Latest / Reframe First / Chris Martin, Director of Product & Technology at Golf Escapes | Tailor-Made Golf Holidays Explained

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Chris Martin, Director of Product & Technology at Golf Escapes | Tailor-Made Golf Holidays Explained · Reframe First

• Oleksij Rak: Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Reframe First. I'm Alexey, the host of the podcast. And let me welcome our today's guest, Chris Martin, Director of Product and Technology at Golf Escapes. Hi, Chris. It's great having you here. Chris: ⁓ you very much for inviting me on. It's unusual place for me to be, but yeah, I'm excited to get started and have a chat. Oleksij Rak: a lot for joining. From what I learned about the company, Golf Escapes is UK golf holiday operator for 20 years in business since 2002. Chris: Yeah, it's got quite a long history. The old owner quite well known in the industry. I started it in 2002, 2003 times, so maybe even a little bit more now. ⁓ And he ⁓ retired ⁓ after COVID. I think a lot of people in travel decided they'd had enough after that. ⁓ the was ⁓ bought by the existing board of directors. Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Chris: and you know it's been going from shrink to shrink but a well-trusted brand in the industry for quite a long time. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, it's quite a long time, 20 something years, it's already a lot. ⁓ company specializing in tailor-made golf holidays, ⁓ ⁓ run golf schools. So could you tell us more about what the company, the business is doing? Chris: Yeah, so... Yeah, absolutely. So company was built on Gulf holidays to Portugal and Spain originally for just FIT customers. It's since grown to become much larger than that. offer all over the world, Asia, South Africa. We do America as well, Caribbean, kind of, ⁓ but mainland Europe as well ⁓ and the UK. We also One of the largest parts of our business tower and a huge area of growth for us is pro-tuition trips where a professional takes away a group of seven to 15 amateurs and teaches them in the winter time. Obviously in the UK golf in the winter is pretty miserable ⁓ people like to get away and professionals run clinics for their students and they go to all different parts of the world ⁓ teach them in lovely Oleksij Rak: Thank Chris: settings. It's a really, really popular type of trip and it's a really, I'm honest, always, ⁓ professional that I meet, I think you should be doing this because it's a great way to teach your students and it's a business, ⁓ do well out of it. We've got some really successful pros. Our number one client is actually one of our professionals. He travels all over the place ⁓ yeah, it's ⁓ It's a huge part of our business as well as we run Pro-Ams. So week long or five day long trips, which are tournaments. So they have up to sort of 150 people on the trip playing in a tournament format of three or four competitive rounds in a team with a professional. yeah, that's kind of the basis of what we're selling. Oleksij Rak: you seen it, you got ⁓ a long list of golf courses that you are selling, so it's like hundreds of them. ⁓ Chris: Yes, general rule of thumb with product. So I started as ⁓ contract manager here before I became director of ⁓ and technology and the general rule with golf courses, we will sell almost anyone. ⁓ we're more particular ⁓ and selective. ⁓ try to keep it streamlined, but ultimately some golf courses, ⁓ there some top golf courses that draw in the names and are well known. renowned throughout the world we sell those as well but generally get some really obscure requests from clients ⁓ so try to contract as many golf courses as possible because they are all unique and ⁓ people really want to play that random golf course in the middle of and so we do our best to cover everything. Oleksij Rak: saying obscure request, what do you mean? Chris: you know, some clients will come along with their prefix itinerary. Obviously, we predominantly sell people. They talk to us about what they would like. And we know with ⁓ expert knowledge, ⁓ travel to everywhere that we sell. ⁓ been there if we've got it on our website generally. And so if a client comes to us and wants inspiration, that's ⁓ absolutely we shine. we do get requests ⁓ clients that come along and they know what they want. These are the courses and this is I want play. And can include, I mean, I've had some really random requests for, particularly in France, France is not such a commercial entity for golf A lot of them tend to be more private, so they're harder to get onto. Oleksij Rak: Mm-hmm. Chris: So, you get, they are also very top golf courses. So you can get a lot of odd requests for places you potentially have never even heard of, even as a contract manager of golf courses. ⁓ you know, you'd be like, where is that? but fortunately, fortunately being this industry, you know, how to, find out the price and, and locate, know, contact the right people ⁓ and facilitate trip. ⁓ one of the reasons I think this industry exists is. Oleksij Rak: This is Andrew. Chris: golf holidays are really complex itineraries. ⁓ people just don't want to do it themselves. And I completely get that. Even though I work in this industry, I ⁓ wouldn't the idea of putting together a golf trip for 16 guys and then to make it all work. So that's where this industry thrives is that we take care of all of that. ⁓ and make it easier on people to book what they want to book. Oleksij Rak: mentioning it, you also mentioned desperation. What do you package in the trip? Is it only ⁓ and the Gulf Coast? Chris: Absolutely. We will do door to door if you're required. So we can include flights. the biggest change in the industry in recent years is everyone wants transfers. A few years ago, was ⁓ car ⁓ and accommodation golf. These days, it's transfers. think people like to, ⁓ it's If someone's you up, taking you to the golf club, dropping you off. Afterwards you can have some beers, can do, you know, relax in the sunshine and not worry. Transfers a huge part of our itinerary building and one of the more complex elements. Club Hire well, so we will offer the full package you just want to go away. We can do everything. And we do bolt-ons, something that we try to... advertised quite a lot is that we're not just sending people to play golf. Particularly in South Africa, we do sort of wine tours and expeditions. Same in Thailand, same in Mauritius. The additional experiences. Wine tasting is quite a nice pairing with golf. So we will offer a complete trip. We will do the basics as well. Just golf. If you called us and wanted three rounds of golf on your trip, can book that. Oleksij Rak: you Chris: but we will also do very complicated, requests and do our best to facilitate whatever you're asking for really. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, that was my follow-up question, but you partially answered it already. But still, what kind of extra requests besides like tasting and some excursions? What do people usually want? Some local experience? Chris: And It's so varied, I mean, just as an example, I'm due to go on ⁓ an exploration trip in a couple of weeks to Thailand. And some of the extras that they offer are day trips to things like floating markets. So obviously, if you go to a in Asia or particularly Thailand, something you should probably see when you're there is ⁓ floating markets because they're amazing. I've before. Oleksij Rak: OK. Chris: and they're so unique and it's such an exceptional experience that it would be foolish of us not to be able to offer that. don't need to book it through us, you could book it yourself through and find out when you're there, but that kind of thing ⁓ everywhere you go. ⁓ always unique experiences to the destination you're going to. So will, I use wine tasting as an easy example. ⁓ We Ryoka as a region. You can't go to Ryoka and then not Oleksij Rak: . Chris: go wine tasting. It's one of the most famous regions in the world. a lot of our destinations the requests all inclusive. So this tends to be really big resorts that offer massive amount of experience. So Mauritius is a really good example, beautiful tropical islands ⁓ in the the all-inclusive resorts there offer excursions included, whether that be day trips to waterfalls, boat ⁓ and like. So we can facilitate all of that. And ⁓ sometimes will book it, but other times it will quite simply be putting you in the right hotel that allows you then when you're on the ground to choose your activities. There's all different types of people. Some people want a fixed itinerary. This is what I'm going to do this day, this day, this day, this day. And other people want to get there, arrive on day one. They know the goals, but after that they've got choices, whether it be bike rides, hikes, whatever it may be. And that's just about putting someone in the right resort and having that local knowledge. ⁓ Oleksij Rak: Mm-hmm. Yeah, so like it's fully packaged experiences like door to door fully packaged ones. Yeah, also. And what kind of like traveler segment is that? Is it right to say that like golf is for the rich? It's like it's a luxury segment. Chris: Thanks for watching. It's an interesting question. mean, the we do like generally golf holidays are someone's second holiday a lot of the time, which does suggest, you know, it's a more wealthy clientele. But I don't think it's exclusively that anymore. I think there is a lot of options for younger guys. Golf has experienced a real resurgence since Covid. it's hugely popular sport and becoming more and more accessible, which is there's less barriers now. There's plenty of clubs that you can go to that in the UK that aren't exclusive, they're affordable, driving ranges everywhere. Quite, you there's a lot of experiences, bars, bars and, you know, that in the UK now that offer golf. And so people are getting into it. And what I'd say to that is we, ⁓ we've got that just aren't that expensive for a holiday. We recently, in the last couple of years, we've been pushing Tunisia, which is really, I went there in 23 and I was very surprised by the sort of level of golf courses that I found and it's become a real push for them to drive tourism. Um, but you can go to, I was just listening to someone quote it quite literally before this phone call. Um, and you can go to Tunisia for a week, four rounds, uh, not including flights, all inclusive for 650 pounds. Um, so, you know, seven nights plus four rounds of golf plus your transfers. That's a very reasonable, and you could reduce that to five nights, three rounds. So you're not talking out of the reach of. like too many people if you it is dependent on person that that being said you know you've got other itineraries that we put together i was listening to one the other day it's going to cost nine thousand pound a person so you know there's swings and roundabouts to that ⁓ that common but ⁓ yeah there's loads of accessible courses and also you don't have to go abroad we sell the uk Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Chris: So you can jump in your car and go and do two nights away with the guys from your golf club at a resort in the UK or a few golf courses in the town. So I think it's like, I believe it's more accessible than it's ever been. But that being said, it is an industry, we are a business and one of the reasons for selling this type of trip is that, you know, there is, it can be, know, expensive and therefore as a business you make the higher margin. Oleksij Rak: Market for this. Yeah, I see. you mentioned that younger generation is also jumping into golf and what's ⁓ usual demographics. This is spread evenly across the generations. ⁓ Chris: And so our demographic is older. Generally speaking, our core customer base is between 40 and 60. And as I said, the reason for that, tends to be people's second holiday. And really in your state in life, you're not at a point where you're having second holidays. until you reach a point in your career where perhaps that's possible. So it's when 40 to 60 is general, but we... We book young people as well. One of the trips that I also got recently is a group of 18 year olds, which has been kind of interesting for the sales agent because of the way that they communicate with him very different. He saying that the emails that they were sending were more like WhatsApp messages. So like one after the other, like one line in each one, just pang, bang, bang, ⁓ But, know, I think ⁓ will case anyone and we can find the right destination for anyone. A lot of the destinations in Europe, the question is, can we walk out to bars and restaurants? ⁓ is there? Kosovo ⁓ Marbella is a big nightlife place. It's got golf as well and caters for more of the younger clientele. They want to go out, play some golf, but they also want to go to bars and clubs and beach restaurants and ⁓ places. I think there's a huge variety. I wouldn't want to box us into one area with a clientele base. think we can find something for everyone. Oleksij Rak: You already mentioned that for the trends that courses are becoming more affordable and that younger generation is ⁓ into that. What trends do you see recently? What other trends have you noticed over the last year or two years of time? Maybe post-COVID. Chris: What do think I would say about travel and golf travel in general? Trends are hard to identify. I'd booking seasons. We have busy booking seasons. ⁓ January, people have finished Christmas, they're sad, they want to put something in the diary that they are excited for. So January is a busy booking month. And then ⁓ for us, travel, our travel months are also busy, our busy travel months are also busy booking months because people come back and book next year straight away. They've been with the group of people they go with. what we've noticed is actually less peaks and in booking season now. So actually it's a bit of a flatter curve. We've seen, I mean we're a company that's growing ⁓ quite nicely. We've decent growth over the last three, four years. and that might explain a little bit why the curse flattens for us, there is less traditional booking seasons than there used to be. I've been in this industry years and it used to be very much January was the massive month and then September, October were huge months as well with some other reasonable sized months. Whereas now you're seeing a much more even spread and ⁓ busy booking months are... are more like, as opposed to being one at a time, two or three. So we see September, it starts to build and it goes right to the end of November now. That's in terms of booking season. And actually we're seeing that November is almost the biggest month, whereas it used to be sort of October. And same in the beginning of the year. It's a nice time to be part of a business that's, you we're busy, the inquiries are high and people are generally... interested. It's been, it's trend that we've noticed is ⁓ how you engage with people ⁓ how generate those inquiries. Social media ⁓ presence become a lot more important, I mean that's an obvious one I would say these days but... It's a lot harder to also measure how, whether you've got an inquiry from social media. know, just having a, you need to have a presence. as a, as a following, it'd be great if we had 50,000 people that followed our business on Instagram, for example. But, and, and to do that, you have to invest in Instagram and invest in influencers, et cetera. Which can be, you know, a minefield to find the right people that suit your brand and that have the right. the same ethos as you guys. But if you you might invest that money and it's quite hard to then gauge whether that's really, you know, generating inquiries for you or just building your brand awareness, which isn't a bad thing. But so I think that that's something that I think we would is a bit of a struggle is, you know, the marketing mix is so vast now and identifying where the best place is to to invest in a delicate process. I think we've done quite well in that area, I must say, but yeah, things move very quickly now. So ⁓ one Instagram is the most important thing in the world and you must be really hard on that. And the next day it might not be. It'll be the next factor. Oleksij Rak: With regards to, you mentioned the change of seasonality. It's not that maybe the change of seasonality is rather that it flatten out somehow. heard like from other businesses, something similar, that very like for probably... for instance, where January used to be the highest selling month is no longer is and it's just and solid over the rest of the year. What you think is the reason for that? Chris: think for think we see a lot more people booking a bit further ahead now. So January used be I'm going to book my trips for the year and I can book, can call up and I'll book May ⁓ because that's, know, ⁓ that's where I to go. Or I can call up and book September because that's where I want to go. ⁓ But what I would say is that the key destinations in golf for Europe are southern Portugal and southern Spain. And the fact is, and Turkey. So those three destinations are the big three that we book in Europe. the fact is now, because it's so popular, you need to book 12 months in a font. Therefore, if you're traveling in May, you must book for next May. ⁓ And so I think one of the reasons for the flattening of the curve is that you can't just book everything at the beginning of the year and go May, September, October, because there's no availability left. So you need to be ahead of that and you need to go on your trip, come back and book it again. And in some cases, even 18 months. If you're talking some of the top destinations in the UK, you will not get availability unless you are very far in advance. Oleksij Rak: I see. So in your case, it's basically dictated by the availability of a supply. It's not by the buyer behaviors, because usually, you know, it's quite often that Americans, they do book everything around December. It's Thanksgiving, Christmas. That's when they plan the next year. Europeans, especially Germans, do it in January, because that's when they plan the next year. But this case is dictated by the availability. Chris: Yeah. other things. Oleksij Rak: Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, that's interesting Thanks for that. ⁓ in terms like you mentioned a lot about Instagram, about influencers, about actually your customer acquisition. What do you mind customer acquisition channels and did they change recently? Like my business, we noticed like Google's behavior has changed a lot. ⁓ Chris: Thank you. Oleksij Rak: Organic traffic has changed a lot. And if you're dependent on paid traffic, you know, you can control it. If you're dependent on organic, it's really hard to control from Google update to Google update. Chris: Yeah, that is a really interesting point. Only a few years ago did we start implementing paid ⁓ traffic, so paid advertising. were a little late to the curve, but ⁓ had a really successful run of paid advertising and it's really boosted our inquiries. What find very interesting about Google's most recent update is they seem to have torpedoed their own business model. Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Chris: in terms of paid advertising because the new AI overviews are generating a huge amount of zero click searches. yeah, so it's I think on that front, think we've got a nice balance at the moment where ⁓ advertising, our organic SEO. Oleksij Rak: Mm-hmm. Chris: is ⁓ constantly worked on. We've got a huge website because we have so much product and so many destinations. we are meticulously going through tweaking our SEO organic written to create a large improvement on website. you change one page on a ⁓ website, it's not to change your organic. in performance, but if you change 100 pages ⁓ small changes over a period of time, ⁓ will improve your SEO. But I SEO very frustrating because it's not something you can quickly measure. So you can put loads of work in and then ⁓ you'd to wait six months and you might have got it wrong and it might do nothing, ⁓ which really hard to then justify in a small business spending that time in the first place. ⁓ you know, if you believe in what you're doing and you do it correctly and you seek the right advice, you can get it right. I think we are doing that. But with so our paid advertising is split across ⁓ traditional chart, you know, the social social media and ⁓ et cetera. And SEO, I think the interesting about the AI update recently with Google is it seems to have reverted ⁓ back to decent organic SEO, you need to have good quality content and original content to appear in AI overviews, which for a long time, organic content was kind of being pushed further and further down the page because so many people had paid advertising at the top. And now you're seeing a bit of a reverse in trend or reverting back in trend because organic SEO is important. It's what language models are picking up on. Where's the original content? Where's the actual answer to this question that's being asked and going out and bringing you in? So, yeah, it's interesting time for website performance. I think anyone looking at their data in the last 12 months will have had to rub their eyes and go, what's just happened there? Because of Google, you know, specifically because of Google updates where suddenly the click-through rates drop through the floor and you think, my god, what's happened to my website? And actually, no, no, it's fine. phone's still ringing and I'm still getting inquiries. So yeah, it's very difficult things to navigate. It changed quickly. Oleksij Rak: But still, like, organic is your main source of promote and understand of user traffic. Chris: Yeah, yeah, I think we've got a good balance of the two, yeah, we were still a good organic website at the moment still seems to be, you know, a cornerstone for any business. Oleksij Rak: I hear a lot of people using AI nowadays to ⁓ content for their websites. Especially you have ⁓ a of golf courses. I've seen of them and you have different types of packages ⁓ and whatever. of that ⁓ multiplies and a lot of pages. ⁓ Probably you it multilingual, I have not checked. So it's a lot of content. Chris: Yeah. Oleksij Rak: I use something in that regard. Chris: I think the hardest thing with when you have a lot of content, a lot of hotels and lot of golf courses with the best one in the world describing a thousand golf courses differently is quite challenging. They are unique and they are different and so are hotels. I would only say that organic, well, authentically written content is obviously the goal. AI is very good for bringing in, I think for helping you generate, but you need to write it yourself. So we have, I think, quite a good balance. AI helps us find the information that we're going to ⁓ but don't use it to write the content so much. we, we always, the draft is always kind of handwritten, I would say. Because and I would say like I was reading about this the other day AI Kind of is quite samey There's a there's a word I think I want to say it's tranquil or tranquility There's a word that it always uses when we we've noticed that I can't it might not be that is something like that That it always uses when describing And I'm not it will you know it get much much cleverer. It's you know as it by the day by the hour and that might change but I think you can tell AI written content still. And is, and it ⁓ one to the next, it's the of voice is quite monotone, I would say. So we do use it, but the phrase always rings true in my head when it comes to AI is a fool with tool is still a fool. So like you have to the tool correctly to make it. to harness its power, which is hugely powerful, but you shouldn't also rely on it solely to do everything for you. Because until it becomes a GI, I don't think that's really the way to ⁓ create content or to do anything much in your business. You still need to be checking on it to make sure it's producing what you want it to produce. Oleksij Rak: Thank you can implement a lot of guardrails around, but still, somebody needs to check what's being produced. That's what I hear. ⁓ do produce a lot with AI, but to successful, there should be a human who is reviewing that in the end. And ⁓ to that in the end. Yeah, sure. And ⁓ what you from growing very fast nowadays? Is it or is it demand? Chris: Mm-hmm. What prevents us from growing very quickly is probably ourselves. I think we've grown really steadily, 15 to 20 percent the last three years, three, four years every year, and we're on a nice path. One of the reasons for that is we're carefully building foundations for bigger growth. I think I've worked in companies that grow very quickly and they struggle to keep up with themselves and their infrastructure doesn't follow suit and then they spend their time, they might be bigger but then they've got a lot of infrastructure work to do when they're at the top. And that puts you in a precarious position in travel. think travel is a volatile industry on its own without also not doing your due diligence on the way up. we are a good growth path. But every with travel, there could be COVID tomorrow. So I think if not built on solid foundations, you're just asking yourself, ⁓ you'll put yourself in precarious position. we obviously, if I, had a magic wand, I would love to have an infinite budget to develop technology to bring everything in as quickly as possible. people, more developers, more technological But I that's not ⁓ and that's business. I think our budgets are strict and we're careful with that. So we're building ⁓ carefully and ⁓ with the that should. set us up for growth, bigger growth, but as long as you're growing I think you're going in the right direction. I don't think you need to grow really, really quickly. Oleksij Rak: Sure. And what keeps breaking continuously as you grow? Is it technology or is it like business processes that are in place? the limitation? Chris: I ⁓ limitations, we, ⁓ businesses, we develop in-house. The limitations are that we're a small team. it's always, ⁓ there's a few that are capable of taking technology further forward. But. Obviously, with a limited number of people, you can't move as quickly and technology is a fast moving industry. limitations are, you know, we can see what we want to achieve and we know the roadmap and the route to that. remaining budget and within our means we can't, you know. can't get there as quickly. And my concern on that front would be, obviously you need to get there. You're your goals out and achieving your goals. But I think we've, fortunately us, because we started a few years ago ⁓ with advancements, we've made a significant inroads to our ⁓ technological So in the next few months, I think we'll see some really nice things come together, as you no doubt have experience with. Oleksij Rak: you Chris: when you build your, you know, when you add your first update, it's never perfect. It's just the first launch of, you know, first iteration of whatever you've developed. And then you have to tinker with it, play with it. it, it has to be out in the wild ⁓ and be used for you to understand what you've got right and what you've got wrong and what needs changing and we've been doing that for the last couple of years and we're sort of coming to a point now where a lot of what we've built is ⁓ together. So I think I'm hopeful ⁓ we're in a place where things are about to come together and hopefully help us accelerate a bit faster. ⁓ Oleksij Rak: Yeah, having technology limitation is a good problem to have nowadays because the harder problem to have is supplier demand problems because they are much harder to work through in the age of AI having technology limitation. It's quite... Chris: Right. Oleksij Rak: achievable to fix. Awesome. What are you building right now in terms of growing your product presence, growing your technology and what are your bets about the future? What are your thoughts? Chris: Yeah, absolutely. a product perspective, we're about to launch Thailand as a new destination for us. said earlier I'm going on a trip. So ⁓ building our long haul programs more. Just before COVID, we'd started the same process. We ⁓ keen to get people further afield and explore more far reaching destinations. ⁓ Oleksij Rak: Mm-hmm. Chris: But COVID really reigned that in. after COVID, we went right back to the core value of the business, which was European Gulf holidays. But since then, we've slowly built long back out. And Thailand is our next big bet. We've just created all the content, all the pages. All the SEO should be, hopefully, really good. And we're running PPC for that. And ⁓ that's our next target market. ⁓ Golf out there is supposed to be amazing, the experience is supposed to be very, very good. And those trips are a bit longer, which is good for clients, good for us. they to include what we talking about earlier, of extra experiences, floating markets, day trips, et cetera. So we're by that from a product perspective. From a ⁓ tech note, tech. knowledge and perspective. We're about to launch a new booking area. So we've been kind of working through the process of sales. So we started with our quote builder and our itinerary builder and we've that's working really well now. And we're working on our sort of booking management area that should be launching in the next few weeks, which is really exciting because it's been a long time coming and it's been really needed. And what that will do is bring together a lot of ⁓ background technology that was developed but you couldn't really use it or see it because it was built with a view that this is for the next phase but in order to harness it within our booking system we need this final piece of the puzzle so the booking area will be launched. soon. what that is doing is focusing in on a huge amount of automation through the sort of smaller tasks that the admin tasks that should be automatic but weren't basically. ⁓ that be exciting because the main for us as a business is the client. And we want free up the people that work here to focus on the client, not on the admin. ⁓ Oleksij Rak: If you could share about numbers, not the revenue numbers, like numbers in general in this kind of industry segment, because I'm not really aware of them. What's the average net revenue from a booking, from a golf course booking in terms of percentage? Chris: Bye. Oleksij Rak: I'm trying to understand like the numbers that... Chris: So, so in your questions, so we work, like I said, it's such a competitive industry. So there's a lot of people, it really depends as any business, it depends on your overheads. If you work on your own and you book a handful of people a year, you probably can go a bit lower. If you're a startup, you know, we come across some horrendous price match margins, which just that you want to throw up. So there are some people out there that trying to take their share of the industry who sell at borderline costs, 3-4%, which is not sustainable for any business. But as an average, so there's two market leaders in this business. And a few years ago, they were building their share and they went very low. But these days, they're strong market leaders and they both have their strengths. Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Chris: and they're kind of at somewhere, depending on destination, they sell somewhere between sort of eight to 15 % margin. And that varies so much depending on destination, but that's kind of your ballpark. So as a business, if you're somewhere around that, then you're probably about right in the industry. But, you know, that being said, if you've got a £100,000 trip and you don't fix your margin at 15%, Oleksij Rak: Thank you. Chris: if you'll take 10 % on a £100,000 trip. So, you know, it's so subjective. is so subjective. We know what we need to sell out. We have baselines and we know what we need to sell out to cover, to make money on any booking. But then also we very much want to look after our clients and keep them booking with us. So we recently launched a loyalty point scheme. It launched at the beginning of 2025. so we gave out load of points to our top clients ⁓ our clients are accruing points by booking with us. So again, that changes the margin because they can use them. They're play and the idea is that they keep going back to us and we offer those people that are loyal to us have further discounts on what we can already do. Oleksij Rak: And what's the biggest driver of the cost is it like usually is client acquisition because it's the biggest competitive niche and everybody's competing for the client. But is it in your business? Client acquisition, customer support, booking process. Well, what is that? Because when ⁓ book trip for your clients, ⁓ you kind support them through the whole trip. Chris: Yeah, yeah, so we, I mean, as a business where we've had, we've had the platinum service fee for award for four years in a row. And so we do, we are there for our client for every stage of the journey. Some people call up, book their trip. We don't hear from them again until they leave and then come back. Other people call us every day. Oleksij Rak: Go. Chris: and we're there for that too. are ⁓ sometimes these are ⁓ in a lifetime trips for people that it's a really special thing. So biggest... probably driver of cost is the support network that goes with these trips. They are complicated. is, like I said, I maintain that's why this industry exists. They are very complicated. An end-to-end booking solution ⁓ the shelf doesn't really exist. So you can buy components that will get you automatic ⁓ to ⁓ but you to bring them all together yourself in an aggregator, which is kind of what we do. The infrastructure that supports the trips is complex and it needs those people, the staff, the team, the sales team to support a client. So I think that's the biggest driver of cost for us, is sure we've got that infrastructure in place. ⁓ And are value trips. People are spending thousands and thousands of pounds. So it's important that trust signals ⁓ are high because you're going to part with that sort of money. you want to part with that sort of money with a reputable company that you can trust. not just about when it goes right either if something goes wrong with our trips, which it can do. We're there and fixing it for the person. As best we can, we try and fix problems when they're on the trip so that they can still enjoy the rest of their trip. And that drives cost, obviously. Oleksij Rak: So it's not the booking process, it's not the itinerary creation, it's rather supporting them, supporting the travelers through their itinerary. Yeah, I see. Yeah, and for sure the customer acquisition, because it's all... Chris: Yeah, I think so. I think we have another cost factor for us is we have been investing in our technology and as you know technology can get expensive so that has driven cost as well. The last few years we've been in a phase of investment but it's manageable. That's more controllable as well, that is something you can stop at any given time if you think ⁓ know what at the moment things are a bit volatile we won't continue with this investment. Oleksij Rak: You know, since you are in business for like 20,000 years, yesterday I had an interview with a guy the industry of boat rental. There a huge fleet of 21,000 boats ⁓ and have a platform where you can come over and rent a boat. And because necessity, started using ⁓ AI extensively and they managed like also in business for a long time, they have a huge amount. of previous customer responses, the cases, the guidelines, and so on. So, I managed to create AI agents that basically save them customer support time. So, they managed to reduce the team of 10, I guess, from 10 down to two people of customer support, but still reducing the customer support response time down to 10 minutes by just having a proper AI agent in place who using all that knowledge base. automatically can respond to like about 50 % of inquiries requests from users and can provide suggestions for the rest 50 % can provide suggestions for the customer support personnel. I think it should be like case for you either because like you're in 22 years in business you have quite a lot of cases, documentation and like internal in-house knowledge base because AI is not perfect when you just ask you, LLM, just give me something to answer. But if you give LLM the knowledge base, it be ⁓ to search through the knowledge base easily and provide you with the response. I'm doing something in that regard because it sounds like ⁓ could ⁓ you. Chris: Yeah. And so we are fortunate that our database is very data rich. goes quite far back. And recent years, we've hugely developed our own reporting system. So we are able to act on the data very easily. It's very manageable, very beautiful. But in terms of your question, AI is something that we are exploring in a number of different areas to how best to use it and it is being integrated. I what's interesting that you said that obviously ⁓ they able to reduce their team ⁓ for customer At this point, I what we're to do is just we're trying to grow without necessarily needing to grow. the business size from a personnel perspective. And I think that's where AI was going to help us and not just technology development in general, because it's processes. It's a it's a difficult one ⁓ to say exactly. I mean, there's a few areas we're going to use it. We are already using it. But development in is, I think, ⁓ one of the areas to use it because having used a few LLMs myself to try and build certain aspects of our code et cetera. You to know what you're asking for and then you need to know how to implement it. I find AI enthusiastic when you talk to it. about how it's going to do this, it's going to do that, it's going to this. and you know, there's so many, again, already there's so many choices ⁓ ⁓ LLMs now that it's hard to know which one's the best one for the thing that you're trying to do. you know, a difficult industry to navigate people... Oleksij Rak: It doesn't matter because it will change tomorrow. ⁓ Chris: Exactly. And again, you know, I mentioned it earlier from our perspective, our trust signals is really important. But AI is so young that there aren't, you know, trust signals aren't really a thing. There's not a lot of review there's not, but there's a lot of money in it and there's a lot of people trying to sell it. ⁓ And, know, it's ⁓ the partner for you. I think we've got a good plan for how to implement it and what we're going to use it for. But it's as you said it could change tomorrow and you could and you might find the right thing the right platform for the one thing you're to build but the next day you need something else so it's just managing it and managing expectations of what it can do. ⁓ Oleksij Rak: Yeah, sure. Awesome. Chris, thanks a lot for this discussion. You mentioned you have 30 to 40 minutes, it's already 46. Don't really want to your time anymore. That was insightful. This is a new area of travel industry for me. I learned something. Thanks a lot for that. Before we wrap it up, do you have anything else you would like to add on top of what we discussed? Chris: Right? Peace. I think, no, think as you said, it sort of flew by 45 minutes of chat. So no, no, I mean, it was really interesting and thank you. And thank you for reaching out. I'm kind of surprised, but yeah, it was good. Oleksij Rak: Thank you too, thanks a lot and a great day and have a great vacation that you are planning. ⁓ Chris: Cheers, you too, take care. Thank you, Bowie. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, bye.