Latest / Reframe First / Oscar Almgren, CEO of UTEGUIDEN | Building a Year-Round Adventure Business in Norway

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Oscar Almgren, CEO of UTEGUIDEN | Building a Year-Round Adventure Business in Norway · Reframe First

• Oleksij Rak: So, hey guys, welcome to another episode of Reframe First. Like I'm Alexey, host of the show. Let me welcome our today's guest, Oskar Ungren from UTGuiden, and ⁓ of ⁓ actually. So, hi Oskar, it's great having you here. Oscar Almgren: Hi nice to yeah nice to be here and to have a chat with you Oleksij Rak: Awesome. So, UTGuiding is a professional guiding company in Norway, unique nature experiences all year round and around Norway itself, or maybe other Scandinavian companies, you will tell us. And you do all these kinds of activities related to the nature, kayaking, to ⁓ seeing by climbing and high-excent, all other stuff. So, Norway is awesome. So, that's from my personal experience being there. So, could you tell us what you're building at UT Guiden and what's the mission of the company and what's the purpose? Oscar Almgren: Yeah. Yeah, we have Just as you say we do like a lot of activities we are running our business year round and goal have been to be like kind of a ⁓ one-stop for adventures in ⁓ our Marendromstad so this like the Oleksij Rak: you you Oscar Almgren: western part, north western part of Norway. to, mean, of course, like our summer season is still the by far biggest season, but we are like really trying to push it to have activity all year round. ⁓ like one the main things about that is to be able to keep our talents like regarding guides. to give them work all year around. We're like in a where like normally pretty seasonal. So like I used like a couple of weeks ago, I looked on some numbers and I think we had in 2025, we ⁓ like 10 days in total with like no activity all over the year. So it's like almost all round. Oleksij Rak: you So the guides that you mentioned, are they like hired by a company or you just outsourcing them part of the work? Oscar Almgren: Yeah, we have like you can say like a mix so we have ⁓ a couple of the guides they are working for us all year round and then we are like adding on so like in the summer season we are about 80 guides working in the company and now in the winter I have 10 and Then we have like guides coming from all over the world. And just as you said, we are doing like a lot of different activities. So we have like most of the guides are specified on like some of them are like ⁓ avalanche and snow professionals or they are like climbing guides or they are doing rafting or kayaking. And some of the guides, they want to stay here all year round and do like all the kind of activities we are doing all year round and some of them are really into rafting for example so they do the rafting season here and then in October when the season is over they go south to south like down to Africa for example or South America and they do the rafting there so we have like a mix of think last year we had like 25 nationalities in totally in the company Oleksij Rak: Oh, it's quite multinational. With regards to the deals, I was looking through the website and I found deals from renting a sauna for four hours near a fjord. Oscar Almgren: Hmm. Oleksij Rak: ⁓ up to like a week or two week trip somewhere into the mountains. So like what kind of deals do you have and how do you like shape them, package them? Oscar Almgren: Yeah, we have like, just as you said, like a great diversity in the trip. Like we have one segment we call our adventure weeks. So those are like the ones you refer to that they can be, even if we call them adventure weeks, they can be longer than a week. Like last year we had like a bike tour that went for a month actually. But those are at the moment, all of like, most of them are in this region, but we do some trips up in Northern Norway. Oleksij Rak: Mm-hmm. Oscar Almgren: and we're looking into doing some more trips in rest of Scandinavia too in this. There we're working with like a lot of ⁓ tour operators and agents are helping them out to tailor-made like adventure bike for their customers. Normally I group from eight to 16 people and then we do like guiding bikes if it's a biking trip. ⁓ transport, accommodation, food. So we are like making the whole package and designing the trip for them. And then we doing our daily departures. So that's like more like ⁓ the you refer to. We to activities all year round and we tried to for a couple of years to sell kayaking in the winter. But kayaking in the winter is everyone thinks, ⁓ it has to be freezing cold to go kayaking in the winter. And the thing is actually here with the temperatures we have in the fjord, there is actually not a really big difference in the temperature in the water in the summer. And then in the winter, the fjords never freeze or anything. So then we added on like an experience with like a kayak and sauna in the winter to like break up the, ⁓ people go, okay, I can go kayaking is really cold. Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Oscar Almgren: but then I can get straight into a hot sauna to make it easier to convince people to join on this trip. And this, yeah. Go ahead. Oleksij Rak: Awesome. And it also includes some accommodations, some hotels, so we'll just package everything together. Oscar Almgren: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So those two like are they like two like main segments we are working with and then of course we are working with a lot of We have some clients coming from like the crew segment into this and we also working with more of a like high-end luxury Segment like ⁓ bespoke like also like a lot of like you can say many of these trips we have is like half day activities where most of the people that If they're not coming here for like biking for a week, ⁓ they're to Norway because they want to experience Norway They're not coming here because they want to go for one activity They can go kayaking one day hiking another day and therefore it's really popular to do like a half like before lunch or after lunch for example, and then this kind of Yeah those are like the two like the two like main you can say the main objectives and then we have like different target groups in this in these segments where we're selling like quite a lot of like in the B2B market for example. Oleksij Rak: you have kind of like week long tours and have like daily experiences which you can like. ⁓ Yeah. Yeah, like with regards to B2B that you mentioned and like cruise, like I know the cruise industry is booming nowadays because like a lot of people are trying, like probably since COVID, people are getting used to cruise ship and cruise. So are there a lot of travelers like coming from cruise? Like that come... Oscar Almgren: Yeah, in general you can say like ever since the pandemic we have had like a yearly growth of 20 % every year since the pandemic. So it's like a Oleksij Rak: you Oscar Almgren: like we haven't really reached the roof yet and we can't really see like when we are still operating more or less in the same area so we're just like getting more and more clients joining us here in this area so it's not that we're like making a lot of new trips or anything like like this but like in general you see it's like it's of course like from the cruise industry too we have like more and more ships coming for the for the region yeah yeah yeah exactly Oleksij Rak: Yeah, people comments are want to like see the maximum over one or two days. And experience the maximum. Yeah, that's interesting. That's interesting one. ⁓ you provide like with regards to like ⁓ experiencing something local, something unique. Do you see this trend there recently? people coming to experience some local stuff or are they coming to see nature around? Oscar Almgren: No, I have the impression that people want to there's like a bigger trend in just as you say in seeing more of the you can say like meaty locals or like they want to see like the real the real deal you don't want to stand in line to see everything else as hundred people in front of you have have done and that's like of course have been like important thing for us too like and in this in our growth this have been like really important for us to like focus on even we have had like a growth in the quantity it still have been important for us to focus on the quality instead of the quantity and to like keep the focus on professional like the delivery in general on what we deliver of experiences. Oleksij Rak: Okay, I see. Yeah, that's interesting. With regards to like, do I know ⁓ your website? Like, ⁓ do users find your platform, your website? What your main channels? So if I go to Norway, how do I find you? Oscar Almgren: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we are like connected like ⁓ thing is we been in this in this region for quite some time now since I started the business in 2012. So like almost soon 15 years. And we have, you can say we have like more or less built the market of adventure tourism in this whole region. So I mean, before we started here, there wasn't any other companies. So we have like, now we see like smaller companies coming up and they are like Oleksij Rak: I'm start on page 22. . Okay. Okay. Oscar Almgren: getting fed by the work we have done in one sense. And it's important for us to keep on pushing the activities and focus on still delivering good... experiences for people that want to come to this region. Yeah, and like, and from like, so people like, we are like connected to like, for example, we sit Norway, Fjord Norway, we are selling like a lot of our trips on like, especially daily departures on different OTAs platforms. I see Oleksij Rak: and like with regard to like sources of like user reposition so Oscar Almgren: of course we're trying to attract as much traffic ourselves, like we are using we use of social media platforms, advertising on Google ads, we are using Meta of But I still see we often, we are in that position. I see when... I'm looking on our search words and who we are competing against that we are in quite many cases we are competing against I can see the six search, ⁓ six hits a Google search, we are five of them, but in True Visit Norway or Fjord Norway or the Destination Company or... Oleksij Rak: Yourself. Oscar Almgren: get your guide or advisor or yeah yeah yeah ⁓ Oleksij Rak: But they are still selling you. That's a great niche to be, so you're quite safe there. As long as people want to come to Norway. Oscar Almgren: Yeah, exactly. It's like important. But then they also like to like, I mean, ⁓ little bit like, I mean, it's good to use like some of these OTAs to reach out to new markets. But in general, it's like quite a big cost for coming out on like the commission is like generally pretty pretty high compared to what you get. like the, in personal opinion, there's no need of this OTAs. mean, ⁓ our here and our nature is so good that we could live without them. But then you need to have like a consensus about like, we are like getting pushed of course, if we see that like many of our competitors are there. ⁓ We need to be there to be able to compete with them on like all the all the riddles. Okay. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, absolutely. Especially with young AI agents coming into play and everybody trying to automate everything. You need to be integrated with the issue of this platform 30A so that you are continuously in the loop. Oscar Almgren: Yeah, and it's also like one of the most important things for us to have been that they have like a good integration with the booking system we're using. Because otherwise, if you don't have like the ones that have been like sleeping on building like new integrations that's like up to date, so you have like the the allotments in the like what you see on the website is the correct number is like you can't overbook your trips. All this is like really important us at least when we are like a bigger organization too like we have our trips on 20 platforms and then if suddenly one platform have to be like manually updated like I mean that's not going to happen. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, yeah, sure. regards, like you mentioned, you like on the market since 2012. So it's ⁓ like years already. That's ⁓ quite long time. So what have you seen that changed over like recent time? It's ⁓ from experience, like travel industries changed a lot ⁓ probably after pandemic. So pandemic times people were... Oscar Almgren: You You Oleksij Rak: closed at homes and then travel became necessity and people decided they need to travel. what Oscar Almgren: Yeah, yeah, it's like was interesting just because straight after the pandemic it was still like a little bit of a People had like got the bad feeling of You know, you shouldn't be flying too much and like there was like in general like that traveling was like a little bit under pressure but I can't really see that anymore it seems like everything is back to pretty close where it was before for like people traveling in general I think I have like a trend of more people want to do like private experiences and maybe that's like a flattening out a little bit but you saw it like pretty clear straight after the pandemic at least that people didn't want to be Oleksij Rak: . Oscar Almgren: Joining other people that they didn't know from before on a on a trip for example That that's like one of the and then of course, I mean We are one of our biggest like markets is like you like North America in general and then like would say like that I mean the pandemic was like pretty straight up I mean, there is like, okay, everything is closed Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Oscar Almgren: see you in a year it was like the the rules of the game was like pretty clear for everyone and then you could just like hope for like i hope this goes over as quick as possible but you know know that like or knew that this will be some kind of a couple of hard years but the last couple of years when we have had these like trade wars and all this where we see that it actually affects our booking especially on this like bigger Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Oscar Almgren: Like people are coming for like a week trip in Norway. Maybe they are paying like $7,000 for a week. And then suddenly it's like declaring war with half of the half of the world. then then even if US is see, like in Norway is seen as a like a safe country to travel to. There's no no one, but it's just like the general that's like the world doesn't feel safe. like this. So we see like all these things have a like a and ⁓ more like unforeseen than like the pandemic. We have been trying to be like, I in, ⁓ in. We are working like, especially in like these week trips, have been, are working with many and tour operators that are based in U S so it's like important for us to have like a good dialogue with them and that they understand that's like, yeah, here is like a everyday business in or like, it's nothing special really going on in, in Norway doing that and have like a good dialogue and Then I think like we have been that we are like where we are in the world, like really far away from a lot of other countries. So, ⁓ like the general like impression people is that it's like still safe to travel to Norway. It's of like the traveling back and forth. But when you are in Norway, you're not under attack when visiting Norway or anything. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, well, the road has definitely changed. Oscar Almgren: Yeah. Oleksij Rak: What else do you see recently? do you think ⁓ rest of the market is not seeing? Oscar Almgren: No, I I what I seen lately One of the biggest friends is I mean it goes Things is starting to go really quick in the society in general like we're talking about the tick-tock generation and Yes on the news that day on how many videos? like kids were looking at on tick-tock on a day is like 500 videos so like use these like ridiculous numbers and see it at least that is like for us we are selling experiences it's really important that like that when the customer gets in touch with us they are ready to buy or like they want to buy like I mean that's why they get in touch with us most of the time and then really need to be quick in answer them too if you like you can't come back with the answer in three days because then they have been yeah then they are like totally somewhere else they have maybe even forgotten about like that they were like and i that's like one of the main things i mean we have been starting to work and more with like AI integration in our business in general and how we can use it for building itineraries making like I mean Some of our inquiries are like yeah, I want to go kayaking. Do you have availability? That's like a pretty easy to check in the calendar if they haven't managed to see it themselves Yes, we have availability and you can just confirm it. But then we also have like more complex bookings where like ⁓ I was working with a request today, and his son they want to come here skiing for three days they were like in this mid-level of the skiing I've done some off-piste maybe wanted to rent some equipment did we have any suggestion where to stay how many days ⁓ they go for a guide how much does it cost ⁓ it's like starting to be like quite a big email to send ⁓ it's like also important that ⁓ still need to be quick and you need to catch all these answers and send it like keep the like dialogue going as as possible and there we see like with the use of AI to help out like where we can feed our own agents our input. I mean it's just like our price list, our product descriptions, all this but like and then we can have like a list on okay these are like the trips you want to sell this is where I have the best margin and to produce longer texts and descriptions on what doing ⁓ in a quick way it's like before it actually took me yeah 20 minutes to write it and then I have to write it so it looks good and it's like attractive and think that that's like I've been like really impressive the last just like the last year on like how texts are looking general I mean ⁓ a year you could see like this is just like AI generated this like ⁓ sounds really but now you're like Oleksij Rak: Okay. Oscar Almgren: really able to tune it into your tone of voice and really make it make it good and of course I need to check all the prices and all this but it's like it's building up the framework way much quicker than we been able to before and and I mean for in the travel industry we're like doing like a lot of micro transactions I mean, my neighbor, he sells salmon. And then when I meet him out here, when I parked the car, he's like, yeah, I'm born and raised in Sweden, but I lived here for 20 years and are like nowadays a Norwegian citizen. But he always like when he have sold salmon to Sweden, he always tell me. And then he's like, yeah, I just sent. Oleksij Rak: Mm-hmm. . Oscar Almgren: 20 ton of salmon to Sweden. He makes like one sale and then he sell like 20 ton of salmon and I do sale and I sell like a kayak trip for two persons. like, mean, now the is working is much bigger than ours, but we still need to do like a lot of small transactions. So you need to make that like the customer to be as good and easy as possible. Otherwise you will be like, we are like in already like in the travel industry, we are like a low margin business. A lot of as if have more work, you will have more guides, more hours. Like ⁓ you never like scale it in a way where like you work less and do more trips, it's like more trips, more working is always like following up, so it's like need to streamline all the things around it. Oleksij Rak: And how can you scale it? it is like your business right now depends a lot on humans, because on these travel guides who will like... travel with a gas to the top of the mountains or do the kayaking. So how easy is it to scale this kind of business? Oscar Almgren: Yeah, I think it's like it's pretty what we have done is like pretty unique in don't think there's any other guiding companies in Norway that are doing what we are doing you see like also I mean we need to do some bread and butter trips too like the easy trips that just like running daily departures ⁓ easy like logistics You need those ones and then you can build out on the like the shouldn't say the fun part, ⁓ you like understand like more of like the extreme trips ⁓ all these things where like, it, but it is tricky to like have the, and us it's like really important to streamline the organization and see where we are earning money, we're not earning money and focus on where we are earning money and ⁓ then also like able like to keep track of like when we are scaling up we need to scale up the other things but like AI can for example help us out in of course some some way to make human work in the back end much more efficient and we see like for example how to implement like have like a written ⁓ manual 15 pages or 17 pages where like really Oleksij Rak: . Oscar Almgren: everything you need if you're working here you can read here but if you have like a lot of seasonal employees you have new people coming in and even if they are told to read this before they come they to like not everyone will do it that's like that's the reality but then if we can make this like with ⁓ ai solutions we can make this information much more accessible So you don't need to ask your manager like how do I put in my hours in the system for example or how do I apply for this like tax card or a bank account or all this because the info is already there but if you can and those are like the kind of we need to get of in the system to make it go as smooth as possible so you don't get messages at 10 in the evening about like this small which also like raising like the stress level on the the our like employees Oleksij Rak: ⁓ And what you're building in terms of automating all of that. Because you can basically automate everything. And actually, the key to efficiency lies in reducing cost of the operation costs. The more you can... Oscar Almgren: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like we're really trying now to like make like all the things I'm talking about to build out like different sales agent that can be like a super good help for our sellers when they are just because we are like ⁓ lucky that we have been really good on writing manuals. information all these four hour guides but then after some time it's like the documents is starting you're starting to get so much documents so you're losing like almost the overview of the documents but if you then can have a system that can read all the documents then it's like really really good and like for example today i had like a inquiry from a guy who wanted to coming from us this summer rent a kayak for multi-day Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Oscar Almgren: and then I read on our website that you need to have like a kind of a kayak certification for like for doing a multi-day rental and then we have written some articles about this before on our website that I'm able to they have already put into the system so instead of this the email is like Where should I start? How should I explain this for him? Then I can easy use like, okay, can you give me a good reply on this? And then it's like feeding it with our information we already have. which gave him like, yeah, because he also said that they had like a lot of time before traveling here. So he was keen on doing the course in US where he was traveling from before he coming here. But like all this, but like to... If I should get someone to start looking in the internal documents, find this info, copy it, put in an email and write it in a way where it's like looks nice too. Oleksij Rak: How much of a margin do you think you're losing on this kind of inefficiencies? Because it sounds like a lot of manual work that needs to be put into planning history. You just mentioned that you were doing some personalization for a group of two farther than some, going to the mountains for skiing, right? And it's just a lot of... Oscar Almgren: Yeah, yeah, I think we are like losing, I think we are losing ⁓ like, I don't have a number on it, but like I'm confident that it's like a lot of time that's being spent because not all the inquiries will lead to a sale either. That's the thing. Like, I mean, how many inquiries do we get where we don't have? They're like, no, we will. I mean, actually it was like another customer I was talking with. They were also coming here and there's like, no, we choose to, we will wait to next year instead. And yeah, they came up some other plans or whatever. it's like, but when you have ⁓ the job put to get these itineraries for like 10 times, ⁓ you can use like, ⁓ all these itineraries to build like a new one. Like then the system will. understand how to like it. So I think it's like for us in the travel industry it's also like important to use the like ⁓ like the system that's accessible and I think it's like a lot of people that don't understand how how much you actually can do nowadays with modern technology in general. Because just as you said, mean, we are like a, where we are like the guide still needs like, and, like the good part in this, like the world of AI where like everyone will lose the job. Like my guides, they will never lose the job. That's like the only thing I'm a hundred percent confident of AI will never be able to guide my clients up safe to a mountain and take them down on the best place at the exact. ⁓ Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Oscar Almgren: cry time of the day. That's like, that's only the guy that can deliver that. But like everything around else what we're doing, we need to like streamline as much as possible. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, that's basically a back office. That's why I asked because like, I understand the business, we got some revenue from the travelers that come in. You need to pay the guides, ⁓ know, hotels and ⁓ equipment, all that kind of stuff. There is a margin, ⁓ margin, and that margin goes to the back office to serve the back office because in the back office... Oscar Almgren: and Oleksij Rak: Like you're receiving inquiries and you need to provide all of them, like itineraries, you need to build them. You have all this communication back and forth and so on and so forth. Like each of the steps, it's out your margins. Because as you mentioned, he may cancel. After all the jobs you put in, he may still not come over and probably the percentage is quite high. Because it's a funnel, not everybody converts. Oscar Almgren: Hmm Oleksij Rak: The more you streamline, the better it is, the higher the margins. That's why I was curious, what percentage of the total margins that you have, what percentage is being hidden by the... Oscar Almgren: Yeah, we try like when we are like pricing a trip the margin should be like 30 % at least like on a week trip we like put on like add-on on 30 % but then you have like like but if we can then start to really like streamline the whole process behind it then like the in the Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Yeah. Oscar Almgren: because the 40 % is what you put in before, but then if that will be like the reality in the end, when you have like questions back and forth and you're writing emails where you don't take all the questions straight away. So you need to send like another email and like all this time consuming. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's time consuming. It's in budgets. But basically what a team of five can do, what does can be done by one person. Like I don't know the size of operations you have in terms of black office, but yeah, it can be like optimized. like with regards to the margins, by speaking recently to a few guests, like... They all tend to agree that the market shifts towards two kinds of segments. First is really a thin margin on mass scale. had chat with a guy ⁓ who selling tours in Asia and he says nobody ⁓ cares personalization and all that kind of stuff. ⁓ It's a thin margin and we need to be as ⁓ efficient possible to sell a And the other option is expensive, like high marginality tools with a lot of personalization. And now you mentioned that you got thin margin, but on the other hand, you named some margin and plus you put a lot of personalization in. So where is your business? Oscar Almgren: Yeah, yeah and and and for us like as I said there in the start we are like working in different target groups too So in like some of them we have like a lower lower margin then you have like a in like when we are working in the luxury segment. There is like normally not the case of The cost is irrelevant I want to do this And I won't do it at this time Fix it and then ⁓ it costs Thousand or ten thousand that doesn't matter because they have like a lot of money, but they don't have a lot of time so it's like and that's like where we have been We are working in We are delivering activities to like a lot of different target groups But we have also been ⁓ eager get like kind of I shouldn't say like a monopoly but but we have like a really big chunk of the total adventure market in this region and and we can of course say like okay we want to drop this segment because we have like a not as good margin in this segment but then we also open up for potential competitors to to dig into our market as like when we have now a big part of the market then we can hold like a kind of a vacuum on the on the market which is like beneficial out like from a like a business strategy perspective for us. And then I think we have been like really good on like streamlining the like organization like now lately and really start looking into like okay where can we work smarter and can't work smarter? Where are we like and where like in the strategic part too like okay this one cost us to deliver these activities cost us quite some money but we want to be here because it's important for our brand. if ⁓ would be like 100 % commercial then we'll probably just close the business of the ⁓ do like the peak summer season and then close the business rest of the year to just like cut all the costs we can but like for me personally as owner of the business it's also important that we are able to contribute to our local communities where we are doing our business and that we do much better with not closing when the season is over. We have like taken over like a small boulder gym in Stranda where I live that ⁓ well like bankrupt after two years like we will never earn any money of that on that boulder gym. but if we can level it on zero and we will like the tourists coming here our nature but then the use of our nature will benefit all of the people who lives here for example we have given like free access for the Bodhidhyam for like the first to seventh grade in school so they're there climbing a couple of days a week for free so like kind of my That's not any like economic value on that, like for me, I sleep better when I know that we are like contributing to the local societies in that way. Oleksij Rak: that's a big trend like sustainable build way of running business. ⁓ that's in travel, so that you do care about local communities and the way they evolve and they benefit from ⁓ your business there. ⁓ Oscar Almgren: Yeah, and I think that's like, that's like also like something that everyone say it's important and it's like a trend. But then on the other hand, I see a lot of businesses that I see some of our competitors, they don't do as we do. They take like the, take the part where they have like the biggest income and then the rest of the year, they just like closing down and are happy, happy with that. that's one of the things ⁓ I is like a little bit hard maybe to reach out to like ⁓ our what we are do like you just compare kayak trip A with kayak trip B you don't feel like even if you can find some info but like yeah we are supporting the local communities like but like yeah okay yeah that trip was like a better price on that I go for that one the pictures were nice But I think in like ⁓ on our like bigger trips when they're staying for a longer time, they're like the customer journey is much longer. So there we will be able to like get them to really understand like the uterguiding way of doing it, why they should come with us and yeah. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's And are you working right now? Why do you see like ⁓ business in like one year time or ⁓ a year, one year, two years time? What plans do you have? So what you're building right now? Oscar Almgren: Yeah, we want to like expand a little bit more. see still like potential for it and then we haven't really, we are like investigating several possibilities for it. I think in the, as I said there in the start about like keeping our talents like the guide we need to look into how we can contribute into other businesses that are how can we share resources with other businesses can our guides help out in other businesses in low season or these kind of ⁓ things much more outside the box than like I'm just working here and this is what I'm doing. But like, okay, if, you're able to help out here a little bit too, then we can give you like a full time position instead of like working on like hourly basis, for example. And to like really for us, like the coming year will be to like, how can we make our business even more sustainable in that way in like how can we keep our talents all year round? How can we increase the business in our like what we call like the shoulder season? like the typical the spring and the fall between like before and after like the peak in the summer. How can we because we like if we want to build up the we can say like yeah we earning money in the summer let's build the summer even bigger. Oleksij Rak: Mm-hmm. Oscar Almgren: But if we build the summer even bigger, our structural costs will increase over the whole year. like, you will still have higher cost. So it's just as important how can we build up like the incomes in the rest of the year to like compensate for this. you like, don't think it's like, you can't just like grow in the middle. You need to grow. all over the year and that's like what we are like want to do yeah yeah yeah you see like we have like a we're coming out in end of september then we have great numbers and then we have like a Oleksij Rak: And what keeps breaking, Kassigov? Is it like the between seasons? Or it like... Oscar Almgren: October like this year October was actually pretty good, but like then you have like November, which is our slowest month of the whole year And how first of of December is pretty slow too. And then we're coming into Christmas Christmas is a good sees like a part of the like three weeks you called Chris like 20th of December to like the 10th of January Christmas new year and a little bit extra and then we again are back on like January, February, but it's like pretty slow too and then you're coming in in the winter our peak winter season March, April and then a little bit of a dip in between the spring and the summer really kicks in and then June, July and August so it's like how we can because we won't be we can reduce some of the structural costs of course but not all of them but like we need to be like getting even better use of the resources we have internally all year round and ⁓ don't think we can get people to travel all year round either so it's like we're looking into some both like other like there are like businesses that have the opposite season from us that have like the peak in the winter for example can there be some like strategic partnership with them where you can build like the whole a whole year together because they have a good winter we have a good summer for example they will be able to lift each other's like low seasons but ⁓ looking into some like other Oleksij Rak: Mm-hmm. Oscar Almgren: like industries but like that are still like close connected to what we are doing. Oleksij Rak: because there is a big disbalance in seasonality and you cannot really grow much because you would have even bigger disbalance in of ⁓ people need to... Oscar Almgren: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And when you see like the differences between like the July that's our peak in the summer and November, which is like the low, it's just like, I mean, it's just like ridiculous if you like look into like another kind of industry. I think they would be just like laughing if they saw like the, saw the real numbers. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, yeah, sure. And like, do you think that the travel is moving? Like, where do you think the industry will shift in next like year, two years of time? With everything happening in the world nowadays, is trade wars AI? Oscar Almgren: I hope that people will be more and more like in ⁓ they are traveling, what they want to experience that you're like not traveling for you only the traveling but you want to have like more quality on what you're doing so that's like my like hope and like in one sense what I like that like the the kind of trend what I see at least is that people care like they're asking much more questions about what we're doing how we're doing things in the in the customer ⁓ journey and i hope that will be like the when you see like people doing like good money in really business you see like like there are like companies in the travel industry that's like what you're selling is sorry but this is like shit what you're selling but it's good money Oleksij Rak: Mm-hmm. Oscar Almgren: and I hope really really hope that we can get rid of that that's like people really acknowledge quality Oleksij Rak: Yeah, you notice during this this interviews recently, I noticed a trend kind of that there ⁓ be something more monetizable in travel ⁓ top of transaction on top of accommodation or whatever. So whether community or trust or something like people want something something more. It's not only come over to Norway, but come over and like experience some local community or to come over and share something with somebody, don't know, or ⁓ trust in the business and the way of working, that's what you mentioned, like not doing some shitty business, but doing some ⁓ right Do you this trend growing or is it just like my observations? ⁓ Oscar Almgren: No, no, no, I think so too and like we really see it on like we're like the more ⁓ we spend with the customers too The more likely they are like because like many of our customers they're coming here once in their lifetime And they won't come come back after that, but then you see Like typical winter customer they're coming here skiing Oleksij Rak: Mm-hmm. Oscar Almgren: with us they're staying for like three to five days they're coming back year after year like two in two weekends i'm going back with a company group i've been skiing with them for four years now this is the fourth year in a row and i some customers after that coming for like maybe skiing with them seven years or something they're just like coming back to the same area and still like keen to do more because they think it's like what we are doing is good and they everything around what we doing too and see like with these people coming on week trips too there's like much easier to sell them to get them to come back like I mean that's like what we have why we have been expanding and doing some more trips for example in northern Norway because When they have been here biking with us one or two times, then we need to sell them something. If we want them to come back, like they're really keen to come back with us, but then we need to give them something, something else. you Oleksij Rak: How do you actually, like this is interesting one for me, like how do you actually manage to, like I put it differently. I have a similar problem in my company. So the problem is that my customer understands value our company only after they work with us. It's very hard to explain this value upfront. I'm hearing from you that clients who came over to you, they come back again and again. How do you find these clients? How can you sell to these particular clients? How you sell your value before they come over? ⁓ Oscar Almgren: Hmm. Hmm. Yeah before what we have done one thing we have done is that we did some videos like with interviews with the guides So like doing like a third like many others when they're ski selling experience skiing you see like some powder skiing some mountains If you watch and you like selling the feeling but instead we'd made like a Interviews like we called guide talks So like one minute videos where like they talk about like the and the clients and like it's so many different clients to really sell. That's like one of the ways how we try to sell this like experience and what we are doing. Like it's not only because if it's only about the skiing interviews, then you like compete with everyone else on the same, the same way. So you need to be like Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Oscar Almgren: and I think that's like also in the this kind of society where everything is like going quick and in one sense a little bit unpersonal. People really appreciate like as you mentioned before too I think like authenticity that is like a real experience we see like with a lot of these like videos we post in social media with like normal like talking heads videos or I've done like a lot of webinars with like Avalanche awareness webinars. I had one here like a one off month ago where we have like 1500 people joining live on this like webinar. it's like I mean people want to and that's like really low what's your say low tech. Oleksij Rak: you Oscar Almgren: It's just like a talking head like this and I talk a little bit Norwegian, some Swedish mixing words and it's just like, mean, out from like design way of looking on it is like, ⁓ shit, like how can you do this? Like you're like mixing everything you're not allowed to mix, but it's like it's authentic. People like, and think that's like an... Oleksij Rak: It's authentic. Oscar Almgren: It's important that like we, at least want, we'll never forget. it's the, like, it's still the guide and like, yeah, this guy, like he told me this and we did this like the memory is like, that's what we're selling. We're selling those experiences and we still need to focus on that. like all this with and everything that's just like for running everything in the back office to make everything go as smooth as possible. Oleksij Rak: So basically that's a lot of talking be able ⁓ deliver the messages ⁓ yourselves and about what you do. ⁓ so that others can hear that at some point. Because making videos, everybody's making videos. We were trying to write down on the website how good we are. Everybody's writing a good thing. And it's hard to distinguish. Oscar Almgren: Hmm. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's like import, import, yeah. Oleksij Rak: And it's hard to show how different you are before people try working with you or come over to you. yeah, that's a lot of talking from what I hear. ⁓ That's what I'm trying to do. Awesome. That was a really great conversation. I don't want to take of your time because it's almost one hour of discussion. Is there anything else you would like to add on top of that? ⁓ Oscar Almgren: Yeah. No, I think it was like really nice talking with you. It was ⁓ really nice. Oleksij Rak: Awesome. Thanks a lot, Oskar, for coming over and having this conversation with us. Have a great one. Best luck in what you're doing. Oscar Almgren: Thank you, thank you. And you need to come here to Norway. As it's like, yeah. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, yeah, thank you and bye. I definitely will. I've been there once and I want to come over again. like, this is a tomorrow. Two are Northern and Iceland, so this is like two outstanding beauties. For sure. Thank you a lot. Oscar Almgren: yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah