Two small business owners, both former members of TTG’s 30 Under 30, described for conference delegates their experiences of launching and running a travel company.
Jessica Bain, who launched South America specialist operator Latin Routes in 2012 with her business partner Martin Johnson, admitted that scaling up the business brought challenges. “It’s difficult to give up power to other people. Scaling up to a size where you lose control of the everyday stuff is scary,” she said.
For Latin Routes, she added, it was more important that new recruits were passionate about small businesses and about South America as opposed to having travel industry experience.
Coming into travel with no experience herself, Bain spent two years as a consultant at Trailfinders to build her knowledge, while studying business at night school. “We both worked several jobs so that we didn’t taken any debt into the business; we made huge sacrifices,” she recalled.
Aden Levin, co-founder of festival specialist Mainstage Travel, said recruiting a team has been his “biggest challenge”. “At 24 I was recruiting people in their 30s and 40s, which was hard. It was important that they had the same passion for the brand that we had,” he said.
He advised ambitious young travel professionals to “start from the bottom and try everything”, and insisted there is “no shame in starting a business when you’re young and if it doesn’t work out, move on”.
Running the business had been difficult, he admitted, but concluded: “Nothing is more satisfying than watching people having a good time at one of our festivals.”
