1st April 2020 By Chris Hutching | chris@tourismticker.com | @tourismticker.com
As we chronicle the coronavirus pandemic’s devastating effect on New Zealand tourism, we turn a spotlight on the sector’s leaders in our Leading through Crisis series to see how they are managing their businesses, organisations, and, in some cases, the industry, through an unprecedented event.
Mark Gilbert
Hassle-free Tours owners Mark and Nikki Gilbert saw their livelihoods crumble on 22 February 2011.
On that day, a magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck Christchurch, wrecking large parts of the city and killing 185 people.
It was a disaster the city is still recovering from in many ways, nine years on.
But it was one that has helped the Gilberts become psychologically ready, as well as realistic, about the recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.
“After the quakes, I was a little bit over-optimistic about how quickly things would recover,” Mark Gilbert told the Ticker.
“This time I’m taking a more cautious approach. Plan for the worst and hope for the best. Our company is a lot bigger now with fixed overhead costs to manage, but we’re going through a similar experience.”
The award-winning Hassle-free Tours offered city and specialist tours and charter services across Christchurch, Canterbury, and Auckland. It also helped visitors organise complementary tours around the region.
“At the moment I’m trying to draw on my experience of the quakes when we lost all customers overnight,” Gilbert said.
“Even though this is on a much bigger scale globally than the quakes, we went from zero customers and had to build up within a totally new tourism landscape in Christchurch at that time.”
Gilbert said he was using the downtime to take a good look at the business and all the things operators usually did not have time for – like improving reservation systems, how to use technology better, and general improvements so things are set up for when tourism comes back.
“The first stage will be local, then domestic. Who knows when international visitors will come back?” he said.
“Before the earthquakes, we were oriented towards international clients. After the quakes, we had to change to tailor ourselves more towards domestic tourism as we gradually built up the international business again.
“We’ll target locals again, using our double-decker wedding and function bus, and try to figure out where new opportunities are.”
Around 98% of Hassle-free’s customers were international tourists and a large proportion were cruise ship passengers.
“We’re not planning to try and operate any tours before November. We were thinking along those lines even before the lockdown as visitors dried up because of the 14-day isolation period with the border restriction,” Gilbert said.
“This has been a crazy summer for us. We were run off our feet until December. Things were looking great. Now there’s so much uncertainty, it’s hard to plan ahead. When will the borders be relaxed?”
Gilbert said it was imperative to get overheads down. By coincidence, some contracts he had with operators were coming to an end, and the Auckland office was on a month-to-month lease.
He has mothballed company vehicles, put registrations on hold, and changed insurance cover to static policies.
The company had managed to hang on to his 25 or so staff thanks to the Government wage subsidy, which Gilbert said had bought people some time to plan.
He negotiated with staff for various solutions including reduced hours to match the subsidy – “at least the subsidy is better than redundancies”.
“There’s no way we could have covered full wages, and a few staff contracts were coming up for renewal anyway.”
About 10 guiding contract workers would have to make their own wage subsidy applications.
“The bank has been good, we’ve changed loans to interest only. Keep in touch with your bank manager regularly.”
The other thing to keep an eye on was how you were dealing with it all personally.
“For many people, this will be the biggest and most stressful thing they’ve had to deal with in their business career, so it’s great to see support groups popping up. Every day I’m talking with people,” Gilbert said.
“Health and fitness is important. I ran the Queenstown marathon last year and over summer stopped because we were so busy. Now I’m running around the block every day. Eat healthy too.
“It’s important to reach out and talk with people because everyone is in the same boat. We’re all part of the big tourism family. If anyone wants to give me a call they’re welcome. I’m happy to chat.
“There’s no doubt there will be a bounce back. It’s a question of how long it takes.”
