The Travel Answers Group has been highly successful at growing a business for 32 years based on designing quality vacations to Australia, New Zealand, Africa and the South Pacific. The company’s transcontinental product range is broad and diverse. But its formula for success is a simple philosophy that can be expressed in a few words. It’s all about providing a high order of service. That company ethos provides the focus and the underlying driving force of its success.
It’s a culture of service. High-level service is founded on an attitude of sincere care for the customer, and it’s carried to fruition by following through, taking responsibility and attending to every detail.
“Service” is a word that has many different meanings. You stop at the service center on the turnpike. What videos you are able to watch may depend on which streaming service you use. Your cousin may have joined the service. You get gas at the service station, but it may be self-service.
But there’s a particular meaning of the word “service” that refers to a higher order of things. If you’ve experienced really high-level service at a great hotel, for example, you know that there is service, and then there is service.
When I was traveling in India, I was told by a native that in Indian culture “the guest is king.” Under that philosophy, one of the greatest pleasures of life is being a good host and making a guest very happy.
Real service is not just a mechanical exchange. That higher level of service pays close attention to you, anticipates your needs, extends beyond your expectations, is concerned about how you feel, sincerely wants to help you and avert problems, and it finds joy in making you happy. Good service is a culture, and carried to its greatest fulfillment it can rise to the level of an art.
Providing service is not for everyone. It requires a certain kind of personality or attitude. For those who have that makeup, their greatest happiness is to make you happy. They draw energy from making others happy.
Formula for Success
The Travel Answers Group is a transcontinental operation with three divisions: Down Under Answers, Africa Answers, and Asia Answers. The founder and owner, Kirk Demeter, is one of those people who is driven by the joy of providing good service. And he has built his company in that image.
In his younger days he worked for Nordstrom, the department store. That’s where he learned about high-level customer service.
“Their service levels were considered legendary back in the day,” he told me. “There’s a story about them taking back a tire from a customer, even though they don’t sell tires. It’s actually a true story.”
That’s taking the axiom “The customer is always right,” a little farther than most would care to. But that was the underlying theory of service at Nordstrom. You never win an argument with a customer. That tire refund may have earned Nordstrom a loyal, repeat customer for life, who knows? Whether it did or not in that case, Nordstrom did get a lot of mileage from having a reputation for providing stellar, bend-over-backwards service.
“I was empowered at Nordstrom to really give high-level service,” he said, “and I really enjoyed doing that. Then I got into the travel business. We were dealing with a few companies and I was like, wow! This service level is pretty terrible.”
In the early ‘90s, while working for Progressive Travels, a luxury biking and hiking tour company, he encountered some incidences of shoddy service that appalled him. He vowed to never do the same. It set the tone for how he would approach his own business. “We try to give really good service.” High-level service inspires return business and customer retention, while it attracts new business. So that philosophy becomes a master plan for growth.
“We were mainly doing adventure touring back in the first days,” he said. “But people were really liking us, and some of these travel agents were saying, ‘Wow, you guys are great. You should do this, and you should do that.’ We expanded our range of offerings away from just adventure on the back of requests from travel agents who were enjoying dealing with us.”
Fortunately, he said, service levels throughout the hospitality industry have improved a lot since the early ‘90s. “But that’s been our philosophy from day one, and it helped us to grow in a rapid way.”
The focus on service earned the company a loyal following, “especially with the specialists who focused on Australia and New Zealand travel,” he said. “When they found us they really liked us and we were really getting a lot of business, and growing fast because of that.”
The philosophy of service is a formula for success.
“That’s been our philosophy,” he said. “You provide a high level of service; you try to turn around quotes quickly; you handle a problem if there’s anything going on. And over the 30-odd years we’ve been in business, there have been some pretty major things that have prompted the need for a really high level of service. You had 9/11, the global financial crisis, and of course, you had COVID. And to keep your reputation intact you had to continually give a high level of service throughout. And that’s what we’ve always tried to do.”
Growth Trajectory
It started with New Zealand and Australia, mostly promoting bicycle touring and hiking. Then it grew into an Australia/New Zealand specialist, providing the whole range of travel arrangements in the region, including motorcoach touring, luxury lodging, diving trips on the Great Barrier Reef, sightseeing in Sydney, getting people to Kangaroo Island, etc.
It helped that Demeter had a special affinity with the Land Downunder. “I remember going into a pub in Taupo, New Zealand, and watching a rugby game, and this group of Kiwis said, ‘Oh, you’re a yank. Come over and we’ll show you how a real sport is played.’ And they’re giving me insights and lessons and buying beers. When it came my turn to buy a round, I did, because I was one of the guys already. I thought that was really a cool thing that I was integrated into this group of friends right from day one. I walked out knowing a lot more about rugby than when I walked in, had a great time… and that’s the kind of feeling you get if you just open yourself up to meet people. It happened back in the ‘90s, and it happens today. I really enjoyed that.”
The company remained focused exclusively on Australia and New Zealand with some stopovers in the Cook Islands, Fiji and Tahiti, until 2011. That year it started offering its services in Africa. And then in 2016 it expanded into Asia. The expansions were based on requests from travel advisors who liked sending their clients with the company.
In Africa, Answers has been providing travel to Kenya, South Africa, Botswana, Tanzania and Zimbabwe, and is now expanding into Rwanda, providing trips to see the mountain gorillas and the chimps. The company has been asked by some tourism boards to move into South America and Europe. It hasn’t happened yet, but could in the future, if enough people ask questions.
David Cogswell is a freelance writer working remotely, from wherever he is at the moment. Born at the dead center of the United States during the last century, he has been incessantly moving and exploring for decades. His articles have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Fortune, Fox News, Luxury Travel Magazine, Travel Weekly, Travel Market Report, Travel Agent Magazine, TravelPulse.com, Quirkycruise.com, and other publications. He is the author of four books and a contributor to several others. He was last seen somewhere in the Northeast US.
