Intrepid Group: one of Australia's best-kept secrets in Melbourne

The "F" Series is our conversation with Founders about everything that is important for growing their company.

Geoff Manchester, co-Founder of Intrepid Group, talks about starting this global company and being the Category King that is aiming to be a 1Bn adventure travel company in 2025 while also being good for the world.

Intrepid Group was ranked #4 for 2019 World Most Innovative Company (Travel sector) by Fast Company.

TRANSCRIPT:

Josephine: Well, I thought it would be great to have an interview and a chit-chat with probably one of the best-kept secrets in Melbourne, one of the global companies I think, one of the global companies and success stories that have really created a category of its own,

I think, unknowingly, I think, that they created a category, in a way.

Geoff: Oh no, that's right, yeah.

Josephine: And I thought it would be great to have a discussion and talk about some interesting topics that I think a lot of founders struggle with. So, Geoff is one of the Co-Founders and still a director of Intrepid travel group. Maybe you just want to give a high-level, you know, how many years has it been since you started Intrepid, and how big is it now, you know, just a general review, that would be great.

Geoff: Sure, so Intrepid was begun 30 years ago, now, so we've been around for a while. And we began because my business partner and I felt that there was a niche in the market that wasn't being addressed, so we felt that there was a need for our style of travel. And what we do is we travel in small groups, with an average of about 10-12 people, travelling around a country. We really try to experience the country as it really is, we use local public transport as much as possible, we stay in small hotels and guesthouses. We're an adventure travel company, so we have a variety of adventurous activities on our trips, but the important part of it is that our trips aren't necessarily physically adventurous, it's much more that they're culturally adventurous. We're just travelling through a country, doing activities that anyone of normal fitness can do. Yes, we do have trekking in Nepal that you need to be pretty fit to do,

but most of our travellers are just people of normal fitness.

Josephine: Thank goodness.

Geoff: So we, as a broad business, we carry around 450,000 people each year, so we're the biggest adventure travel company in the world, and we have 120 destinations that we take people travelling to. And we have, our passengers come from all around the world, so one of the things that really appeals to our travellers is that they're not only going to visit a new culture, like going somewhere like Turkey, but they're also travelling with people from different cultures, and often they make lifelong friends with the people they're travelling with. And so, yes, over the years, Intrepid has grown pretty continuously over most of the years, but there have been lots of challenges along the way, and we're based here in Melbourne, Australia, and we have around 29, 30 offices around the world. Some of those are sales and marketing offices, and some of those are operational centres from which we run the tours.

Josephine: Yeah, okay, so if I'm not wrong you're around $300+ million now, upon the wiki.

Geoff: Yeah, probably a bit more than that.

Josephine: Yeah, yeah, plus, yeah, exactly. And you are looking at growing towards 1 billion.

Geoff: Yeah, so we have a, we've just released our 2025 strategy, in which we want to grow to be a billion dollar adventure travel company.

Josephine: Wow, that's amazing!

Geoff: And we think the opportunity is there because, really, people are travelling more, and as they travel more, they realise they want to get more out of their travel, and so the market's moving towards what we do, which is very much experiential travel, and it's very much real activities that we're doing.

Josephine: Did you, at any point in time, realise that 'wow, this is actually going to be big', I mean, like as big as it is now, you know what I mean?

Geoff: No, I don't think so, I mean, because it's hard to predict how much it can grow, and even just, if you go back 20 years, we thought most of our business would come from outside of Australia, because we distribute our product in the UK, North America, because those markets are potentially much bigger than Australia. But in the last 20 years, Australia has grown much more than we ever expected, so we still have, like, 40-45% of our travellers coming from within Australia, so there's an enormous scope. So, you know, we're continuing to grow in Australia, where we're quite a well-known brand, but in the UK, North America, we're not a well-known brand, so there's lots and lots of opportunities there.

Josephine: Okay, are there any companies that are sort of your role-model company? That you, wow, that you really admire?

Geoff: Well, I guess one of our role-model companies is Patagonia, because they're a company that really has a purpose at the core of what they do, and has shown that a company can have purposeful activities beyond making profit, but it continues to grow and continues to be profitable as a result of having that purpose at the base of what they're about.

Josephine: Okay, is there any company in Australia that is remotely near one you would, like, admire or think that, you know, it's on a good track?

Geoff: I mean, not to those, not to that degree, but I mean, there's a few companies, you know, like Kathmandu, the outdoor clothing company, you've got, what are they called, the cosmetic company that's been around for years and years, the retail cosmetic...

Josephine: Ah, right, Body Shop.

Geoff: Body Shop, for a while, Body Shop was owned by a big French cosmetics company for a long time, they sort of, they lost their way, and they're now owned by a really interesting South American company, now they're back, really, into the purpose area, much more strongly again.

Josephine: Right, okay.