellers a reason to stop and stay at his hotel. This add-on business blossomed. “We kept growing and growing,” says Armstrong. “Cruise ships coming to Saint John were looking for a company that could provide large groups with outdoor activities, so we geared ourselves up to do that.” He invested in equipment, vans, and motor coaches and learned “once you got that big, you had to keep going.”

To maximize his capital investment, Armstrong focused on expansion into a winter sun destination. Industry relationships lead him to Key West, which was both under-serviced (there was only one other outfitter who focused on the general public rather than the cruise ship business) and a destination to which the OAC could drive its equipment. This is where Armstrong outsmarted himself. “What we thought was only going to be a winter business ended up being very large,” he says. In the beginning, 220 cruise ships visited Key West each year. Two years ago, when he sold his share of OAC, which had grown to 48 employees, 1,100 cruise ships were stopping at Key West, and his company had the bulk of their business.

When it comes to exporting skills Daniel Abel, Vaughan Perret, and Charles Leary could be the poster boys for the concept. In 1998 the trio of New Orleans foodies sold their Louisiana businesses, a restaurant and cheese factory, and built the popular Trout Point Lodge outside Yarmouth, N.S. Abel is still a practicing lawyer in Louisiana, Perret is a lawyer turned chef, and Leary chucked in the chalk (he taught Chinese history at Tulane University in New Orleans) for the kitchen.

The business partners knew they needed to do more than just open a wilderness lodge, so they focused on culinary vacations, a travel sector that has recently soared in popularity. As a result, they have been written up in virtually every major magazine in North America. “Every year since we opened, our culinary vacations have been very successful and attracted a lot of attention,” says Leary. “We’ve been named on a couple of worldwide top 10 lists for our cooking vacations. With the seasonality of Nova Scotia tourism, which became obvious to us after our first winter, we started tourism-related culinary vacations in Costa Rica and Spain to cover the winter and spring periods.”

In 2004 the partners opened a four-room inn in Costa Rica, which, due to the recession and staff challenges, they have converted into a villa rental. Since 2007 they have operated out of a three-bedroom villa in Spain; they intend to expand it to a 13-room boutique hotel and restaurant by the Alhambra Palace and have plans for a fourth property.

Some tourism professionals may relish a quiet winter season to recharge, but given the economic pressures on their businesses, few of them can afford the luxury of a six-month layoff. “Having to be seasonal in Nova Scotia has been somewhat of a blessing,” says Leary. “It gives us time off to focus on other projects, but we couldn’t survive only relying on the season at the lodge.”

Developing the winter season is an opportunity to expand a business without hurting or confusing the main brand. As these Atlantic Canadian entrepreneurs have shown, opportunities exist to grow your business—and it doesn’t mean having to do it in waist-deep snow at home. Philip Guest compare operating offshore to producing live theatre. “Every tour we run is like putting on a show,” he says. “Every detail needs to be precise, and quality control can be a challenge. But when it works, it’s a beautiful thing.”