Listed in: Staff & people

Wayfare springs to success by putting people first

The customer may always be right, but putting employees first is proving a winning formula for some fast-growing southern tourism entities.

5 minute read

There’s no denying the numbers behind the New Zealand tourism sector are impressive: worth $16 billion annually in export earnings, and $39 billion overall, it’s New Zealand’s biggest industry. But even in a climate of fair trading winds, the Wayfare group of companies is forging a path that’s leaving others in its wake.

Mastering growth

Wayfare gained a place in the  Master of Growth category of the 2018 Deloitte Fast 50 programme, recognising the success of a five-year growth plan that has seen Wayfare make major acquisitions, launch a multiple brand strategy and invest heavily in its existing assets.

And it’s their people who are leading the way, says Wayfare Chief Executive Richard Lauder.

“For us it’s always been employees first. Our approach is to give people great opportunities working within our group and to make sure we increase their mana as part of the time they have with us. We offer our customers remarkable experiences, but that comes down to us being able to trust people to deliver those remarkable experiences. And they do that because they’re engaged, they’re informed, they’re motivated and they share the vision”.

Among those opportunities are initiatives like the group’s award-winning Wisdom Workers programme, which draws on the experience of older staff to provide learning opportunities for younger team members, helping solve an industry-wide shortage of qualified skippers in the process.

Tourism pioneers

Wayfare (which recently changed its name from the Real Journeys group of companies) encompasses the Real Journeys, Cardrona Alpine Resort, Go Orange, International Antarctic Centre and Canyon Food & Brew Co. tourism brands.

Its origins date back to 1954, when its founders, tourism pioneers Sir Les and Olive Hutchins, purchased a small company taking visitors to Doubtful Sound. The couple grew the company to what later became Real Journeys – encompassing experiences and assets such as the Te Anau Glowworm Caves, Milford Track lake transport, the steamship TSS Earnslaw, and Milford Sound cruises.

However after several decades of consolidating existing operations, the 100 percent family-owned business made a step change, pursuing a growth strategy that involved major acquisitions, such as buying the Cardrona Alpine Resort and the Walter Peak High Country Farm (which it had previously leased) in 2013, and the International Antarctic Centre in Christchurch in 2015.

Alongside developing and regrouping its assets, the moves have led to some impressive gains. Wayfare Chief Executive Richard Lauder cites, for example, how annual passenger numbers on the Queenstown-based TSS Earnslaw have swelled from 120,000 to 270,000 and the numbers choosing to dine at Walter Peak have more than tripled.

Seeing such growth, adds Lauder, is all the more satisfying in a business he describes as “hellishly capital intensive”. Wayfare has banked with BNZ since its inception in the 1950s, and Lauder says the bank’s support in the acquisition of major assets like Cardrona and Walter Peak has been crucial, as has the support of Wayfare’s shareholder family.

A new vision

Creating a multiple brand strategy has also been a key pillar for growth, with the purchase of a second Doubtful Sound cruise business in 2012 sparking the creation of the Go Orange brand to complement the company’s foundation Real Journeys offering.

Aimed at the young, modern, adventure traveller, Go Orange has since gone on to acquire a number of other businesses, as well as other assets from the parent group, to create a suite of tourism experiences that include rafting, kayaking, cruising and jet boating.

“The adventure tourism sector is the fastest growing category in the wider tourism space”, says Go Orange General Manager Luke Taylor, and in order to capture its slice of the action the team behind Go Orange undertook extensive research to rebrand and create its product set.

The brand is aimed at millennials, but not the traditional ‘backpacker’ market, which Taylor cites has been in decline in recent years. Instead, these young modern travellers are more likely to be tertiary educated with no mortgage or children, and have good levels of disposable income to spend on unique experiences.

And the approach seems to be resonating with its customer base: Go Orange’s stellar growth has been recognised with its listing on the 2018 Fast 50 index of the country’s fastest growing companies, and the business was named fastest growing services business in the Dunedin and lower South Island region.

Bringing it all together

Taylor describes the process of bringing together a range of different acquisitions and operations under one umbrella as one of “massive cultural and structural change”, but its success has come down to uniting Go Orange’s people through shared vision and purpose.

“We have the whole ‘start with the why’ philosophy”, explains Taylor. “What we offer at Go Orange, and that has all of our staff culturally fizzing, is the ability to be a growth business; it’s having that vision that we’re only limited by our imagination and that one day we’ll look back on the company and say ‘we made this’”.

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