Adventure Travel with Sebastian Riedel - Oasis Travel Platform

Area/Topic
Technology Trends & Tourism

Sebastian Riedel
CEO
Oasis Travel Platform

Sebastian is the CEO of the Oasis Travel Platform, a company dedicated to streamlining travel operations for businesses. From an early age, Sebastian’s life was shaped by his passion for travel, which led him to transition from a successful career in technology to the travel industry. He co-founded Global Basecamps, an international tour operator that offers unique, authentic travel experiences.

Through Oasis, Sebastian combines his expertise in technology with his love for exploration, offering a solution that simplifies travel logistics while enhancing the overall experience for companies. His focus remains on the human connections and meaningful experiences that make travel a powerful force for personal and professional growth.

https://myoasisapp.com/

summary
In this episode of the Big World Made Small podcast, Jason Elkins interviews Sebastian Riedel, CEO of the Oasis Travel Platform. They discuss Sebastian's journey from a childhood filled with travel to his career in the travel industry. The conversation explores the evolution of travel experiences, the importance of human connection, and the challenges of maintaining relationships while pursuing a travel-centric lifestyle. Sebastian shares insights on starting Global Basecamps and the development of Oasis, a platform designed to streamline travel operations for companies. The episode emphasizes the significance of creating meaningful travel experiences and the impact of technology on the travel industry.

takeaways

• Travel has been a significant part of Sebastian's life since childhood.
• Sebastian transitioned from a tech-heavy career to the travel industry.
• The excitement of travel has changed with technology.
• Human connection is a vital aspect of travel experiences.
• Traveling is about creating memories rather than accumulating things.
• The challenges of a travel lifestyle can impact personal relationships.
• Finding a travel partner who shares your wanderlust is crucial.
• Global Basecamps was founded to provide unique travel experiences.
• Oasis was developed to streamline travel operations for companies.
• The importance of adapting to changes in the travel industry.

Learn more about the Big World Made Small Podcast and join our private community to get episode updates, special access to our guests, and exclusive adventure travel offers at bigworldmadesmall.com.

Transcript

Jason Elkins (00:01.196)
Welcome back everybody to another episode of the Big World Made Small podcast for the adventure traveler. Today we've got Sebastian Riedel here. Did I say that right, Sebastian? You'd mentioned before I hit record that sometimes people pronounce it slightly different. So I wanted to make sure I got that right. And Sebastian is the CEO of the Oasis Travel Platform, which I've been working with your platform for quite a while. I'm gotten quite familiar with it. So we'll discuss that a little bit, but really Sebastian, I'd like to kind of just jump in and.

Sebastian Riedel (00:10.684)
Yeah, that's good. Yeah, thanks.

Sebastian Riedel (00:16.722)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (00:30.36)
and start with a little bit about who you are. So welcome to the show.

Sebastian Riedel (00:34.452)
Great, yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. And yeah, looking forward to having this conversation. And yeah, thanks again for having me.

Jason Elkins (00:41.334)
Yeah, no, it's my, it's my pleasure. Thanks for taking time out of your day to join us. So Sebastian, I believe that our listeners, they maybe want to know a little bit about what you do, but it's really about kind of who you are. That's kind of the theme of the, of the show and anybody that's listened to, to very many of the episodes kind of gets at. So I really want to kind of figure out who you are. How did you get from basically from where you were, wherever that was to where you are now. And we can go back as far as you think is relevant.

Sebastian Riedel (01:03.016)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:07.128)
I don't know what's the first thing that you think is relevant to your career choices.

Sebastian Riedel (01:07.451)
Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (01:11.6)
Yeah, that's an interesting question. Well, definitely, you know, obviously travel is a big part of my life. you know, this being a travel podcast, definitely will tie things into that. yeah, I guess I, well, I was originally born in Germany. My parents were living over there. So, you know, we've been and my dad has been traveling a lot throughout our kind of childhood. So I definitely kind of got the travel bug early living abroad. We lived in England for a year.

in high school, I visited my dad who was living in Italy. so yeah, definitely kind of started that travel experience early and definitely, learned the benefits of traveling and the sort of what you get out of visiting other cultures and learning, you know, things are different from where you live. And it's to me, that's super exciting. And that's like, one of the best things to, learn about different cultures in our, in our world. So, yeah. So the travel bug kind of set in early, my path.

Jason Elkins (02:07.15)
Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (02:10.003)
to the travel industry was a little bit, like many people I'm sure, took a lot of different roads. So when I finished college, I started working for the electric utility in San Francisco. So completely different kind of world and worked for the power generation department there for a few years. I kind of think of it a completely different career, was in study environmental science after that. then during that time at

PG &E, I started getting into sort of like database programming and things of that nature. And then, so my next kind of major job was working for a litigation consulting company in San Francisco. So probably nobody knows what that actually means, but it's basically a company that helps like law firms or large corporations go through large legal proceedings. So bankruptcies, class action lawsuits, things of that nature. And basically what we did was

Or what I did specifically was we built web applications for, and data like analysis applications for those huge, you know, legal proceedings. So things like building a website for tracking claims for a company that's going through bankruptcy, analyzing data for a class action lawsuit with just tons of information. And so it was very like, yeah, very tech heavy. I love programming. So I really enjoyed it.

it just was intense. So a lot of long hours, we worked for attorneys, so they work all the time. So we ended up working all the time. So, yeah, it was, it was fun. And that's where I learned to program. learned to build software, deal with databases and so forth. And that was definitely something that I enjoyed, but it wasn't a passion. You know, I always wanted to like do something that I was passionate about, which I think most people that get into the travel industry.

It's a passion for them. not a, you you're not going to get rich necessarily in the travel industry, but you're going to be doing something that you can relate to and love. So, so basically back in 2005, a friend of mine in San Francisco came to me and said, you know, I want to start this travel company. he worked for a company called air tracks and they are, not sure if you're familiar with them, but they were at the time, sort of the, the leader in around the world travel. so a lot of sort of like.

Sebastian Riedel (04:34.01)
adventurous types, backpackers, so forth, were buying tickets through them because it was the only way you could link together one -way tickets, which now has gone away. But back at the time, it was actually really important. And so he basically had spent a lot of time dealing with customers who were planning these trips and booking their airfare, but then they didn't know what to do on the ground. And they were like, what should I see when I hear? And he was also an avatraveler, had all this advice for them.

and was kind of like, wow, I'm just giving away all my travel secrets for free and said, you know, and also, you know, just sort of being a passion. and so he kind of came to me and was like, we should, you know, want you to help with the technology side. And then we also, I have other business partner, Michael came in on the sort of operational and sales side. And so the three of us started global base camps. So that was sort of how I moved. And at that time I was, you know,

Jason Elkins (05:25.048)
Great.

Sebastian Riedel (05:29.384)
just sort of exhausted from programming and that world. so yeah, to me, I was like, this is perfect, perfect opportunity. So yeah.

Jason Elkins (05:38.102)
Yeah, that sounds great. I'm curious, Sebastian. So it sounds like it sounds like your, your undergraduate degree or what you did. You mentioned you finished school and got into this. it like an engineering background? It sounds very, you mentioned tech heavy. Obviously what kind of, what kind of education did you pick up in the beginning?

Sebastian Riedel (05:54.94)
Yeah, so I studied environmental science undergrad, and then I got a master's degree in ecology. So I was really going down the sort of science road and was, you know, looking at potentially, you know, even going further in that sort of in the field of like ecology and, sort of studying climate change and things of that nature. And so that was also heavy in sort of math and some programming and things of that nature. So kind of when I

Jason Elkins (06:01.645)
Okay.

Sebastian Riedel (06:24.658)
got out of that transition to this job where I was doing programming, it kind of like that sort of took over the road of doing like science and environmental science and things of that nature. But yeah, that was my original sort of game plan back in the day.

Jason Elkins (06:39.586)
I'm curious as you were going through school, can see maybe a little bit more in school, environmental sciences and stuff like that, but then into the programming world, did you feel like the people around you were kind of like -minded? you, mean, cause you've got a passion for travel now. I don't know how strong that was then, but did, was that difficult for you and maybe your colleagues or other people around you to kind of get you and understand your desire to travel or did it just, I'm just curious what kind of challenges came up when you were in that, that line of

Sebastian Riedel (06:54.078)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (07:08.276)
So yeah, well, definitely when I was working in the programming world, the litigation consulting, it was so focused on just the technology and the job at hand. was really no travel aspect, what have you. was literally like, for me, was like, this is my paycheck that allows me to go and travel. Why not?

when I'm done not at working and so forth. So yeah, there wasn't really any kind of crossover. So that's why I was kind of excited to just take this jump and be able to say, I'm going to take some of the skills I learned in programming and so forth and apply them to an industry or something that I'm passionate about. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (07:49.914)
That's very cool because I can't imagine that many the programmers and engineering types are typically a little bit more kind of structured and maybe don't have the same desire to that that wanderlust or whatever word you want to use for it. So so during this time, while you're doing that type of work, you weren't working in the travel business, but it sounds like you were, you know, earning money so you could go travel. So tell us a little bit about kind of.

Sebastian Riedel (07:57.981)
Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (08:01.769)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (08:13.634)
What did that look like for you before you were actually working in the travel business? Were you able to travel and visit places?

Sebastian Riedel (08:20.446)
Yeah, good question. Yeah. So, yeah, I did a fair amount of traveling at that time, mostly Asia. So, at that time, my dad was living in Vietnam. And so I took a couple big trips to where, I would go and, and, visit him for a few weeks and then just take a couple months and just wander around. So to definitely did the full backpacking, you know, through Vietnam went to, you know, Indonesia.

Jason Elkins (08:40.725)
Okay.

Sebastian Riedel (08:48.318)
to because a friend of mine might, you know, might be there for, you know, this was also a while ago, you know, I'm definitely going to age myself, but this was in the late nineties. So when the kind of I was in this, this, that first time that I went to Vietnam and, we went, I remember just my friend was kind of maybe going to be in, in, in Bali. So I just got a flight down there and just hung out. He told me that where the hotel, three brothers bungalows, he, that's where he always stays.

Jason Elkins (08:57.25)
Mm

Sebastian Riedel (09:12.798)
So I just got a flight down there, went to three, but you know, this is like kind of like email is just kind of popping around, you know, so it was like not this thing where it's so easy to connect with people, which I love because it was like, I literally went there, checked into the place. They pulled out the book, you know, with it's, you know, paper where they have people and said, has this person checked in or has this, his brother checked in? And they're like, Nope, nobody here. And so I was like, bummer. Okay, whatever. I'll just go hang out. And that actually happened for a couple of days in a row.

Jason Elkins (09:18.89)
Mm -hmm.

Jason Elkins (09:22.239)
Mm

Sebastian Riedel (09:41.478)
And then I actually just saw him and I was like, you are here. And he's like, yeah, I've been here for two days. And so it was like, those kinds of things are like really fun. They don't happen anymore because you have your phone with you you can just check and see if someone's so like, yeah, that was, that was pretty fun. And we ended up spending three weeks just bouncing around different islands in Indonesia. So yeah.

Jason Elkins (10:00.622)
Do you think that if you were to take kind of your experience then and kind of compare it to, you cause I travel a lot, you travel a lot. I'm sure you run into people that are kind of doing what you did back then, but they're doing it now with their phones and their, you know, the different websites, they're booking stuff ahead of time and they're using apps. I know that with Oasis travel platform, you guys have an app. So when people are traveling, they just pull out their phone and.

Sebastian Riedel (10:15.155)
Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (10:22.814)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (10:25.758)
and they know what to expect. So what do you think the differences are in the experience? I don't know where I'm going with this question, but what do you think is different? Was it better back then or what do you think?

Sebastian Riedel (10:25.843)
Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (10:33.714)
Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (10:37.754)
Yeah, that's a good question. That's like, yeah, that's a really good question. It's hard to say. it's one of those things I think, you know, when you're kind of looking back, you always know it was always better back then, you know, everything was better before. But, you know, maybe that's not necessarily true. So I think, you know, those the excitement of like that, that sort of scenario that I just described to you, the sort of like, wow, I just flew to Indonesia, I might not see my friend, I might be traveling for three weeks by myself, which is

Jason Elkins (10:50.072)
Mm -hmm.

Sebastian Riedel (11:07.48)
A, great, and B, you know, wish I wish my friend was here with me or whatever, you know, so there's like the positive, there's pros and cons to both. and I think sort of that level of like uncertainty, excitement, adventure, you know, that maybe some of that sort of feeling is lost in some of the, like the randomness of when you are kind of traveling in those backpacker days with no internet and no, or, you know, minimal internet and, you know, minimal sort of resources that there's.

Jason Elkins (11:11.853)
Mm

Sebastian Riedel (11:35.666)
The positives are these sort of unknown and the adventure and the excitement, feel like. But the flip side is I think now people are able to sort of like, and there's also like back in those days, there's a lot of like, you know, negatives necessary. I mean, you can turn them into positives, but you're like, you missed the ferry, you're staying another two days on the island, you know, and you're like, you're done with the, you're like, man, I really want to, you know, so those things, which are again,

Jason Elkins (11:55.747)
Mm

Sebastian Riedel (12:01.9)
like on the face negative, but really sometimes are the best things that happen to you, you know, and then you're like, this two days, it was great, you know. So you kind of miss those, but I feel like now maybe with more information, you don't have as many of those, you're, you know, you're able to kind of maximize your experience, maybe more, you're able to sort of like find stuff, you know, so I don't know, it's hard to say which is better. I definitely enjoyed the sort of the excitement and the adventure aspect.

Jason Elkins (12:06.157)
Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (12:28.456)
But the flip side is you have these times where you missed something, you're stuck somewhere, couldn't, those things, which again, you could say it could be good and bad. But yeah, I think now, yeah, I don't know. But that's a really good question.

Jason Elkins (12:41.198)
But I guess also, you know, as I was listening to you, it's kind of occurred to me that we still have the option. I mean, I've got the phone in my pocket. That does not necessarily mean that I have to plan out everything. So if I'm the personality that is super spontaneous and loves those little surprises that come up along the way, I can always shut off my phone, put it in my pocket, or I can always just walk down to where I think there's buses and wait and get on a bus and just see where I go. I, you know, I still have that ability.

Sebastian Riedel (12:47.794)
Yeah, yeah, that's true.

Yeah, that's true.

Sebastian Riedel (12:59.56)
Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (13:07.42)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true.

Jason Elkins (13:10.742)
Where the flip side was back in, you know, the eighties, nineties, if you weren't spontaneous and adventurous, you just didn't go. You know, so at least I guess it's opened up, opened up a lot more opportunities for those people that don't have that, have a different threshold for, you know, risk aversion or whatever, guess you'd want to say, but, yeah, it's, it's interesting. then.

Sebastian Riedel (13:13.33)
Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (13:17.788)
Yeah, yeah, you probably didn't want to be doing it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yep. No, that's a really good point. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (13:37.816)
And then of course, there's always that, you you go somewhere. It still happens to me. I go somewhere and I tend to not do a lot of research ahead of time. go and then like on the last day I'm leaving and I run into a taxi driver. run into another guest and they're like, man, did you go see such and such? I'm like, no, tell me about it. And they tell you about it. You're like, my gosh, I missed that because I was just disconnected. so, you know, it's, but that's, that's, that's part of it. So, all right.

Sebastian Riedel (13:52.008)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, yep. Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (14:01.064)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, yeah.

Jason Elkins (14:06.36)
Very cool. I'm curious about your dad. I don't know if you want to go there or not, you know, you mentioned that he had traveled quite a bit. He sounds pretty adventurous or so. I'm curious. What was his background? What kind of work was he doing and did that influence you in any of your decisions?

Sebastian Riedel (14:22.196)
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. No, happy to talk about my dad. He's, he's awesome. He, so his, his kind of like short stories, he grew up in a really small town in Northern California. and basically like really small and, went into the army, and, went to Vietnam and actually signed up, I think it's 62. So before the draft, right before the draft, and because of that, they,

They taught him how to speak Vietnamese. went to the army, Navy language school in Monterey. And so when he went over to Vietnam, you know, he was actually in a place where he was like, you know, translating and so forth, you know? and so he did a couple of tours there and then when he got out, he was on the GI bill. So he went to UC Davis studying economics and then just kind of like, he's told me about his sort of, calls his life like that.

Jason Elkins (14:51.029)
Mm

Jason Elkins (15:07.107)
Mm

Sebastian Riedel (15:15.208)
happenstance or just kind of, you know, like things just sort of happened and it unfolded. And so they were doing a master's program the first year he graduated and they were like, Hey, do you want to participate? And he was like, sure. And then, so the next thing they were like, do you want to get your PhD? We'll send you to Hong Kong and you can study this emerging markets. And he was like, that sounds pretty good. You know? So, then, you know, he did actually like took a motorbike through like Malaysia, Thailand.

all the way down in like 65. He just drove his motorcycle down there and like told me stories about we went to a place this railroad hotel in Hoi An once. sorry, Hoi An in Thailand. And he was like, yeah, I was here. This was 20 years ago. And he was like, yeah, I was here 30 years ago. And I was like, wow, that's amazing. So yeah, he that actually I'm glad you brought that up because that is a big, you know, impact of my

Jason Elkins (16:01.294)
Wow. Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (16:09.16)
travel bug and like just seeing him go to these places. And he was lucky that then he started, you know, his career in sort of, became a professor and teaching like international economics. And so that allowed him to feel his passion of travel and, know, being able to do like your sabbatical here, go to conference and things of that nature. So like, yeah, that's a good point. I definitely, you know, got a lot of that sort of travel bug from watching him, you know,

meld his career into a way into a thing that gave him the ability to travel like all over the place. So yeah.

Jason Elkins (16:44.79)
What were the, I'm sure you, you know, without going into too much detail, I'm sure you were able to watch him, you know, kind of a see progress through life doing these things and you followed in his footsteps in several ways. I'm curious what challenges you saw come up either for him, for you or other people that you've worked with in the travel business. because I know sometimes it creates relationship challenges, financial challenges, all kinds of challenges. And I think we should touch on that. So I'm curious kind of what comes up to what comes to mind.

Sebastian Riedel (17:06.984)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely, yeah, in some ways, you know, it's, hard to, you know, live the, I don't know if you call it normal or whatever life, you know, if you're sort of have this wanderlust and you're always wanting to travel and explore new things and so forth. So yeah, definitely. feel like that's something that yeah, through his, his personal life has also taken, you know, journey of finding the right people and, you know,

that are compatible with the lifestyle of traveling and so forth. And yeah, so I, yeah, I definitely agree with you there. It's something that, you know, it, and that's what makes it awesome is when you do find that person that's like, yeah, this is, you know, I have the same, you know, desire to travel and do this and do that, or, you know, you know, totally fine with you taking off for three months and going and living somewhere. And yeah, so yeah, it's definitely something that comes.

Jason Elkins (18:06.446)
curious if you, I don't know your relationships as we don't need to go there, but I'm curious, do you have any tips or pointers? Because I relate to what you just said. I'm traveling. I've been traveling full time for three years and that's the biggest challenge I've found is sometimes, you know, I show up at some places and that's fascinating. They're really interested in me because I'm doing this, but then it's like, but I'm not going with you. Or they just don't, they don't quite get it. I've had hundreds of conversations when people ask you, where do you live?

Sebastian Riedel (18:10.109)
Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (18:14.611)
Mm

Sebastian Riedel (18:27.422)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jason Elkins (18:33.922)
Well, today, today I live here. Next week, I'm not sure. So I'm curious if you have any tips or pointers for how do you find the right person to tag along with you or at least put up with you.

Sebastian Riedel (18:34.11)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

No, yeah, yeah. No, yeah, it's hard. Exactly. Yeah, it's hard to find someone to put up with me at different levels, on all the levels. But no, I'm just kidding. But yeah, no, think it's, yeah, it's interesting. don't, you know, I don't, definitely don't have any pointers, unfortunately, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (18:50.916)
Hahaha

Jason Elkins (18:59.744)
No. Okay. All right. Well, I just, I thought I would just check to see if you had any, any good pointers for me. I'd read an article recently about it's kind of, I, I wish I could remember the word, but there's it's in the, like the diagnostic manual for psychiatric stuff in the U S and it's basically it's wanderlust. It's that person that has such a desire for new experiences that it, that it impacts their relationships, their finances, their, this, they're that.

Sebastian Riedel (19:16.764)
-huh.

Sebastian Riedel (19:23.088)
yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (19:27.229)
Mm.

Jason Elkins (19:28.174)
And it basically is wanderlust. There's another word for it, but it's that, that person that's like spending all the, maybe they're not spending all their money on booze or drugs or gambling, but they're spending all their money on trips or they're, they're just blowing off their families. You know, maybe that guy who has a family and at 40, he decides I gotta go, you know? And, so anyway, I just, I thought it was an interesting, interesting article.

Sebastian Riedel (19:38.044)
Yeah, totally. Yeah.

Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (19:47.346)
Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, that's a good, that's a good point. And I think that's sort of kind of what you touch on about wanderlust and kind of the difference between, you know, and yeah, my partner and I currently, you know, she has the same sort of mindset in like, we would rather have like kind of memories than things, which, you know, as you mentioned, your current status, obviously you're in the same boat because you're

Jason Elkins (20:10.882)
Mm

Jason Elkins (20:15.904)
Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (20:16.338)
You want as little things as possible and as many memories as possible. I, yeah, I think that is, there's definitely, mean, I'm not saying there's just two types of people, there's this type, but there are, that is two different types of people. One is people who like, you know, choose to have memories over things in certain ways. And there's obviously a scale, you know, a sliding scale like these, you know, but you know, that's something when you align with someone who's like, you know, would you rather have a new, you know,

Jason Elkins (20:35.255)
Yeah, yeah,

Sebastian Riedel (20:42.43)
patio furniture set or just roll with this old one for the next three years. And then we can go take this awesome trip and, you know, come back and just sit, sit on the old pan of patio furniture, but with these awesome stories that we're going to talk about, you know, so yeah.

Jason Elkins (20:49.183)
that. Yup.

Jason Elkins (20:55.106)
That resonates so much. I think the majority of people, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. I get it. I just don't get it. It's, know, the majority of people, you know, strive for that, the house and the cars and the pets and just the things. And that's part of why I'm divorced. My ex -wife was wonderful, beautiful, wonderful woman. But I remember so many conversations, every time Christmas came around, it was like, we could take all the money we're going to spend on presents.

Sebastian Riedel (21:04.041)
Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (21:08.284)
Yeah, totally.

Sebastian Riedel (21:20.105)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (21:24.138)
And we could just go to the Bahamas or we could, you know, go to South, go to Costa Rica or something. And I just always thought that was the most obvious answer to the Christmas question. And she would just like, no, I want to wake up in the morning and have the stuff under the tree and see the smiles on the kids' faces. And that was just such a disconnect.

Sebastian Riedel (21:26.578)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (21:32.85)
Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (21:40.658)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (21:45.1)
that, you know, we were together for a long time and, and I realized that it wasn't fair to her either because I was constantly, let's, you know, I'd sit there and watch videos about families sailing around the world on their sailboats. I'm like, let's go buy a sailboat and she's like, we need to buy a house. So, so anyway, I'm sure some other people listening to this can appreciate that.

Sebastian Riedel (21:45.138)
Yeah, yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (21:52.297)
Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (21:57.436)
Yeah, yeah, right. Right, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and I think, yeah, I think kind of maybe now that we've talked through it, that is kind of maybe one of the tips is like find that person where, you know, people are like, you know, the beginning, you know, I don't know when you're young and you say, do you want? You're talking to your significant, your potential significant other. There's these things that, you know, typical society set, like, do you want to have kids? Do you want to do this? Or do you want to, you know, maybe the first question is like, where, where are you on the wanderlust scale? And are we in the same, you know, are we in that same zone?

Jason Elkins (22:27.207)
Mm

Jason Elkins (22:33.128)
Yeah, yeah. And it's, think the response would be interesting because I've had similar conversations. The response interesting because when you say, are you on the wonder less scale? If they're not high on the wander less scale, they probably don't really appreciate the question. They don't understand what it means because I've had so many people that I have a conversation. do you like to travel? Almost everybody says yes. You know, do you like to travel? Okay, great. So what does that mean to you or?

Sebastian Riedel (22:48.66)
You're right, that's true.

Sebastian Riedel (22:56.648)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (23:01.932)
question I like to say you have magic wand you can go anywhere in the planet you know for two weeks where do you want to go and I used to get you know when I was dating after the divorce I used to hear Hawaii all the time like I want to go to Hawaii I'm like but in Arizona come I like anywhere in the world like you just don't understand and it's like yeah so it's so when someone says they like to travel you got to dig a little bit deeper to kind of understand what that looks like okay do you like to put

Sebastian Riedel (23:13.862)
Mm -hmm, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Travel, travel, yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (23:27.325)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (23:30.574)
carry everything you own in your suitcase and get on a bus with chickens and go from Airbnb to Airbnb for six months at a time. How does that sound? But I don't know. I haven't solved it yet, it's fun trying.

Sebastian Riedel (23:32.818)
Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (23:40.914)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, and it's good. It sounds like you're thinking about it a lot. Okay.

Jason Elkins (23:51.335)
Yeah, it does. Let's change the subject. Anyway, so I want to hear a little bit more about global base camps and how you guys came together. My understanding based on our conversation so far as you were kind of the tech guy with a passion for travel, which, which made a lot of sense because a tech guy without a lot of passion for travel probably can't afford to go work with a startup to do something like that. They're probably, yeah, that sounds interesting, but so

Sebastian Riedel (24:07.144)
Yep. Yep.

Sebastian Riedel (24:13.99)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jason Elkins (24:19.384)
Tell us what that was like getting that business started. kind of some things that came up along the way and what, what you learned from that.

Sebastian Riedel (24:25.8)
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So, yeah, like I was kind of starting to before. So basically I had a friend, Greg and he, Gregor, and he was working for air trucks and wanted to peel off. had this idea of, know, basically servicing their clients, providing them with, you know, ground, services once it booked their air flight. And, and then my other business partner, Michael D 'Amico. And so he was kind of the sales and ops person.

And so the three of us started it. The original, the name Global Base Camps comes from the original idea was to take these people that are going on like a month long trip and say, look, you know, kind of the still like in the sort of like grownup backpacker mode where they're like, you know, like you want to have this base camp. So if you're going to go to, you know, like Cambodia and be in sort of.

the jungle, like there's a really cool lodge here that you can do all these excursions from or in Chiang Mai or whatever, you know, and so this is your base camp and you'll probably book it for four nights. And then, you you'll probably do some stuff as you transition down towards the beach in Thailand or something, you know, and then you'll have another base camp at the beach. And so that was the idea for global base camps. And so that's how we launched and, you know, kind of built out. We wanted to launch with sort of a web like bookable interface as well as, you know, sort of.

Jason Elkins (25:22.637)
He

Sebastian Riedel (25:46.278)
you know, just over, you know, phone email, so, so forth. and we quickly found that people that wanted to use the service wanted everything. So they'd want like, I'd like a transfer actually would like you to kind of book, you know, just the whole trip for me, tours, all that kind of stuff, leave a lot of stuff open, but, know, book those like key tours, the accommodation and the transfers. So.

Jason Elkins (26:12.867)
Mm

Sebastian Riedel (26:13.224)
like we quickly, like within six months kind of rethought our thing and was like, look, really what we're doing is building custom tours. don't, you know, those are the people that want to use us. The other people, they can do this stuff kind of on their own or they, sort of think they can actually. And so that's kind of where, so the name has always stuck, but you know, the goal of BaseCamps is really about having these cool lodges and cool properties that were your base camp for, to explore a region. Unfortunately,

Jason Elkins (26:28.044)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Sebastian Riedel (26:42.022)
Now people think of it really as just tracking, you know, and they kind of have put a real like kind of tracking expedition connotation to it, which, know, we've, we've thought about rebranding, you know, so many times because we go to a trade show and they're like, you guys just do tracking. we're like, no, actually, you know, so, but yeah, base camp, you know, like, kind of like, you know, yeah, I think so maybe, you know, just sort of like, they think of a tracking base camp versus like a sort of what we were thinking, I think. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (26:57.944)
Where do you think they get that idea?

Just the name, huh? Okay. Okay. Makes sense.

Jason Elkins (27:09.282)
Like we've got a camp set up at the base of every mountain and that's what we do. Yeah. That makes, okay. I appreciate that.

Sebastian Riedel (27:11.7)
Yes, exactly. Yeah. So, yeah. But yeah, so, but yeah, so that's, so we got started. actually started in 2000. So it took us a couple of years to kind of get things going. And, then, you know, I think our first booking was in 2007. And that was like, I think we had like five, five trips planned. And then that's when I remember we had maybe like our 10th customer, like called us up and was like, Hey, I just lost most of my

you know, retirement, you know, I'm no longer going to go on that trip. And we were kind of like, and that was like, I remember that was kind of like the, you know, the beginning of the sort of that, you know, recession and all of that stuff. So definitely a difficult time to start. And, you know, kind of learned a lot in that first year or two of that, you know, kind of trying to figure out how to kind of keep going. And, you know, there were still people traveling and so forth. So

Jason Elkins (27:41.42)
Mm -hmm.

Sebastian Riedel (28:07.944)
just not the right environment to kind of start a leisure travel business. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (28:14.52)
being said though, in hindsight, because it's always looked different in hindsight. In hindsight, would you have waited two or three years or do you feel like what you learned through that process was, was worth the headache, the frustration, the pressure, the stress, all that stuff.

Sebastian Riedel (28:30.438)
Yeah. yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, with hindsight, think we definitely would have wanted to keep launching, you know, just maybe it would have like sort of planned a little bit, you know, more kind of like longer, better runway, you know, kind of be like, okay, it's actually going to take us a little longer to get to profitability because this is going to be sort of lean times. But yeah, I agree with you like in, in lean times and, you know, when things are hard is the opportunity to learn new things, you know, like when you're

Jason Elkins (28:58.541)
Mm

Sebastian Riedel (28:59.252)
You know that I agree with you on that point for sure, you know, anything really, you know, kind of like these challenges are the things that at the time you're like, man, this is, you know, this is the worst thing that's happening to us. then later you're like, well, it did force us to figure out, you know, like we, we got like, at that time, air tracks was 95 % of our business in the first year, you know, basically. And so we got super, you know, not the word is an aggressive, but just creative of like.

We would go up and it really came down to their salespeople because they were high touch sort of booking these trips. There are salespeople being like, Hey, do you have, would you have your ground accommodations, transfers, tours sorted? you don't let me introduce you to so -and -so at global base camps. If they did that, would, know, the close rate was through the roof. If they just said, you know, sent we, you know, had some auto emails that were like, if you're interested in this, you know, then your closer, it's like a 2%, you know, or something. So.

Jason Elkins (29:42.595)
Mm

Jason Elkins (29:54.764)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Super passive.

Sebastian Riedel (29:55.944)
So we like would fly at the time we would fly. They were based in San Francisco. So we would like, you know, fly up to San Francisco once a quarter and meet with their sales staff and do a full kind of video presentation about our product and our services and all of that. We once created posters and we put them all around their office space of like air trucks and global base camps. I mean, it was like, it was fun. And it was like, yeah, to that, in that, to that point, yeah, just kind of, we were in a place where we were like, we really, this is our main.

Jason Elkins (30:15.541)
Mm

Sebastian Riedel (30:24.604)
revenue source right now, we need to really maximize it. So we got kind of creative on how to, how to do that, you know.

Jason Elkins (30:30.892)
Yeah, I see that I've had quite a few conversations with people here on the show that have been through. There was that recession. Obviously there was, you know, more, more recently we had a big one. And I think, you know, kind of what comes up for me is if you always have done what you've always done and it's worked for you, you just kind of like, you know, the doors open, people just keep coming in the door. There's no reason to think, to think about, well, what could we be doing better?

Sebastian Riedel (30:39.737)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (30:53.384)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (30:57.038)
You'd almost, you almost have this idea. Well, it'd be foolish to try anything new because this is working. So you just kind of keep doing what you're doing for 20 years without even thinking about doing anything different or new. And then all of a something happens and you're just, you've got 20 years of practice.

Sebastian Riedel (31:01.212)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yes.

Jason Elkins (31:16.302)
complacency, practiced complacency for 20 years. And then something happens. You probably have a bigger staff and bigger expenses and all that stuff. And then some big happens. You just, you're not even trained that you haven't even really thought about changes where a newer business comes in and gets hit right away with that. It's, like, now you've your foundation, your roots is all in creativity and ingenuity and

Sebastian Riedel (31:17.554)
Yeah, for sure.

Sebastian Riedel (31:27.048)
Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (31:32.68)
Yep. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (31:40.382)
and new ideas and I think there are some advantages to that and those are probably the companies that in the long run eventually, but it's stressful, I'm sure.

Sebastian Riedel (31:40.531)
Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (31:48.244)
Yeah, no, for sure. yeah, I do kind of wonder about that too. We did actually kind of talk about it because yeah, also the other thing that kind of a byproduct of that, which you just basically touched on was, you know, at some point we had, you know, done these multiple trips to air tracks and we're just like measuring the, you know, increase in leads and so forth. And was like, this isn't going to do it. You know, we need, you know, definitely need to diversify where we're in, you know, then it was just sort of like, you know, open the flood gates. Let's, let's try everything. So it was kind of like.

Jason Elkins (32:09.57)
Mm -hmm.

Sebastian Riedel (32:18.42)
You know, we had like, you know, run out every ground ball. this is like someone throw an idea. That's like, that's not a great idea. We're like, let's just try it. You never know. You know, and so we, know, and luckily within, I think maybe by year two or three, we got probably year three, we got to kind of a place where we're at right now, where, right, right. You know, the last time I, you know, when I was working there was, 30 % like, repeats and referrals, 30 % like.

Jason Elkins (32:21.602)
Mm

Jason Elkins (32:26.004)
Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (32:47.284)
let's call it digital marketing, know, whether that's SEO, PBC, so forth, and then 30 % partnerships and AirTrek's just being one of those. So it's sort of one of actually several, you key partnerships. So, which I think your point is key. if something happens, your website, you know, you know, your SEO tanks or something, then it's like, that's only 10 % of our business. like, you know, one of those partners pulls the plug. They say, you know, we're no longer business or we're going somewhere else.

Jason Elkins (32:49.784)
Mm

Jason Elkins (32:56.887)
Mm

Jason Elkins (33:07.821)
Mm -hmm.

Sebastian Riedel (33:15.956)
That's only 10 % of your business. To your point is like if you've been doing kind of the same thing, like you said, for 20 years and not trying new stuff and have one, know, legit business model, business sales channel, what have you. And that goes away, then yeah, it's tough. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (33:29.464)
Mm

Jason Elkins (33:32.718)
Yeah, you're just not prepared to be flexible because you haven't been for 20 years and I mean that that's that that's that way in our personal lives as well as in business. It shows up the same. If, if you haven't, if you haven't been to the gym in 20 years and all of sudden someone says you have to go to the gym, it's going to be, it's going to be tough, right? Because that's a change to your pattern. So where if you've been going to the gym for 20 years or doing different things, different things, whatever they are, just growing, continuing to grow then.

Sebastian Riedel (33:37.105)
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Sebastian Riedel (33:41.692)
Yeah. Yeah.

Right, yeah. Yep.

Sebastian Riedel (33:59.196)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (34:00.204)
than when you're forced to make changes. It's just, yeah, maybe just a little bit easier. I'm curious about global base camps. And I don't know how you started out and I'm not sure where they are now as far as kind of their business model. Does global base camps own any locations or do they work with DMCs in the different countries? How would you describe kind of how they do it?

Sebastian Riedel (34:04.617)
Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (34:17.992)
Yep. Yeah. DMCs, like, so yeah, a hundred percent, or not a hundred percent, but mostly DMCs, some destinations, you know, book some stuff kind of direct and work, but work with multiple kind of local partners. But yeah, so basically, and that was the thing in those sort of, you know, early years was really cultivating relationships with the right DMCs. And in my opinion, you when people say like, you know, what is the sort of differentiator?

It's like learning to work with people that share your same values. like responsible travel was a big one for us, you know, it's so kind of the biggest one for us is sort of, know, leaving the destination better than how you found it, making sure the money flows to local people, local guides, things that local properties, things of that nature. So responsible travel through the uniqueness of the product. So definitely that's something we collaborated a lot with, with DMCs was figuring out like, you know, what's an experience that

that other people can't do. What's an experience that... And so actually in Cambodia, one of the experiences that we have is to go and visit the lake outside of Siem Reap and basically do this. partnered with Waves for Water and they have this water filter that you can put into any five gallon drum and you basically can take...

You can create drinking water from any water source. And so there the, lake actually gets brackish for part of the year. And, people still continue to drink that water and it obviously has really bad, you know, and they also just, that's their, that's their sewer system. And, know, so it's when the lake level, you know, when it's the wet season, it's not a big deal when it goes down, it's, it becomes a really big deal. and people live on, there's, these are the community that's on houseboats. So what we kind of set up with our.

Jason Elkins (35:56.386)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (36:07.981)
Mm

Sebastian Riedel (36:10.782)
Partner there is this experience where our travelers would bring a water filter with them and they would do this one day experience out of CM Reap where they'd go and they'd get on a boat and they'd go and visit a family and they together would build this, show them how to build this, you know, bucket that creates, probable water. And it's like, you know, it's, know, I would say by far people came back and were like, that was my favorite day, you know, like anchor Watts, amazing, like it's so beautiful. It's mind blowing, like,

Jason Elkins (36:35.64)
Yeah, yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (36:39.74)
literally that day, meeting the family, feeling like I helped them, feeling like I brought, you know, is like the best experience. so like kind of creating those types of experiences, different destinations with our DMCs is really kind of what I think what a global base camp stands for and what their kind of like value proposition is, is allowing travelers to find those, those types of experiences. And a lot of times people don't know that, you know, like, you know, going to visit a school in Africa.

you know, and is like the best, you know, better than the game drive. You know, it's seeing these communities, learning about the communities and like, you know, seeing people in different, you know, different cultures, I think is really what kind of sets things apart.

Jason Elkins (37:10.893)
Mm -hmm.

Jason Elkins (37:20.298)
It's interesting. And before I go any further, I want to just meant for anybody that's listening that, you know, I threw out the work, the letters DMC. so DMC destination, destination management company. I should have said it a little bit better for our listeners, but so it's partners on the ground is probably the best way to put it. So you've got partners on the ground in Cambodia that maybe they work with other tour operators as well. Maybe they don't, I don't know that, but that's, but they're the ones kind of on the ground that, you know, that.

Sebastian Riedel (37:27.059)
Hmm.

Sebastian Riedel (37:35.23)
Yep. Yep.

Jason Elkins (37:46.592)
contract with the drivers and the guides and the lodges and all that stuff to, so, then whereas like global base camps or an outbound tour operator, like local base camps is going to, you know,

figure out how to put together trips that make sense, market them, have conversations with clients here in the US or other countries as well. So anyway, I just want to touch on that for the listeners. But also, I really want to get back to the human connection part that you'd mentioned, because I think that that's super important. I don't know how you put a number on it, but I'm just kind of curious what you're, you mentioned that that's the experience that your clients tend to come back and rave about. I remember

You know, I've been to Africa only a couple of times, but I've spent a fair amount of time there when I went. And if you were to ask me, what's your favorite experience in Africa? You know, that was easy. You know, it was in Zambia and we went and visited this little village and the, man that lived in the village, was the tour guide and he brought his seven year old son, Patrick along for the walk through the village and Patrick held my hand the whole time.

Sebastian Riedel (38:50.896)
Mm.

Jason Elkins (38:51.214)
and was so proud to be involved in this tour. I think he was the aspiring tour guide, I'm not sure, but the other kids would look at him and Patrick was just grinning ear to ear and he was so proud to be walking, walking through the village with me. so like hands down, like 10 times, like, and we did some amazing game viewing experiences and all this stuff, but that's always the experience that, that will come back to my mind. So, which, which brings up the point, like when we travel, maybe we don't always realize how important the connections are.

Sebastian Riedel (38:53.896)
That's us. Right.

Sebastian Riedel (39:01.246)
Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (39:20.006)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (39:20.172)
human connections, but I mean, what are your thoughts? What would you like to share with listeners about kind of the value of, you know, what's what role does human connection play in travel like this?

Sebastian Riedel (39:28.98)
Yeah, I mean, I think it's like unquantifiable. I honestly like that experience I just described in Cambodia, kind of just giving me chills actually thinking about it. And the other ones that we have, and for me personally, remember, I'll go back to my dad for a second. But I remember the first time I went to visit him in Vietnam was I believe 96. And we had just like opened an embassy there and he was living over there.

Jason Elkins (39:33.261)
Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (39:57.06)
I'm just doing some actually work with the government. and I remember him describing what it was like and, you know, via through email or something. And I remember just getting off the plane and him picking me up on a motorbike and jumped on the back and we're driving through Saigon and just like all of the like sensory people, like just going about, you know, at this time it was all motorbikes. There was no cars or anything. And it was just like someone carrying like a huge like

pieces of rebar on a motorbike, no problem, or like 18 chickens. And, you know, then like, you know, the school girls was just riding their bike through all this madness, just no care in the world. and then just like getting to interact with the people and seeing like how happy and just sort of like felt like balance they were, you know, and, at the time I was like in the process of transitioning jobs and had gone over there because switching jobs and just stressed and, know, what am going to do with my life and all of this? And like, here are these are people that, you know,

when you think about economic advantages, we're like have gazillions more opportunities and money and things like that. And you have these people like just so much more kind of like centered and balanced. And so that was really the main thing that hit me that first time when I was there. It wasn't necessarily like the different, it was really just the people and how nice and genuine and kind they were to me even. like, yeah, so like I think that is.

Jason Elkins (40:58.71)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Sebastian Riedel (41:21.552)
Like interacting with cultures and people to me is more or equally as important. don't know, I can't quantify it, but you know, as seeing some amazing site, as seeing anchor, like I said, you know, seeing this cool site or going to this cool spot, like actually interacting with people to me is what I get probably the most out of traveling. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (41:29.421)
Yeah, you can't.

Jason Elkins (41:40.318)
I know why it came up while you were talking, but if you think back, I just remember back to like the days of the Soviet Union and if you went to the Soviet Union, you know, people could go there, but you had a handler, I guess, you know, and it's still like that. Maybe it'd be like that in North Korea, I think is it Turkmenistan or there's some places in the world that maybe you go, but you've got someone there that kind of makes sure you don't interact with the locals.

Sebastian Riedel (41:52.862)
Mm -hmm.

Sebastian Riedel (41:59.048)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (42:04.306)
Yeah, right, Yeah, yeah.

Jason Elkins (42:05.26)
And I'm like, why would I ever want to do that? If I was going to, if, if I was like, I want to go to North Korea, but I can't talk to anybody. I don't want to go, you know, it's like, what's, what's the point? Or if I wanted to go to Machu Picchu and people say, there's lots of crowds, but I still want to go to Machu Picchu. But to be honest with you, if they shut it down for me for three days, there's going be nobody else there. You can just do the in control by yourself. And I'm like, no, no, thanks. What's the point? At least give me a local guide that I can speak with or something. So.

Sebastian Riedel (42:12.028)
Yeah, yeah, pass. exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (42:26.546)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (42:35.232)
Anyway, so I think the people that travel much kind of are in agreement. Maybe there's some people out there that really like solo travel, want to go climb a mountain by themselves. That's fine. But even then, maybe they're connecting with themselves. So I still think it's human connection. So anyway, I mean, we could go on and on about all this stuff. It's fascinating conversation. And Sebastian, I want to ask you, though, because we've discussed quite a few things. I feel like we could come back and do quite a few episodes. But I'm curious what.

Sebastian Riedel (42:43.954)
Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah, that's true. That's a point. Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (42:59.881)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (43:04.936)
Did I forget to ask you what should I've asked you that you want to make sure our listeners know about? You know, we didn't even really touch on Oasis, so maybe this would be a good opportunity to put that out there because that's important. I want people to leave the conversation kind of understanding where you took that technology ability with your love of travel. So let's speak about Oasis for a few minutes here before we wrap up.

Sebastian Riedel (43:11.592)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (43:18.163)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely happy to share on that. yeah, basically where, so Oasis is basically a platform for, tour operators to travel companies really to sort of streamline their, sales and operations. So basically it's a CRM and itinerary builder and a financials management tool all, all in one. and there's also a sort of traveler focused, mobile app or, so that would be a basically.

a tool for tour operators, clients to access all of their travel documents while they're traveling. So basically how that came about was at Global Base Camps, kind of maybe 10 years in and sort of doing a lot. I built a lot of like we, or we built a lot of tools like Google Docs and spreadsheets and things to try to streamline our protocols and really get our team focused. And, but still we just felt like we were doing the same thing over and over running inefficiently.

At this point, we were probably half remote. half the team was in the office in Encinitas and the other half were kind of scattered around, mostly the West Coast actually, but either way, just not in the office. And so we wanted to, we were like, we have to be able to do things more efficiently. There's gotta be a tool out there that's built for companies like us that will help us. We kind of reached a point of revenue where we're like, okay, we can afford to pay.

Jason Elkins (44:36.033)
Mm

Sebastian Riedel (44:51.998)
something in software. So yeah, I demoed everything out there. And yeah, just for whatever reasons, you know, we had sort of our deal breakers and there was like, you know, it couldn't be legacy software, we needed something kind of moving into the modern era. We wanted to send web based proposals, we wanted to have everything under one log and we wanted it in the cloud. So that you know, the experience in the office was the same as if you're traveling or you're on a fam or you're in remote. So yeah, so basically demoed everything and didn't

Jason Elkins (45:16.119)
Mm

Sebastian Riedel (45:21.204)
really see something. And so we're kind of like, there's an opportunity here. So that's when I peeled off from global base camps and was like, all right, I'm going to build this software. actually at that point, I've been like maybe 12 years out of software and I was just kind of missing it. And I was like, okay, my sort of like logical nerdy brain is missing some of these, like some of that process. So yeah, so then built Oasis and yeah, with the goal really of just

Jason Elkins (45:34.883)
Mm -hmm.

Sebastian Riedel (45:48.5)
allowing tour operators to run more efficiently, to be able to send web -based proposals to customers, which is huge, especially when you're selling a $50 ,000 Safari. If you're just sending an outline in email, it's a pretty big ask. Yeah, you're saying, yeah, hey, we want you to spend as much as you spent on a car or two cars, or in my case, like 10 cars. But we're just going to give you the, here's the outline.

Jason Elkins (46:02.252)
or like a PDF document that they got open and yeah, yeah.

Jason Elkins (46:12.951)
Mm

Sebastian Riedel (46:17.672)
kind of just felt really like there was a better way to do things. And so that's when we built Oasis and it took a couple of years to get going to build it. Global Basecamp was our first customer obviously, and they tested it out for a couple of years. And then we were kind of just sort of organically adding companies to using Oasis.

And then kind of that was, you we finished the mobile app, which was kind of key, I think, you know, to like, it's basically a tool for our customers, customers, the traveler. and so we kind of finished that right before, unfortunately COVID. So we were kind of like on this nice little path of like adding features, adding customers. didn't want to like go full board and be like, Hey, let's market to everyone. We weren't, not really ready. I wanted to make sure we, you know, everyone in the travel industry does things differently, which is kind of tough, you know? So it's sort of like.

We wanted to make it configurable, but not too complex, but powerful enough to meet everybody's Anyway, so then, yeah, that kind of happened right before COVID. then, so that was obviously a little pause there. And then since COVID, I've really found that more and more companies are just really focused on becoming more efficient and figuring out, of like what you us kind of ties right back into what you were saying before about.

you know, the sort of tough times making you more, you know, nimble and giving you the opportunity to challenge. I feel like it has, you know, sort of bumped the interest in, in people saying, you know what, I really need to switch platforms. Cause it's kind of a big ass to get someone to say, all right, you've got, know, you've got this process down where even if it's just a spreadsheet and email and you're, creating itineraries and Word documents, you've got it down.

Jason Elkins (47:38.243)
Mm

Sebastian Riedel (47:58.78)
like switch everything and move to this platform. You know, a lot of times people are like, I'd love to, but I just can't right now. You know, I'd love to hear that a lot. And so I think kind of the COVID maybe made people like say, you know what, I can't do like later, later. need to, you know, if I want to get more efficient, I need to do it now or, you know, more kind of ready to like take those jumps in terms of like, you know, kind of like seeing an opportunity to upgrade.

whether it's your itineraries or upgrade the way you're tracking your clients or tracking your finances, so forth. So yeah.

Jason Elkins (48:30.794)
Yeah. And you, and you touched on kind of like, you know, from the, potential client standpoint, you know, they're booking a $20 ,000 trip and they're getting a PDF that was graded in word. but then there's also on the other side of that is your planners, you know, if you've got a travel business and you've.

Sebastian Riedel (48:40.796)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (48:46.803)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (48:49.538)
You hire a new planner and they come in and say, okay, here's, you got to go into the drive, go into the Google drive and find the document and just copy paste and make sure you read everything because it probably got corrupted by the last person that went in and used it. And, and here, grab some photos, go online, grab some photos and paste them into the document. Like every time they send out a proposal, you know, and they're like, are you kidding me? You know, and especially if it's someone that's worked in a different industry where.

Sebastian Riedel (48:54.866)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (49:12.072)
Yeah, yeah, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jason Elkins (49:18.67)
They didn't, you know, because the reality is a lot of tour operators still kind of working in that world, you know, where like the technology they have now was pretty cool 20 years ago, you know, when, when they started. But as somebody, and this is not a paid ad, you haven't sponsored the show. You haven't sponsored this episode, but as somebody who has been working in the platform for cheese, probably about six, seven, eight months now, you know, yeah, there's a, there's a bit of work in the beginning.

Sebastian Riedel (49:19.068)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (49:24.05)
Yeah, yeah, totally. Absolutely. Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (49:29.608)
Yeah, absolutely.

All right.

Sebastian Riedel (49:44.008)
Nice.

Jason Elkins (49:46.946)
Yeah, absolutely. You got to take everything in your old word documents and figure out, okay, how do we, what should we really be doing with this? Put it into the system. But then once it's there, it's there. And then the planners can literally, it's like, okay, planner, new planner. This is how you do it. Here's some templates. Here's some samples. Boom, boom, boom. You want to change something? You just literally grab one module, plug it in. It's, pretty cool. So I, I, I'll give you a big kudos for my experience with it so far.

Sebastian Riedel (49:46.952)
Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (49:56.712)
Yeah, yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (50:04.467)
Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (50:09.416)
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, yeah, thanks for saying that. I appreciate it. And, actually you brought up, you brought up an interesting, like a good point, actually something that we've been focusing on is I think, and I think some, like we want it, like, I feel like it's really a powerful tool and it's, you can almost do anything, you know, anything in terms of the world that we're in, but I think it is, complex. And so it's one of those things where the, the more you put into it, the more you get out of it.

but it's also an area where we recognized in the last few months, we're like, we need to make this, we wanna keep the power, we wanna keep the flexibility, the configurability, allow people to like really take it, you know, where they want to, but we do need to, we're putting a lot of resources into this kind of better documentation, kind of making some processes more simplified, you know, building, even from the UI standpoint, some people are a little bit more clear on what each field does and things of that nature. So, that directly,

address is kind what you're talking about. think that's something that's important is making it as user friendly and able to understand the functionality better. So yeah.

Jason Elkins (51:19.308)
And you've got two challenges. One, one is the person with the organization that's implementing it. That's, you know, maybe transferring all the information, you know, from their old itineraries, kind of getting everything set up. So there's that person on the team.

Sebastian Riedel (51:25.778)
Mm

Sebastian Riedel (51:32.809)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (51:33.61)
And then there's the other level is like, okay, you've got a planner who's not an administrator, the account or anything. But so you've got two different levels that you can, can work on that. And, and I, I know you guys are constantly making changes and we just got an email the other day that everybody on my team, you know, that I'm working with was excited about. So, it's good, good to see those, constant improvements. So anyway, so I'm on board. Sebastian, thank you so much. Anybody that's listening to this, if you're in the travel business, you're interested in Oasis.

Sebastian Riedel (51:37.126)
Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

Right.

Sebastian Riedel (51:51.315)
cool. Yeah.

Sebastian Riedel (51:56.02)
Cool, awesome, thanks, cheers.

Jason Elkins (52:03.803)
you know, we've got a link right in the show notes. go to go take a look at it. Reach out to me if you want to, if you have any questions about my experience, I give it a big endorsement. but you know, so go to the website, connect with Sebastian. I'm sure on, know, like, LinkedIn, all these different places. Is there anything else that you want to touch on before we say goodbye?

Sebastian Riedel (52:12.18)
Thanks, Sister.

Sebastian Riedel (52:21.732)
No, I really appreciate the conversation. Thanks for having me on, Jason. I feel like we went to some spaces I wasn't even anticipating, but they're fun to talk about. It was great. I love talking about my dad and remembering the first times I visited him Vietnam and all that stuff, all the way from there to technology, travel, platforms. Yeah, it's great to cover the variety. So thanks. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (52:28.93)
Good!

Jason Elkins (52:42.392)
Well, I could, I could, I could tell you enjoyed it. could tell you enjoyed it. I, for those, the listeners that aren't able to see your face, when you were talking about your dad, you're kind of grinning near to year. So, clear. I'm happy. I'm happy. I asked about that as well. Cause I almost let that go, but I was like, we got to get back to the dad conversation. There's something there and sure. Sure enough there was. So Sebastian, well, you know,

Sebastian Riedel (52:49.076)
Okay, great. Excellent. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's a little more interesting than software, But yeah, you never know. Yeah. So yeah, we can nerd out on software too. Excellent. Well, thanks so much, Jason. I really appreciate it. All right. Have a good one. Okay. Take care. Bye.

Jason Elkins (53:08.842)
Yep, that's for sure. All right. Thanks, Sebastian. You have a great day. Bye.