So You Wanna Be an Int’l Tour Operator, Huh? Part III

The lad (on left) who put Imagine on the map.

Thanks to a few licked stamps (and a boat-load of serendipity) my little “Imagine…Belize” tour biz got off to a most amazing start that first season.  That the travel editor of one of Seattle’s largest newspapers booked my first trip – and then (despite cold showers and jungle drug busts) came home to wax glowingly about his many adventures amid the islands and jungles of Belize, and heap praise on my little fledgling tour company was HUGE!

Verily put Imagine on the map, it did.  And filled up all three of my planned departures that winter (plus happily forced me to scurry to add 2 more.)  But that first season wasn’t a slam dunk on the road to success by any means, as selling a nation on the idea that vacationing amid the (allegedly deep, dark, dangerous) region of Central America (where machine-gun-toting Nicaraguan “Contras” were after all – uh, truly toting great big ol’ machine-guns!) was… decidedly an uphill marketing battle to say the least.

Nonetheless, I persisted – investing a portion of the profits from that first year in my very own desktop computer (no more pecking brochures and press releases at the library – yay!), and planning 3 more trips for the following winter.  Only trouble was… while at that point I was encouraged that I could eventually make the biz a full-time profitable endeavor, my part-time job in Human Resources didn’t allow me enough time to make that happen.  Indeed, the ol’ not enough money/yet not enough time dilemma.  Tough to take that leap into dumping a secure paycheck and jumping with both feet into building the business full time.

And then… the dilemma was solved (albeit at the time, most alarmingly) for me, when my part-time position in HRM was dissolved and I was suddenly layed-off. Yikes!  No income and only the proverbial “seat-of-my-pants” to somehow repeat the magic that had brought me such success that first season.  Like it or not, it was sink or swim time.

So I did what any passionate wanderlust with a newly discovered gob of entrepreneurial DNA streaming through her veins would do:  I channeled my inner-Michael Phelps and dog-paddled madly for the next several years.

An early intrepid Imagine group

In the early years I personally guided each and every trip of course.  And though the folks were all great, guiding was one of the hardest jobs I ever had.  My Imagine trips ranged from seven days to three weeks and let me tell ya – being “on” 24/7 for three solid weeks can be quite the marathon indeed.Not only ensuring that all accommodations, transport, and activities were all in place (often without benefit of even a confirmation fax), and coordinating the logistics of physically moving 12-16 folks from islands to jungles to beaches to cloud forests (more often than not on pot-holed dirt roads and/or suspiciously rickety boats), but making sure that each was safe, reasonably comfortable, and deliriously enchanted by each wondrous locale we visited.

Ah yes, there was simply no end to the fun and games of being a tour guide, and the challenges kept me anxious and on my tippy-toes most every blessed minute

Among the many “interesting” mishaps in those early days as a tour guide, I fondly remember…

And when I wasn’t guiding trips, I was down in the tropics scouting out new hotels and researching new itineraries. So I was out of the country most the year, leaving uh, nobody back at the “office” (my bedroom) to keep up with the nitty-gritty of marketing, paperwork and actually selling trips. I’d also added Costa Rica to Imagine’s menu of “Soft Adventures”. So between guiding trips and whizzing to ‘n fro the tropics in the off-season, I was necessarily out of the country a LOT those first few years.

Seriously. It really WAS a tough job!

All well and good.  I mean after all, “working” amid the splendor of tropical isles and verdant rainforests isn’t exactly drudgery.  And it surely beats toiling in a windowless cubicle 50 weeks per year.But from a business standpoint, I needed to be in the office (I believe I mentioned… bedroom?) answering the phone, dreaming up new marketing schemes, and devising ever more fantastic and adventure-filled itineraries for my schedule of trips  – in order to fill those those trips and keep the Imagine piggy bank chubby each year. So after awhile, I began hiring local guides in Belize and Costa Rica – providing a win-win for all involved:

• hiring local guides provided jobs in Belize and Costa Rica (where they were sorely needed);
• local guides would always be far more knowledgeable about the wonders of their native land than I could ever hope to be (and thus my clients enjoyed more intimate cultural exchanges); and I…
• I was then free to build the business, do slide presentations, participate in travel shows, etc.  plus still got to whiz off to tropical hideaways for research at least a few times each year.

Fast forward a dozen years, and over that time the business grew – not by leaps and bounds, but steadily as Belize and Costa Rica slowly entered the consciousness of mainstream travelers.  Personally I rather hoped that my two beloved tropical treasures would remain “undiscovered” forever.  But of course that notion was blasphemy for a lass who needed to sell trips.

Still… I stayed true to my original philosophy of the “Adventure” in Imagine’s “Soft Adventures” – always using small, locally owned hotels, staying in homestays whenever possible, eating local fare (I once talked the Tico cook at our hotel at Manuel Antonio into sending her son into the rainforest to nab an iguana for the group’s dinner!), and generally encouraging a cultural exchange on all my trips, along with a serious respect for the delicate tropical environment (from early on, I opted to donate 10% of Imagine’s net profits to environmental groups like the Belize Audubon and the Monteverde Conservation League.)

But time marched on, as it so reliably does. Things inevitably changed, and Imagine necessarily changed with them.  And though I know I said this would be the final installment of the “So You Wanna Be an Int’l Tour Operator, Huh?” – this post is already teetering on a tome, so best I save a final, final wrap-up for next time…

~ Tune in for the (seriously, I promise!) final chapter of this 20 year saga: “To Every Time…Turn, Turn, Turn” and how I learned to adapt Imagine to the changing winds of time.