PEOPLE

MASTERS TO WATCH: HARCO VAN UDEN

1 december 2020Door MASTERS Redactie4 min lezen

← Alle verhalen

Harco van Uden, founder and CEO of ExperienceTravel, tells MASTERS how important personal contact is with his customers and that they specialise in tailor-made trips. "Our volume makes us the smallest travel organisation on the one hand, and the largest specialist on the other."

Harco van Uden, founder and CEO of ExperienceTravel, MASTERS explains how important personal contact is with its customers and that they are specialists in tailor-made trips. “Our volume makes us the smallest travel organization on the one hand, and the largest specialist on the other.”Text: Bart-Jan Brouwer | Online editor: Natasha Hendriks
Image: John van Helvert

Customized trips

Harco: “We started 23 years ago as a specialist in tailor-made trips to Africa. What started with safaris has grown into a comprehensive offering that covers the entire world: from adventure to cultural travel experience, from city trip to beach break. We ensure that every part of the day and every hour of the trip is correct, so that the customer only has to enjoy. Our clientele is in the top segment. People who consider quality more important than price, but at the same time want the right price for it.”

Explorer

Harco: “You can do a safari in a thousand ways, but nothing is more beautiful than the authentic way in which Livingstone traveled through Africa: with friends or family into the bush of Botswana, equipped with your own tents, cars and guides, two weeks completely away from the world. The tent camp is moved every two or three days, fresh bread is baked in the ground every morning, food is served at the campfire in the evening, everything is arranged down to the last detail, and at the same time you travel through the continent like a true explorer. We call that 'organized adventure', but it is pure. And when you travel with your own group, it never becomes a 'program'. Another example is Antarctica: if you land there with your own small group and can walk around among the penguins, you get so close.”

Passed!

Harco: “Corona has had a major impact on the travel industry. From mid-March to the end of June, no new trips were booked, people canceled their trips or wanted to be taken back - and the repatriation costs are our responsibility. We had customers on all continents, even in Antarctica. We had already brought them all back before the repatriation flights started. That was hard work, 24/7 together. But it wasn't very different from usual. Since the start of ExperienceTravel, we have had to repatriate customers from five to ten countries every year. Only now the planes were on the ground, it affected all countries and everyone wanted to go back at the same time. I call 2020 an exam year. In recent years we have taken our exams, this was the big exam. It wasn't so much the difficulty as the mass and the panic among the people. Personal contact with customers is one of our most important features. We didn't wait for them to call us, but contacted everyone from day one. We had to rebook a customer in New Zealand five times, because more and more countries were closing and airports were closing. Everything was now and every morning there was new news. But we got him back. He was so grateful for our efforts that he had a bouquet of flowers delivered to each employee and a plant to our office. Every day we received chocolate, flowers and letters of gratitude. In short: we passed our exam!”

Safety

Harco: “It was a very expensive course. Fortunately, we have done well in recent years and we are always prepared for the future. We were immediately able to switch very quickly and did not need any additional IT when this happened. We already worked day and night anyway - which is necessary when you have customers all over the world - and were used to sitting at home behind the laptop. If corona disappears immediately, we will not work very differently. We also continue to do the same when it comes to organizing trips. We organize tailor-made trips, individually. With your own family, in your own vehicle, at your own activity, at your own table in the restaurant... So we unconsciously did many things corona-proof. We just have an extra reason to pay close attention. Safety has always been our top priority.”