Adventure Travel with Marjanna Akhtar - Great Expeditions Travel

Area/Topic
Worldwide, SCUBA Diving, Responsible Tourism

Marjanna Akhtar
Owner
Great Expeditions Travel

Marjanna’s interest in international travel began in the late ‘80s while pursuing her BA in animal biology at the University of Colorado, and she took her first underwater breath on scuba!

That was the beginning of a travel career that spans over three decades; beginning in 1990 with a specialization in the niche market of scuba diving and the destinations found in the South Pacific.

Over the ensuing years, she has evolved the business to reflect the diverse interests of the company’s growing clientele base, as well as her own style and passion for world-wide travel. Destinations in Africa, Central & South America, SE Asia and Europe now feature strongly in the company's portfolio and incorporating authentic experiences into customized itineraries for individuals, families and small groups of friends are the foundation of Great Expeditions Travel.

Throughout her travel career, exploring the world did not halt when motherhood arrived and her son, now a young adult, has been immersed into international travel since the age of 9 months.

When not on her desk, you can often find Marjanna on the back of her horse, enjoying the rural small communities of western Colorado with her dogs and husband.

https://greatexpeditionstravel.com/

Summary
Marjanna Akhtar, owner of Great Expeditions Travel, discusses her background in adventure travel and the importance of responsible and sustainable tourism. She shares her personal experiences and the impact of travel on her own life. The conversation also touches on the challenges of over-tourism and the role of tour operators in promoting responsible travel. Marjanna emphasizes the need for travelers to support local communities and conservation efforts, and the importance of connecting with people and cultures while traveling. Marjanna Akhtar discusses the benefits of being a member of the Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA) and the importance of networking and connecting with responsible tour operators. She highlights the role of ATTA in bringing together all the components of the travel industry to grow the market in sustainable ways. Marjanna also emphasizes the challenges and rewards of running a tour operation business, including the need for extensive knowledge and education in the industry. She discusses the value of human contact in travel and the importance of personalized experiences. Marjanna shares the satisfaction of creating life-changing experiences for clients and the pride she feels in her work.

Takeaways

• Adventure travel can be a means to explore a destination and connect with local communities and nature.
• Responsible tourism involves supporting local communities, conservation efforts, and distributing income to the people on the ground.
• Over-tourism is a concern, and it is important to find ways to minimize the negative impact of mass tourism.
• Tour operators play a crucial role in promoting responsible and sustainable tourism and educating clients about their choices.
• Travel can help break down prejudices and foster understanding and connection among people from different cultures and backgrounds. Being a member of ATTA provides networking opportunities and connections with responsible tour operators.
• ATTA brings together all components of the travel industry to grow the market in sustainable ways.
• Running a tour operation business requires extensive knowledge, education, and the

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Transcript

Jason Elkins (00:00.478)
Welcome back everybody to another episode of the Big World Made Small podcast for the adventure traveler. Today we're very fortunate. We've got Marjanna Akhtar here with us. She is the owner of Great Expeditions Travel. Marjanna, did I say right? Marjanna. Okay, we're good. We discussed that a little bit before I pushed the record button. So I'm happy to hear that. And, but more importantly, happy to have you here. You've got kind of a...

Marjanna Akhtar (00:16.58)
You did. You got it.

Jason Elkins (00:27.87)
Interesting background as a lot of folks in this business do and I look forward to digging into that a little bit I know that you just came back from a conference We're gonna discuss that a little bit and just kind of new things and new well They're not necessarily new but new ways of looking at things in the adventure travel space. So Welcome to the show. Happy to have you here

Marjanna Akhtar (00:46.756)
Thank you, I'm happy to be here.

Jason Elkins (00:49.726)
So where are you physically located right now?

Marjanna Akhtar (00:52.772)
Yeah, I am in a very small town that most people say where it's called Paena. It's located in the western slope, the western side of the mountain range in Colorado Valley called the North Fork Valley. And yeah, it's a wonderful small community filled with a wide variety of people, which is what makes it such a wonderful place to live. So.

Jason Elkins (01:05.47)
Okay.

Jason Elkins (01:15.678)
Did you grow up close to there or where did you grow up?

Marjanna Akhtar (01:18.916)
No, my father was in the Air Force, so I was a military brat. Born in California, didn't get a chance to live anything anywhere too interesting. It was Cheyenne, Wyoming, Dayton, Ohio. But he did retire as a youngest, so he retired when I was 12 in Colorado. So I do call Colorado home since I've been here since early days.

Jason Elkins (01:24.126)
Okay.

Jason Elkins (01:30.43)
Jason Elkins (01:43.294)
Do you think that it sounds like you didn't necessarily live overseas, but do you feel like your childhood and growing up as an Air Force brat had any impact on your desire to travel, your openness to new adventures and experiences, or what do you think?

Marjanna Akhtar (01:59.908)
I probably, you know, there was always, my brother was born in Japan, so my parents did travel earlier before I came around. But yeah, I don't know, I did have the early travel bug, I would say. I was always enthralled with the idea of going places, and I certainly had friends through the military who did go overseas, and yeah, possibly.

Jason Elkins (02:21.182)
Yeah. So what was the, the first big thing? Cause this is the part of the conversation where we dig into your childhood a little bit, not necessarily childhood, but earlier years and what inspired you, what gave you the travel bugs? Are there any big fond memories that you have? Like, yeah, that's the moment when I realized, I mean, I read your bio, but I, not everybody listening to this has read your bio. So tell us a little bit about what, what got you going.

Marjanna Akhtar (02:28.452)
Mm -hmm.

Marjanna Akhtar (02:41.604)
Sure.

It was a pretty clear moment actually. I was at CU. I was doing my undergraduate degree in biology and I had a genetics class and my instructor talked about some of the studies he had done on conch populations in the Caribbean.

And he had done those off the island of Islamou Hariz and the Caribbean reef up there. So I just got enthralled with the whole idea of going to Mexico and seeing the reef and the turquoise water that he talked about. And I did so on my break between semesters that following semester in January before school started again and decided to try scuba diving while I was there. And...

just fell in love with the whole concept and it went from there. So I started off in travel at a dive shop doing scuba diving travel. So that was probably the moment. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (03:36.158)
wow.

Did you, did you, I'm curious, did you wait until you finished school or you were, whatever that looks like for you or were you working in the dive shop while you finished up school or what did that look like?

Marjanna Akhtar (03:49.668)
Well, it was a little slower process than that. It was after I graduated and I had a degree in biology and wasn't sure where I wanted to go with it next and started working in the dive shop part -time afterwards while I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. And it just seemed like that's what I wanted to do. And I didn't pursue other options and just stayed with travel then.

Jason Elkins (04:12.926)
Very cool, and the dive shop was in Colorado.

Marjanna Akhtar (04:15.652)
Yeah, in Boulder. It was the first dive shop in Boulder. And unfortunately, it's no longer there. But yeah, it was a great start. And friends with the industry and started traveling off to conferences, learning new destinations. And the travel bug from there evolved further into Australia. I had the opportunity to go to a live aboard on the Great Barrier Reef and connected with a small adventure tour operator.

and they were doing not just the diving, they did represent the boat, but they were doing a lot of super cool adventure travel and it really was back in the 90s adventure travel. It was a buzzword at the time, it was a newer industry for sure. And they were doing sea coking trips and rainforest trekking. They had a really simple, basic, but wonderfully authentic outback camp in the middle of Cape York Peninsula. And that just inspired me to do that.

me to start my own company. I wanted to do more than the underwater world. The topside was this fascinating and the wildlife and the nature and all of that captivated me as much as the underwater world initially did. So that's when I did the leap into travel ownership. I decided to do it.

Jason Elkins (05:28.798)
Very cool.

Jason Elkins (05:33.054)
Very cool. I'm curious. So when I think of, you know, I grew up in the Rocky mountains, I'm from Wyoming and my father actually was a scuba diver, but a lot of people think, okay, Rocky mountains, Boulder, Colorado dive shop. What's that? You know, so I don't think we can go forward without you giving it, painting the picture of what it's like to work in a dive shop in Colorado. you know, what was the mix of things you were doing on a daily basis? obviously.

Marjanna Akhtar (05:47.076)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (06:02.686)
were learning and helping people prepare for trips and you were traveling as well. So tell us a little bit more about that.

Marjanna Akhtar (06:09.892)
Well, an interesting fact is that Colorado has, or at least did, probably still does, the highest number of certified scuba divers for a landlocked state.

States that have oceans will possibly and probably have more divers than Colorado. But as far as landlocked state, we have a very high percentage. And probably a lot of that is the clientele base of Colorado with people are adventurous. They tend to travel internationally. We don't have an ocean. So if they're going to scuba dive, they're going to go somewhere. So travel side of it was obviously a big part of that industry. And when I was in the dive shop, I was strictly in the travel department.

Jason Elkins (06:26.654)
Mm -hmm.

Marjanna Akhtar (06:52.15)
I did train up to dive master, but that was only so that I could have the qualifications to lead group trips as traveler. Not so much because of my desire to teach scuba.

Jason Elkins (07:01.342)
Okay, okay.

Jason Elkins (07:05.95)
Okay. And the shop also did probably lessons for people in the area, stuff like that. And I did work, I worked in a fly shop, which is similar, but it's a little bit more easy to get your head around a fly shop, fly fishing shop in Montana. It makes a lot of sense. And we had a lot of travelers from outside the state, but a big part of it was to get people hooked on it and then go take a trip with them.

Marjanna Akhtar (07:11.008)
yeah.

Marjanna Akhtar (07:21.156)
Yes.

Marjanna Akhtar (07:34.052)
Exactly.

Jason Elkins (07:34.494)
you know, especially if you, if you learn how to scuba dive in Colorado and maybe do your open water certifications and some of the colder, colder waters there, it can be quite appealing. I'm sure to go on a trip. So were you dealing, go ahead.

Marjanna Akhtar (07:48.516)
Yeah, I was just going to say traveling then of course led to gear purchase and more training and so it you know yeah it's definitely an integral part of the dive business for dive shops in Colorado especially.

Jason Elkins (07:54.398)
Yep.

Jason Elkins (08:03.614)
I'm curious what your friends, family, or anybody in your life, you know, you went to school, see you, got your degree in biology, and then went to work at a dive shop. And divers and travelers probably can relate to that, but maybe there's other people in the world that have a harder time getting their head around that. So did you get resistance or were you supported by your friends and family when you did that?

Marjanna Akhtar (08:28.52)
More or less, my father was always trying to get me to go on and get my master's degree. I'd have brochures put on my desk every day, like, you know, did you think about this? Did you think about that? So, yeah, no, it just was an evolution. And I think when I came to the point where I was ready to do my own business,

Jason Elkins (08:35.07)
Mm -hmm.

Marjanna Akhtar (08:51.14)
people were very supportive. In fact, I had great support from friends and clientele base and everybody. And part of that was when I was doing travel at the dive shop, a lot of people were like, well, I don't dive. So they didn't think about me as somebody who could help them with travel. And the message of, well, I'm not just doing dive travel. I can do other travel. And my inclination and my...

Jason Elkins (09:07.262)
Mmm.

Marjanna Akhtar (09:18.564)
Direction was heading in that in that way to do that. Like I said the topside adventures as much as any underside underwater so The idea of great expeditions travel was to actually keep diving out of the title So while scuba diving is certainly something we still do a lot of people still think of the company, you know for for the underwater worlds It's probably more so other adventures and other destinations at this point

Jason Elkins (09:32.318)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (09:47.23)
Right, right. And I think with any of the niche, like diving or fly fishing travel, I actually managed a diving and fly fishing resort in Belize for a while. So it was a mix and we lived in Montana before we went there. So we did our open water certification in Montana, went down to Belize. But I think where I'm going with this is oftentimes these activities, I don't know if the excuse is the right word, but it kind of gives us a good reason, an excuse.

to go to some pretty specific, you know, spectacular places. So let's say you go on a dive trip. Oftentimes it's not about the diving. It's part of it. You know, it's, it's, it's easy to, to imagine, okay, we're going to go, you know, dive on the coral reef, but it's all the other things that are going on around it that are oftentimes the things that you come back remembering the most. I know with a lot of my fly fish, you know, I led a lot of fly fishing trips and typically it was the time around the dinner table socializing, or it was.

Marjanna Akhtar (10:16.804)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (10:42.206)
something that was completely unrelated to the fly fishing or the diving that really kind of, you know, maybe a connection with a family member that you've never traveled with, somebody traveling with a parent or that type of thing. so I suspect, you know, you probably, it, it, it makes sense to kind of expand a little bit because there's so much more than just the diving. And if you're speaking to someone that's not a diver, they're like, well, why would I book a trip with you? I didn't, you know, I, I get that. yeah. So.

Marjanna Akhtar (11:07.716)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was definitely the case like again, I started in in the world of Australia with connecting with a small tour operator.

which was the impetus for starting Great Expeditions. They were looking to have US representation and grow the business more so in the US market. And so we did. That's what we did. And absolutely, it took my father with me and we had this wonderful scuba diving experience together. We got certified together. It was my college graduation present. So it was something we did together. But yeah, it was all the other things that we did that really captivated me, like I said, and gave me the opportunity to do it.

gave me the real impetus to move on with.

experiential travel, I guess, using an activity, whether it's an adventurous activity or whether it's something on a very soft adventure basis as a means to further explore a destination. And that can be through a lot of different avenues from, again, very high adventure and physical or on a slower pace of gastronomy and connecting with the local culture through food.

Jason Elkins (12:20.574)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, because I think, you know, the word you'd mentioned adventure travel was kind of a buzzword back in the nineties and you know, still it gets tossed around quite a bit. And what does it mean? I don't know. I think we all kind of have our own definition of what it means, but I love the way you just described it. for me, it's kind of anything that pushes you outside of your comfort zone a bit and creates new, new connections. I'm going to call it connections with.

typically human connections either with yourself, maybe, you know, claiming Kilimanjaro is, you know, you're connecting with yourself and some of the challenges and struggles or obviously connecting with other hikers. But I'll tell you what, going and eating street food in Cambodia can be pretty connecting as well outside the comfort zone, all those things that I just mentioned. So I tend to think it's a pretty broad definition. Each one of us has our own.

Marjanna Akhtar (12:55.652)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (13:15.55)
What's adventurous for me is might be different for you.

Marjanna Akhtar (13:19.524)
exactly and I think you're spot on. You know it's a very broad term and I think in some respects it even it's had a few evolutions from being adventure to becoming more in the luxury end. You know people thought adventure travel was all about you know sleeping in a tent somewhere and when you realize that it has a range of experiences from yeah you might sleep in a tent in some places or doing some things but you could also be on a

a very exclusive resort. And part of that adventure is because you're in a very remote area. And it's about that and not necessarily about, again, roughing it or being hardcore physically active. So and you're right, I think the connection with people is what it's really all about. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (14:04.03)
Yeah, I've even...

Jason Elkins (14:10.878)
Yeah, I've even considered, you know, kind of changing up the branding and the naming of the podcast here just a little bit, you know, more of like for the adventurous traveler as opposed to the adventure travel podcast because, you know, I've spoken with some, you know, tour operators that, we don't do adventure travel. Okay. Well then I don't want to get stuck on the word. The word is not important. It's like, okay, do you help your clients, you know, experience new things, learn new things, connect?

Marjanna Akhtar (14:17.572)
Yeah.

Marjanna Akhtar (14:33.604)
Right.

Jason Elkins (14:40.958)
And again, I think the connection part for me is huge. You could drop me in the most beautiful place on the planet with the most interesting whatever's going on around it. And if I don't have a human being to connect with when I'm there, it's just not the same. Whether it's connection with locals that live there or connection with family members that are traveling or other travelers.

I just, I just don't enjoy it when it's just me by myself. unless it's something super extreme that I just have to overcome, you know, maybe camping, I guess, camping in the woods for a month by yourself would be an adventure. but then even then you're connecting with yourself, you know? And so I don't know.

Marjanna Akhtar (15:26.18)
Yeah, it's a tough word. It's a tough, you know, 30 second elevator concept. Because something that's very adventurous to one person could be, you know, just everyday life for another person.

Jason Elkins (15:35.92)
Yes.

Jason Elkins (15:43.038)
Yeah. Yeah. And we were so varied. I mean, some people don't even want to travel and that's fine. I get that. I remember when I was, I was working for a tour operator that was part of a larger company. We had a lot of retail stores and one of the retail associates had said, you know, Jason, we really need to put together trips for people that don't like to travel. It was basically what I heard. And it was, you know, my wife wants to go to Europe, but she doesn't like to travel. She doesn't.

Marjanna Akhtar (16:04.148)
laughs

Jason Elkins (16:12.542)
You know, she worries about security, safety data, you know, all this stuff. And is all I could hear him was saying was my wife doesn't really like to travel. Maybe we need to create trips for people that don't like to travel. And I was like, okay, that's interesting. And at the time it seemed very strange, but I'll tell you with technology and some of the things that are going on with technology these days, I believe there are people that don't really want to travel, don't really want to leave the house, but...

They can do virtual tours. They can go online and they can sit and watch YouTube videos for hours and hours and hours and experience in their own way, all this different stuff. Now, I watch the videos, but then I gotta go. I'm like, okay, that looks amazing. I gotta go there. So it's just, we all have our own. I'm not sure where I'm going with this. Let's change the subject. What do you think? Go ahead.

Marjanna Akhtar (17:04.516)
Well, you know, okay, I was just gonna say some of that is, yeah, which you lose is that connection with people, right? Or sharing the experience with someone else. But you know, some people don't have the opportunity to travel. So, you know, these kinds of experiences are nice to visualize. And so, yeah. I guess there was a tagline I used to use when I first started, and I still think it's very...

Jason Elkins (17:13.086)
Yeah. Yep.

Jason Elkins (17:27.55)
I'm just...

Marjanna Akhtar (17:34.212)
very appropriate. Mark Twain, you know, travel is fatal to prejudice, narrow mindedness and bigotry, or those three things. I might not have had them in the right order, but, and I think that in addition to, you know, the connection that when you travel, you do expand your world. You do learn that people...

have wonderful lives in other places besides your own, or maybe you realize how fortunate you are and that people, you know, don't have as nice of a place as you do. So, but that we're all people. And, you know, we all do want kind of basically the same things. And it doesn't matter where we live or what our religion is or how we live that life. We're still basically.

wanting to live a happy, healthy life and have our children and have them grow up to be happy and healthy and safe. And that's what life is about.

Jason Elkins (18:27.358)
Absolutely. And that's, you know, then the name of this podcast, the big world made small was really all about that. I was on my first trip to Southeast Asia. I'd done quite a bit of traveling, but I'd never been to Southeast Asia. And I was there last year and it was like, it seemed so far away before I went, you know, and it is the plane. It's a, it's a long, it's a long flight. It's a long flight, but in the whole scope of things, it's a long flight. Well, I've spent, okay. It was, I don't know.

Marjanna Akhtar (18:44.844)
It is. It's a long plain ring.

Jason Elkins (18:55.006)
15 hours, whatever. I've spent 15 hours doing things a lot less productive than going to Southeast Asia. So in my mind, that's 15 hours well spent. And, you know, I was in Malaysia, which is really the first kind of Islamic country that I really spent any time in. And I grew up in the States. I've traveled a lot, but I still had some biases. You know, I think that's kind of normal. And, you know, and I go there and the people...

They dress differently. They've got some different customs. The way they eat their food is different. There's a lot of things that are different, but there were so many more things that were the same. You know, to see the woman walking through the shopping center in either her job or even a burka, holding the hands of her children or having the kids climbing on her and the men, the way that they clearly cared very deeply for their families and their children and their wives. And to just...

to see that it was different enough that I realized, wow, my world just got smaller by coming here. It's like, I feel so much more connected to them and so much more understanding and patient. And I just wanted that. That was just kind of the vision for the podcast was to just have people just have conversations and hopefully inspire them to go somewhere and do something that would have the same impact on them, help them make the big world feel a little bit smaller for them. So.

I completely get it. So I'm happy, happy that we touched on that. And go ahead.

Marjanna Akhtar (20:26.756)
Yeah. And I think, you know, starting that even with your children, you know, I had already been well into the travel industry and had my company for a number of years before I had my son. And it's like, you just take them with you, you incorporate them in. And so his first international trip was to Australia at nine months old. We were trying to do it before he was mobile, but he was a little more mobile than we wanted at the time. But...

Jason Elkins (20:33.086)
Hmm?

Jason Elkins (20:51.294)
Wow.

Marjanna Akhtar (20:55.716)
And yeah, he's been a fortunate child for sure to have been many places, but I think it's had a big impact on the very well put together young man that he has become at this point at 21. So.

Jason Elkins (21:12.574)
Yeah, I see it. I believe it. I was fortunate to travel a bit when I was younger. It definitely inspired me and helped me kind of maybe be a little bit more mature, a little quicker. And my son, like I was in, when I was in Malaysia, my son came, you know, he flew into Singapore and spent two months with me and he was 16. He's in Guadalcanal, Columbia with me at the moment. And it's been so cool for him to be exposed to that as well.

I remember the first summer that we traveled together, we were in Guatemala and within a few months he was back at school and he was so excited. He's like, dad, there's a kid here from Guatemala. And like, he just felt that connection with this kid. He's like, yeah, he's my friend. He's really short, but he's really cool. And it was just like, and I don't think that he would have had the same connection. It would just been another kid at the school. You know, there's.

Marjanna Akhtar (22:00.932)
Bye!

Marjanna Akhtar (22:08.292)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (22:10.75)
there's this game, it's an online game, it's called GeoGuessr, I don't know if you've heard of it, but it's what it does is you get online and it drops you on a Google map, some random place on the planet. And it drops you in this random spot on the planet, you see the Google street view, and the objective is you can navigate around and you try and guess where you are. And the quicker you guess where you are, the closer to the location, you know,

Marjanna Akhtar (22:35.492)
Have fun.

Jason Elkins (22:39.774)
And my son is hooked on this. He plays it a lot. And I remember at one point he called me, he's like, dad, they dropped me right in front of peddling street in Kuala Lumpur. I was on that spot. I stood on that spot and that's where they dropped me. And I was like, this is, yeah. He's like, I knew right where I was. And, you know, and it's like, that is, that's so cool. I'm not sure he completely appreciates how fortunate he is.

Marjanna Akhtar (22:53.252)
And I knew right where I was.

Jason Elkins (23:06.014)
to be able to travel, because as you travel, you end up in other people who would love to travel and don't always have the same opportunities. But it's, yeah, I've just really enjoyed traveling with him. And your son, what kind of work is he doing?

Marjanna Akhtar (23:20.644)
Well, he's trying to figure out what he wants to do. He's very interested in videography, doing promotional videos, but his real passion at this stage is snowboarding. So he took his second gap year this winter and went to work at Big Sky, Montana, and yeah, as a lift operator, you know, learning what it is to make your way in the world and follow a passion. And I think he's...

Jason Elkins (23:27.422)
okay.

Jason Elkins (23:33.598)
Okay.

Jason Elkins (23:39.198)
yeah!

Marjanna Akhtar (23:50.052)
not ready to give up on school. He did a year and a half and thinking he'll finish his marketing and business degree and that will certainly help with his videography pursuits down the road. But yeah, it's like he wants to do something while he can physically while he's young enough to do something pretty extreme, which is what he's doing.

Jason Elkins (24:07.422)
Yeah. Well, for what it's worth, I lived in Montana. That was in the part of my life where I just wanted to be a fishing guide and did about a year and a half of school at Montana State University before I was, you know, every time the weather was nice, I was going fishing instead of going to class. So, and I worked with a lot of people that were, you know, lift operators and the skiers and the snowboarders. And it's, it's actually pretty cool. It's, I think it's a great thing to do. I, it definitely, you know,

Marjanna Akhtar (24:21.572)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (24:37.31)
of helped me figure out some things and instilled this passion for doing what you want to do. So I think that's very, very cool. So you've been a good influence on him.

Marjanna Akhtar (24:40.548)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, it's like who knows what you want to do when you're 20 years old, right? Some people are fortunate, but most of us aren't.

Jason Elkins (24:48.798)
Yeah, I'm fifth.

Marjanna, I'm about, I'm 50 now and I'm still not completely sure. But it's working. I'm happy and I'm getting to see places and do things and have wonderful conversations with folks like yourself. So I can't complain. Hey, one of the things that we wanted to discuss and you touched on it right, right before I hit the record button, you'd mentioned that you were just coming back from a kind of a conference, it's called a conference and.

Marjanna Akhtar (24:58.02)
Exactly.

Jason Elkins (25:21.214)
And the subject that came up there was kind of about over tourism, sustainable tourism and stuff like that. So I'd love to dig into that and just kind of learn more about your takeaways from the event you're at and just kind of generally how you feel about that stuff.

Marjanna Akhtar (25:37.156)
Yeah.

That's like a day's worth of talking about. They're big topics. There's a lot of concerns in the industry and trends that we're seeing in the industry about the negative effects of tourism, whereas tourism can certainly have very positive effects. And so we try to focus and promote the tourism that's going to have a positive effect. So what does that mean?

you know, responsible tourism, sustainable tourism, what would all the ecotourism. But basically, if you can support the industry in a way that your tourism dollars are actually staying in the local communities and providing local jobs.

for the people who are on the ground helping to protect the land that they live in, the conservation efforts that might be going on to protect the wildlife that they're around, education for the people, all of these distribution of income. It helps all these things if you do it on the basic level. And mass tourism, go ahead.

Jason Elkins (26:46.814)
I'm curious. Yeah, I was curious. And maybe this is, you're probably getting ready to answer this, but somebody listening to this may, may be thinking, well, if I go visit, I don't know, Machu Picchu or a Wadi Rum or, or any of these places, if I go there, obviously I'm benefiting the community there because it's jobs. It's I, I paid $5 ,000 for this trip. So I'm sure that the people there, I mean, so.

I could see somebody thinking, well, what is like, how do I be responsible or what does that like, aren't I already by visiting, bringing money there?

Marjanna Akhtar (27:26.468)
Yes, to some extent, probably not necessarily so depending on how you did the distribution channel. And you know, you've kind of keyed in on a couple of places that are...

icons and certainly when you go to Jordan, you know, you're not going to want to miss Wadi Rum or if you go to India, you're not going to want to miss seeing the Taj Mahal or you know Machu Picchu is certainly a big draw for people want to go to experience Peru. They might find it other things and other places to do in addition, but it's it's an icon. The impact on it's a difficult question. There isn't really an answer. How do we prevent the overtourism? So some

Some ways around it are traveling at different times of year.

traveling to maybe what your experience that you want to have and focusing more of your time into what you're actually going to be able to experience versus thinking you have to go to these icons to get the experience. Working with responsible tour operators on the ground who are actually doing those things, taking care of the people that they're hiring, making sure they're hiring local people, perhaps contributing part of their profits in

to sustainable projects and conservation work. And those are the things that are not necessarily easy to know whether or not you're contributing to. So we do go to these conferences. We meet with the tour operators. We travel. We connect. We network. We're members of organizations that promote and support these types of tour operators and ground operators so that when we're putting together client itineraries, we're hopefully doing the best job we can to make sure that

Marjanna Akhtar (29:13.99)
you are working with the right kind of people and your dollars are helping the communities and the people and places where you're traveling to.

Jason Elkins (29:22.43)
Yeah, it's a challenge because it's like, okay, well, whose responsibility is it to do this? Is it the tour operators? Like you're an outbound tour operator. You work with, you know, partners on the ground. Is it your responsibility? Is it the customer, you know, the client that's booking the trip, trying to figure out who's, I use the word responsibility. I'm not sure it's the right word, but like, can we expect our clients?

to just know or can we expect our clients to say, well, okay, I'll pay $500 more for a week because I wanna make sure that I'm using a tour operator that's doing the right thing where it's hard for them, it's hard for the clients. It's kind of like buying something at Walmart or anywhere. You go buy something, you buy something off of Amazon. We look at...

Marjanna Akhtar (30:11.844)
Hehehehe

Jason Elkins (30:17.758)
price and maybe value in a sense, but we really don't know who made that in a factory in China or who took the cold walled out of the ground for the battery pack or whatever. And it's really hard for the consumer to really know. As tour operators, it's a little easier for us to know because we know what's going on in these communities, hopefully, the good tour operators.

Marjanna Akhtar (30:43.332)
Hopefully.

Jason Elkins (30:46.014)
So is it just a matter of the tour operators really need to take the lead there and help educate the clients a little bit when they come to book or what do you think?

Marjanna Akhtar (30:57.188)
You know, ultimately, you know, it's your decision on where you're going to put your dollars at. But having an understanding as to why something might cost more versus something that you could buy cheaper is something that we can all do to help educate people to make better decisions if they're interested in making better decisions. Ultimately, it is their choice. So we saw in the conference, there was a talk and this was a very interesting.

point of data from some research that they had done. So if you take a mass tourism product, i .e. a cruise ship, and then you take a small group tour, and then you take something that's a very niche market adventure travel type product, the number of people it takes to actually have the same impact to

the local community and the environment and the people on the ground, it takes about 100 people on a cruise ship and it'll take about a dozen people on a small group, you know, type product. It'll only take four people doing an adventure tour product to have the same impact to the local community and the environment. And that was a stat that really, that kind of hit home. And so, you know, if you're gonna...

Jason Elkins (32:15.198)
That makes sense, yeah.

Marjanna Akhtar (32:21.412)
You know, I have clients right now, they wanted to do Alaska and they're doing another very big trip. And so they were thinking about a cruise and suggested something a little bit different. That would be a little more authentic, a little bit more in depth, small, small type of impact. And cost wise, there's a big price difference. And so what they opted to do was to instead of do two trips, they decided to wait a year so that they could do their Alaska

trip on the level that was what they really wanted to do and experience that they didn't really want to spend the money on for this year because of another commitment. So those are the kinds of things hopefully I had an influence on them making a decision that will be more beneficial to what they end up doing in Alaska.

Jason Elkins (33:08.51)
Well, it's, it's, it just, to me, it seems like kind of a tough thing because we say, okay, well, we can take 12 people on a small tour, a small group and have the same impact on the, the environment, the, the financial impact in the community, all that stuff. Then if we had a hundred, so as a tour operator, I could say, well, that's great. I'd be happy to do groups of 12 all day, every day, you know, whatever.

but then you got to think about, well, what about the other 88 people on the cruise ship that can't afford it? Or like, it's their only way they can travel. Maybe they've got physical limitations or just, it's just, it's like, do we want to leave them at home? Say, well, you know what, the impact that you guys have on the environment is too much. So you need to stay home.

Or do we really kind of like, there are some benefits to getting people out there. We're just talking about it. You know, as far as somebody who takes a cruise to Southeast Asia, maybe that's better than not taking your not going at all. You know, I don't know. It's a tough thing, isn't it?

Marjanna Akhtar (34:10.532)
Yeah.

Marjanna Akhtar (34:21.444)
You've hit the nail on the head with a very, very big difficult concept in travel for sure. And there is no answer to that question. Like, you know, there's talk about putting in roads and tram cars to get in to see the gorillas in Uganda and Rwanda and it's like...

So that people who aren't physically capable necessarily of doing the trekking or whatever reason, does that mean they shouldn't have a right to see the girl as well? What's the impact on the girl is going to be with that kind of tourism? I don't know. Probably not good. So, but where do you draw a line? It's something that everybody can do and it's certainly not something that everybody can afford to do. So moral questions.

Jason Elkins (35:04.83)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (35:16.541)
Yeah, it is. And you and I probably aren't going to sort it out in this conversation, but it is.

Marjanna Akhtar (35:20.452)
Yeah. But I suspect we're going to see a lot more of those topics and conversations come up because the, you know, there is over tourism impacts and it's not just in the adventure world. You know, Europe has been unprecedented with tourists in the past couple of years, especially since COVID. And, you know, the ability to even get into seeing some of the iconic sites is difficult.

Jason Elkins (35:46.718)
Yeah. Yeah. And, and, you know, we can also look at like national parks. I remember having a conversation with my brother years ago about the, just the economics of not like, let's say Yellowstone, you take Yellowstone National Park, it can get kind of crowded and.

And his, you know, I think his take was, well, this is a national park. Everybody should be able to go and it should, you know, it should be available to everybody. And yes, I'm not going to dispute that argument. And also, if everybody's paying for it through tax dollars to support the park, but they're never going, maybe there's a different, you know, so then you say, okay, well, we're going to charge $50 a person to go into the park.

Marjanna Akhtar (36:14.34)
Right?

Jason Elkins (36:32.542)
And then the people that are using the park are actually the ones paying to support the infrastructure and all that stuff. And it also, when you raise rates, you know, the number of visitors changes as well. And it's like, but then if you start charging $100 a person to go into Yellowstone Park, then every other US citizen is like, well, geez, this is a national park. I should be able to go there. I shouldn't have to pay a hundred bucks.

But if everybody comes in for free, then it's crowded and the animals suffer and then the environment. And it's a tough one. I don't know the answers, but the conference you were at, if you don't mind, let's, because we talk about ATTA quite a bit on this show, on the podcast that we've interviewed, I've interviewed several members and they're kind of, well, what's your take? You're an ATTA member. What's your take on?

Marjanna Akhtar (37:06.628)
It is.

Marjanna Akhtar (37:16.612)
Yep.

Jason Elkins (37:27.934)
We talked a little bit about the conference, but what do you think about organizations like ATTA for tourism? If another tour operator is listening to this, what would you want them to know about partnering with other tour operators to try and impact change?

Marjanna Akhtar (37:46.18)
Well, the conference I was at wasn't ATTA. We did have the CEO of ATTA, Shannon, was there as a speaker and had a chance to have good catch -up chats with him throughout the weekend. But as far as ATTA as an organization, gosh, I don't know how long we've been a member of the organization now, several years.

Jason Elkins (37:52.062)
Okay.

Marjanna Akhtar (38:09.316)
I personally found it to be one of the most beneficial organizations to be involved with. There's a way of networking and connecting again with those responsible tour operators on the ground, as well as with colleagues here.

which we get together and you get at summits and adventure weeks, we get a chance to experience destinations, work with tourism boards, work with emerging destinations that are looking to grow responsible tourism model. And so they work with ATTA to help do that. And ATTA has a way of bringing together all the components to grow that market, hopefully in the right directions and in sustainable manners.

So yeah, you know, you can get a chance to like say powwow and network and toss ideas around and have these difficult conversations. Get a chance again to meet the people that you need to meet with to work with for my business. It's been, you know, very important. So I would say anybody who's not a member who's in this realm of travel, I would encourage you to take a look at it. It's a great organization.

Jason Elkins (39:22.878)
Yeah, I first, I guess, really interacted with them was actually at one of their summits in Namibia several years ago. That's where I met Shannon the first time. And it was like, okay, yeah, this is pretty cool. You know, cause the, honestly, the travel was the side work for, we kind of operated in a little bit of a vacuum. We really weren't interacting with our, our counterparts at other companies. And when I went to ATTA and everybody was there together and it was like, wow, this is really, really cool.

Marjanna Akhtar (39:31.716)
Mm.

Jason Elkins (39:53.086)
And whether it's a TTA or, you know, there's other organizations out there, obviously as well. But I think operating in a vacuum can be really difficult in this business. I mean, almost, almost impossible. I mean, to a certain extent, we weren't in a complete vacuum, but the exchange of ideas and understanding, you know, there's so many ways to work together. Obviously our business, you know, we talk about distribution channels. I mean, if you're an outbound tour operator in the States, sending people to Africa, you need to.

Marjanna Akhtar (39:56.868)
sure.

Jason Elkins (40:23.102)
connect with somebody. So yeah, I just I wanted to wanted to touch on that real quick.

Marjanna Akhtar (40:29.7)
Yeah, and ATTA does a really good job of, like you say, all avenues. So you've got the media and journalism aspect. So they're the ones getting the message out and kind of putting...

out to people what they're going to see and be inspired about, right? They're telling the stories and showing the photos and then you have the actual official tourism aspect, you know, your tourism boards and your government aspect of tourism and the destination and then connecting buyers such as myself.

Jason Elkins (40:57.918)
Mm -hmm.

Marjanna Akhtar (41:01.444)
into, you know, some of these might be small operators and they wouldn't have a budget to be able to come to the U .S. to meet with me to tell me about this great product that they're doing. So yeah, it's a way to, again, from ground level work through the industry.

Jason Elkins (41:13.086)
Yeah. Yep.

Jason Elkins (41:20.894)
And we're not doing an infomercial for ATTA on any level at all. This is, this is just you and I just having conversation. And I will share that when I came up with the idea for the podcast, I went to the ATTA website and I started going down the list of members and like, okay, you know, anybody that I thought was particularly interesting, you know, that's, that was the first place I went to reach out to find great speakers for the show. And anybody that's listened to this for a while.

Marjanna Akhtar (41:23.556)
No.

Jason Elkins (41:50.782)
probably knows that probably half the speakers that we've had on the show have been part of the ATTA. And it was just a natural fit. And that just came from my experience in Africa. Most of the people I met there, I was like, yeah, I would love to interview those people. So that's the approach that I took. What's the biggest challenge of having your own tour operation business?

Marjanna Akhtar (42:05.156)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (42:18.974)
that people might not realize.

Marjanna Akhtar (42:22.628)
gosh, yeah. I think the fact that you kind of have to be chief bottle washer and cook.

Jason Elkins (42:24.958)
that you're willing to share. I'll put you on the spot here.

Marjanna Akhtar (42:37.252)
to do the job well. Even if you have staff and compartmentalized people doing various jobs, you're still going to have to oversee and kind of be, you know, I don't have a business degree, but I own a business, you know, so you kind of learn how to do everything. I think another challenge is as an independent company, it's difficult to be independent, especially if you're not completely niche just doing one thing.

So to be able to be relevant and stay knowledgeable in the industry takes a lot of education, a lot of time to stay connected and know what my clientele base wants and how to service them in the right way with the right knowledge and the right products. I think.

The best benefit with the advent of the internet, you know, as I started in 96 and we were barely doing email at that time. We were still sending faxes to places and you know, an email was not even heard of, right? So the advent of PC's email and then the rapid takeover of technology has changed how we communicate and it's opened a lot of doors. And a lot of people said, that was going to be the demise of the travel industry. And instead it's complete opposite, right?

It's been how we market and how we do a lot of business. So challenges of staying on top of these types of trends and yeah, being able to work with them. AI is coming up, is the next one, right? Playing around with it a little bit.

Jason Elkins (44:00.542)
Mm -hmm.

Jason Elkins (44:06.142)
Yeah, and just things like, yeah.

Marjanna Akhtar (44:19.588)
put together a trip to Africa, give me a safari to Tanzania based on these parameters. And it comes back with something that if a lay person who doesn't know a thing about Africa or Tanzania is gonna go, wow, that looks fantastic. Look what it just did for me. But the reality is, it's total garbage. It's not even logistically feasible. And that will get better, of course, but having the...

The human contact for travel, I think, is going to come around to still being a very relevant thing after we, and ways to use that technology will come into play with the industry as all the other technology things have done in the past without doing away with people.

Jason Elkins (45:03.71)
Yeah.

Well, yeah, and earlier we were discussing about the value of the connection around this type of travel. It's hard to imagine.

I'm not making any projections as to what's going to happen in the future, but yeah, it is hard to imagine doing this type of work without a fair amount of human involvement and connection. Can you go online and book a tour without talking to a single person? Yeah, you can. You certainly can. But I like to think behind that, there's people on the ground setting up these tours.

that are hopefully knowledgeable and there's some connection going on there. It may not be the vendor directly to the client or the consumer directly, business directly to the consumer conversations with all the AI and technology, but there's still people involved. There's still probably a person that's going to meet you at the airport, probably a person that's going to take you out on safari if you're doing it right. I don't know. Yeah, you know, I mean, there are ways it can go.

Marjanna Akhtar (46:12.58)
Yeah, hopefully.

Jason Elkins (46:17.886)
wrong as you and I both know. What's the, what's the, the highlight or what's the positive of having your own tour operation business that maybe people don't realize.

Marjanna Akhtar (46:28.516)
Mm.

Marjanna Akhtar (46:32.836)
Well, I think the biggest benefit of how I'm in control. So that's a good thing. But realistically being independent, I'm not beholden to any.

quotas or having to work within certain consortium, you know, preferred product, I'm really able to mix and match the right product to the right clientele and that's what we pride ourselves on. And I think that's why we are in business after 28 years and, you know, three pretty major catastrophic travel events in that career. And still here today.

Jason Elkins (47:07.934)
Yeah. Well, Jenna, what's the, right. What's the, for the listeners that aren't quite sure, because you touched on a few things with consortiums and all the stuff that a lot of travel agents are beholden to, help the listeners really understand in your words, what's the difference between a travel agent and a tour operator.

Marjanna Akhtar (47:31.704)
A travel agent is typically and historically been a brick and mortar business. So in other words, they're in an office and they're dealing primarily with a local clientele base. And that is...

a little bit old school with today's world, but that was sort of a traditional, whereas a tour operator is kind of the next level where they're specialized and working directly in country and they're actually supporting a lot of the retail travel agents. So the business model is that retail travel agent will oftentimes use a tour operator as their source of information to help with their clients' bookings. Tour operator is going to be a more direct working with the on -ground supplier.

often times they may be specialized to a destination or specialized to a niche industry. So it's a bit of a gray area. It's not such a big difference in today's world like it was 10, 15 years ago.

Jason Elkins (48:31.998)
So it sounds.

Jason Elkins (48:41.758)
It definitely has changed. So what that could look like is somebody could have a friend that's a travel agent, you know, and they go to their travel agent friend and say, I want to go take a trip. I want to take a safari in Africa. And that travel agent then may reach out to somebody like yourself as a, as, as a tour operator with, with specific expertise. And then you kind of have that conversation with the travel agent, try and figure out what, what, you know, what products make the most sense, but then you're.

dealing with an inbound tour operator in, let's say Kenya. And then they have individual guides, transfer services and stuff like that. There's a lot of pieces, pieces, parts in there that could go wrong. I mean, realistically, and I guess I'm saying, okay, this is why it's important to, to, you know, to choose the right person. You're probably not going to be communicating directly with the person that's going to be in the safari vehicle with you.

when you're booking your trip and neither and nor should you because that person's probably really good at taking people out on Safari, but maybe not so great at handling all the other things that can come up. So.

Marjanna Akhtar (49:55.588)
Yeah, and so that's when those relationships and again that investment that we put into ourselves to have the product knowledge and the connections and that we, you know, I'm based here in Peonia, Colorado. I...

travel a lot. I've been to a lot of places. I have a lot of feedback from clients who, you know, tell me how everything went and what they liked about this or that. But I can't know everything up to date for every destination. And so we do rely very much on our partners in country. And they're the ones who are on the ground in that particular area. And they're the ones who are going to be up to date with, you might not want to use that hotel anymore. Or there's some something going on or we have this

great new product that is going to be perfect for your clientele base. Things like that that would be very difficult for me to know firsthand not living there.

Jason Elkins (50:48.19)
Yeah. And those folks, I'm going to keep saying Kenya, the folks in Kenya that are communicating with you, they value the relationship with you because you're their customer, you know, and they value that relationship. And if you are, you know, sending them clients, they're probably going to bend over backwards to make sure your clients are maybe a little bit better taken care of than the one off that came through some travel agent somewhere else that has never really, you know,

Marjanna Akhtar (50:59.748)
Great.

Jason Elkins (51:17.95)
The relationships, I guess where I'm going with this is, and you touched on the relationships are so important. So maybe, maybe the tour operator dealing with, yeah, is in the States, but if they've got those strong relationships with their partners, that's, that's a great way to go. I, and I guess I'm touching on it because a lot of people think, I should book direct. You know, I should book directly with the person that's going to be taking me out on safari and that can be challenging. Go ahead.

Marjanna Akhtar (51:39.3)
Mm.

Marjanna Akhtar (51:42.872)
Well, the challenge with that, of course, is information overload. And you may connect with somebody and not really know what other choices there are out there. And it's sometimes hard to differentiate.

Jason Elkins (51:59.294)
Well, I think people, yeah, I think people fall into this idea that, well, it's the internet age. Back in the nineties, I couldn't find a tour operator in Kenya very easily, but now I've got the internet and well, you know, the, the, anybody can build a website. I mean, realistically, or pay somebody to build a website. And so I think some people might think, well, now I can go find, I can Google, you know, safaris Kenya, Africa.

Nairobi, whatever, and they'll get a Google, give them 30 pages of websites to look at. And they figure if I just scroll through and find the website that looks the best, then that'll answer the question. But also there's just, there's cultural differences. There are, you know,

Marjanna Akhtar (52:47.652)
Well, there's a lot to it because different regions, different times of year, seasonality factors, cancer, and it's hard to, again, differentiate what those differences are unless you have a good working knowledge of what those differences are. And it's not so much necessarily that you're going to be treated better or worse.

Jason Elkins (52:54.174)
Yeah.

Marjanna Akhtar (53:08.868)
hopefully a responsible good tour operator is going to take care of every client that they have on the ground. And if they've got a good model, they're going to have very good service people. Their guides are going to be top notch and their vehicles are going to be well maintained. And they're going to have a well -trained, friendly staff taking care of everything else behind the scenes as well. And your guest experience should be the same. What we, again, can do as added value is product knowledge.

Jason Elkins (53:14.238)
Mm -hmm.

Marjanna Akhtar (53:38.822)
and destination knowledge and being able to help cut through.

Jason Elkins (53:43.326)
Well, and the processes, you know, just the processes you have in place can be a huge benefit to, you know, when you're like, okay, I'm ready to book my trip. And they're like, okay, wire it to this account in Nairobi and add an.

Marjanna Akhtar (53:55.332)
Right. I was just going to say you're working with someone here. You're paying a U .S. bank. But no, but we're here. We're here. And if you have a problem, which, you know, knock on wood, it's actually pretty amazing, especially when you're doing.

Jason Elkins (54:01.886)
You know, yeah.

Marjanna Akhtar (54:09.508)
complicated itineraries with a lot of components and very remote regions of the world that things don't go wrong more often, but it's very rare. And sometimes I have clients that come back and even say that, gosh, we had how many different flights and we were off on this completely remote area and everything went as it should and every connection was made and somebody was there to meet me at every step of the way and so on. And that's...

you know, 99 % of the time what happens. But when something does go wrong, and unfortunately it's things that are unforeseeable, it's a weather issue, it's a flight issue, a mechanical issue, it's almost always something unavoidable and not planned on, of course, you have someone to help you sort it out. Yeah, and help you on the other side of that.

Jason Elkins (54:55.006)
Yeah. Yeah. I got this, I got the sense. So the listeners aren't able to see your face right now, but when you were kind of describing how all these different pieces come together and people like, wow, it all came together. I saw a sense of pride on your face. And which, which ties me back to the, what's the best part of having your own business and you in this business and doing what you do. and I think I just saw it on your face. I just, I, I get the sense from you that.

Marjanna Akhtar (55:10.628)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (55:24.926)
It's a sense of accomplishment, because it can be challenging, because there are a lot of moving parts we discussed. But then also what we touched on earlier about kind of changing the world and changing people's perspectives and maybe even changing their lives in some way. I just got that sense of pride was on your face. Did I read that right?

Marjanna Akhtar (55:43.108)
Yeah, probably. It's like the majority of my time I'm sitting on my computer, right? And so what keeps you here every day? And there's definitely frustrations you're dealing with with consumers. So there's always communication issues at times where you have to educational issues or like say things just don't go as planned. And so at the end of the day,

Jason Elkins (55:50.014)
Mm -hmm.

Jason Elkins (55:57.886)
Mm -hmm.

Marjanna Akhtar (56:09.636)
when we get those Google reviews or we get those, the business is nearly 100 % repeat referral. And so that is a great deal of pride that over 28 years I was able to be in that position. And it is done by offering something personalized, something a bit unique. A lot of times people come back saying, I never would have known about any of where we went, if you hadn't recommended it, it's not necessarily gonna be.

Jason Elkins (56:12.766)
Hmm?

Jason Elkins (56:16.414)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Marjanna Akhtar (56:39.492)
you know, the mainstream icon that you think about when you go to a certain destination. It's like, well, you know, you don't have to travel to five different gateways to experience what you want to do. Slow it down and you can get the same experience that you're looking for out of another area that you don't know about.

Jason Elkins (56:51.23)
Mm -hmm.

Jason Elkins (56:59.806)
I love that you specifically mentioned reviews because, you know, I have worked in the business for quite a while and for a few years I had a hot air balloon ride business that really didn't make any money. And here's the thing, I, well, no, it was. And when I looked back at it, I was like, you know, and my ex -wife, she was my wife at the time, didn't think the business was as great as I did. And.

Marjanna Akhtar (57:11.588)
It was fun though, right? Or maybe not.

Jason Elkins (57:28.062)
Sometimes I just kind of realized, you know, I'm actually working for reviews here. I'm not making money. I'm working for reviews at the end of the day. If I go out and fly somebody in the morning at the end of the day, I was going to the reviews. I was like, I want to see, did they write a review already? You know, and it was pretty good. We got a lot of great reviews and it was, that was the thing that just kind of kept me going. And when I sold the business, the thing I was most.

Marjanna Akhtar (57:46.564)
Hmm.

Jason Elkins (57:55.646)
concerned about was that my TripAdvisor page would go away or that the people that bought the business would somehow do something horrible to change the reviews. And it was just, I was so proud of those reviews. And I would sit with my kid or my wife and say, listen to the reviews. Sometimes on a Friday evening, we'd sit there and I'd just read reviews. And it just gave me such a sense of pride and just such a sense of I'm doing something important.

Like I had, I did a lot of proposal flights, you know, so people were getting engaged in the balloon or celebrating anniversaries. And I just got a lot of pride and a lot of satisfaction out of feeling like I, you know, they're going to remember something that I helped them do as opposed to so many things in life. You go through life, you buy things, you, you interact with businesses and you forget, but the trips you're putting together for people, they don't forget them, right? They never forget them.

Marjanna Akhtar (58:38.82)
Mm -hmm.

Jason Elkins (58:52.382)
They will remember them forever. And you were part of that. So I don't know if it's resonating with you, but that's how I, that's what I found myself thinking.

Marjanna Akhtar (58:56.964)
Yeah.

Marjanna Akhtar (59:00.772)
Yeah, you know, after COVID, it was a really interesting little trend that developed. I had a number of people contact us to do travel that I hadn't heard from in a very long time. And I'm talking 15 years, 20 years. It's like, okay, where have you been all that time? But...

Jason Elkins (59:19.742)
Mm -hmm.

Marjanna Akhtar (59:23.236)
maybe they were raising their families and they weren't really traveling to where they thought I would be of assistance for, but they did a trip to Australia and they're like, are you still in business? I just loved what you did. I'm thinking, you know, I want to go to Africa now. Can you help me? And it's like, gosh, that was just such a,

Jason Elkins (59:37.118)
Yeah.

Marjanna Akhtar (59:42.596)
I don't know, pat on the back, that they had an experience that was so old, but it was such a life -changing experience for them in some way that they thought of us when it was time to do something really special again. And, yeah.

Jason Elkins (59:44.638)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (59:55.742)
And especially with COVID because people had a lot of time to reflect and realize, you know, geez, I remember a time when, yeah, I remember, yeah, I remember a time when we did some cool stuff and man, this frankly sucks because we can't go do that stuff. So there's that, you know, and they're, they're reminiscing about the wonderful experience maybe that you set up for them 15 years ago. They're like, man, I don't want to miss out on life anymore.

Marjanna Akhtar (01:00:00.452)
Yeah.

Maybe I shouldn't wait.

Jason Elkins (01:00:26.174)
got to do these things because unfortunately a lot of people went into COVID with aspirations of doing a lot of traveling and they didn't, and, and, and they didn't, and some of them, yeah, and some of them did not make it out the other side, still being able to travel, you know, and there were a lot of people that were set to retire in that year and we're going to go travel the world once they retired.

Marjanna Akhtar (01:00:32.932)
yeah, it was a big year. 2020 was a big travel year. Until it wasn't.

Marjanna Akhtar (01:00:41.988)
Yeah, that's right.

Jason Elkins (01:00:53.726)
They never, you know, they didn't have a chance for a while or some of them will never have the chance. So this stuff's important. What we're doing is important. So, yeah.

Marjanna Akhtar (01:01:01.188)
Yeah, there's the surveys that were done and shared at the conference. Just a couple of interesting facts that came out was the trend is people are interested in spending more of their money on experiences versus material things.

So that's a growing trend. So I think our position in this travel industry to be able to provide those types of experiences, life -changing experiences, whether it's a small thing or a big thing, is going to be an important role moving forward for consumers. And the other thing that we've always known this, but the actual data kind of backed it up, is that 55 % of your pleasure of your trip is actually in the planning part of it. And...

Jason Elkins (01:01:48.734)
Really? OK.

Marjanna Akhtar (01:01:49.636)
And only 15 % of it is actually doing it. And the rest of it is looking back and sharing it. And that goes back to that connection idea of being somewhere and doing something amazing and being alone doing it. Then who do you go back and share that with?

You can, but people's attention span for listening about your Kilimanjaro track is only so big unless they were there with you. And then you could talk about it for hours and share your photos and all that.

Jason Elkins (01:02:19.646)
Remember the days when people come back with a slideshow presentation, they'd go to it, right? And you'd get all your friends together and they're like, okay. And you'd sit there and go through the slides one at a time. Well, this is where Margie did this or that or whatever. And it's like, okay. Yeah. And now it's all on Instagram and Facebook, I guess, which is kind of the new version of that. But anyway.

Marjanna Akhtar (01:02:24.388)
gosh, I remember doing them.

Marjanna Akhtar (01:02:36.228)
Hehehehe.

Marjanna Akhtar (01:02:41.86)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Marjanna Akhtar (01:02:48.9)
But it did play a part that 55 % of the pleasures in the planning, the importance of being collaborative with your planning. So it's not just, it's making sure that we are communicating and giving options and discussing the whys and wherefores of what's being proposed so that people can make decisions and be part of the process. Because that's what's fun.

Jason Elkins (01:03:12.414)
I have a question because I've worked with several planners over the years and I'm working with some now. And sometimes we tend to look at things through our own lens and maybe forget things like our clients actually enjoy the planning process. So I guess my question to you is, do you feel like your typical client is happy to get on a video call with you or an actual live conversation with you?

in the beginning of the planning process, do you think that that's a plus for people or do you think more people just want to do email?

Marjanna Akhtar (01:03:48.772)
Hmm. I think that initially people are not wanting to commit them. So if they don't know you already. So I'm talking about somebody that hasn't worked with me before perhaps. That the initially it's going to be a little hesitation even to provide a phone number. But I always encourage.

Jason Elkins (01:03:57.278)
Okay.

Marjanna Akhtar (01:04:08.964)
you know, and I try to answer the questions they're asking. And, but usually this type of travel planning, there's a lot of factors that are in place and it's hard to communicate some of those.

data and reasons and why -fors and where -fors without, on email. And so there's a lot of misinterpretation that can happen. It's very time consuming to type out a dissertation about traveling to Kenya and a phone call you can actually cut to the chase. Sometimes once I start talking to somebody, I'm like, I was completely on the wrong track. Actually having this conversation, the feedback I'm getting to my questions and discussion is something else that's gonna be much better for these particular people than what I initially thought.

Jason Elkins (01:04:27.71)
Mm -hmm.

Jason Elkins (01:04:51.838)
Well, just look at tone of voice. If you're in an email, you're like, you could do this, you could do that. I suggest this and that and this and that. And then you send it off. It's hard to get feedback where if you're having a conversation with them and if it's a video call, you maybe even see their face kind of go, eh. And you can be like, OK. It doesn't look like or it doesn't sound like you're that excited about that. Tell me more. And you can change direction so much quicker and easier. I know if I'm.

Marjanna Akhtar (01:04:52.358)
thought.

Marjanna Akhtar (01:05:09.124)
Mm -hmm.

Jason Elkins (01:05:20.318)
trying to work with somebody to plan a trip. And maybe this is useful for the listeners. If I'm working with somebody to try and plan a trip, I'd love to do a video call or at least a phone call because I honestly, I feel like I'd do a much better job at helping you and supporting you. It's not so I can pressure you or manipulate you or make you feel like you can't get off the phone without giving me your credit card. That has nothing, I don't know, for me anyway, that has nothing to do with it.

Marjanna Akhtar (01:05:33.476)
Yeah.

Marjanna Akhtar (01:05:45.476)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:05:45.566)
For me, it's like, no, I just, I literally, I think I can help you plan a better trip. If they enter the call, you're like, yeah, I don't know. I, okay, fine. That's, that's cool. I would still rather do the video call and have you say no, then do it by email and have you give him, you know, and have you fill out a online credit card thing. So I, I don't know. It's just my thoughts.

Marjanna Akhtar (01:06:03.78)
Yeah, and I definitely like to follow up the detailed information in writing because I think oftentimes there's a lot of information and let people have a chance to digest it all. But the initial conversation is very helpful if not a video call, at least a phone call versus an email. But definitely people rarely will pick up the phone and call initially. It will be a...

Jason Elkins (01:06:10.686)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:06:14.846)
Sure.

Marjanna Akhtar (01:06:30.212)
Email something that's not you know Yeah, see somehow there's a little bit more of a guardrail there that you don't have to cross if you don't want to

Jason Elkins (01:06:31.678)
some sort of email.

Jason Elkins (01:06:37.31)
Yeah, and I get that because in 90 % of the interactions you're having with businesses, you don't want to talk. I don't want to talk to somebody. I don't want to talk to someone about a phone plan or most things, honestly. It's like, no, I just, I'm just looking for the information. Just tell me what the price is. Boom, boom, boom. So I go through life with that. That's kind of my default mode.

Marjanna Akhtar (01:06:46.98)
Right.

Jason Elkins (01:07:00.67)
And then I get to maybe booking a trip and I just automatically kind of have the same instinctual, like, wait a minute, I just want the information. But being on the other side of it, I also see the value of doing it. So hopefully maybe somebody's listening to this. Maybe you can challenge them to actually pick up a phone and have a conversation with Marjan or anybody.

Marjanna Akhtar (01:07:18.052)
And usually it's usually not a barrier once you start a relationship, you know, and sometimes, you know, kind of going back and forth on email and maybe the client will pick up the phone and say, you know what, this is silly. Let's just, just, just chat this through. It's like, you're texting your kid back and forth, you know, about something. It's like, you know what, just, this could have been done in two minutes, you know, if we'd just picked up the phone.

Jason Elkins (01:07:33.31)
This is easier.

Jason Elkins (01:07:39.454)
Yeah.

Yep. And you can't say, I told you so. I offered a call the first time, you know, it's just like, okay, yep, you're right. Let's, you're right. Sometimes people just need to be convinced that, actually this would be easier. But yeah, and also just a level of trust, you know, it's like, but anyway, we've, we've, we've discussed a lot of stuff that I wasn't planning per se to, to chat about, but it's been a fascinating conversation. I think your depth of experience and knowledge is very useful for anybody listening to this, whether they're a traveler.

Marjanna Akhtar (01:07:48.26)
I'm gonna go.

Jason Elkins (01:08:13.182)
I do believe we've got travel agents, store operators, other folks like yourself even listening to the show. So I think you brought a lot of value. So thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Is there anything that I've, is there anything I forgot to ask or should have asked or that you want to make sure our listeners know about either you or Great Expeditions before we go?

Marjanna Akhtar (01:08:22.276)
Thank you. It's been a fun conversation.

Marjanna Akhtar (01:08:34.948)
gosh, I think we touched on most of the points. So I, again, fun conversation. I look forward to being in touch.

Jason Elkins (01:08:40.862)
Okay, cool.

Yeah, we'll work on some projects in the future, I'm sure. And I'll have, for anybody listening, I'll have your website address right there in the show notes so they can click through and take a look at some of the cool stuff you're doing. And are you still excited about scuba diving?

Marjanna Akhtar (01:09:02.508)
yeah, I still enjoy it. It's certainly not something I do as much as I used to. It used to be if I didn't do two or three dive trips a year, I'd be like, But I'm happy to be a little bit more of a warm weather, you know, casual diver these days. And I like a lot of other things, you know. My favorite thing in the world, put me on a horse and go on safari in Africa. That would be my happy spot.

Jason Elkins (01:09:16.094)
Yup. Yup.

Jason Elkins (01:09:26.846)
Yeah, very cool. and the other, actually the one question I did forget to ask. Are you happy you didn't go back to graduate school?

Marjanna Akhtar (01:09:38.884)
Yes, yeah, I think, you know, you often look at where, you know, I think back and it's like, gosh, if I would have done this, and then I think, but I wouldn't have had that or this or this. And so, you know, it's my path of travel. I met my husband, he owned a resort in Fiji. And it's like, if I didn't go down this path of travel, I wouldn't be here where I am with him. And so, you know, anything that goes down a different twist, he's like, yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:09:40.254)
Okay.

Jason Elkins (01:09:49.246)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:09:55.838)
No, cool.

Jason Elkins (01:10:06.814)
Yep.

Marjanna Akhtar (01:10:07.076)
Life is what it is and I'm grateful to be where I'm at and doing what I'm doing. And so, you know, graduate school wasn't my path. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:10:17.438)
Very cool. Well, thanks for sharing everything with us. And I look forward to chatting with you very soon. All right, Janet, thank you so much. You too.

Marjanna Akhtar (01:10:24.132)
Thanks Jason. Have a great day.