A Few Details

We've had some questions from folks. In response, here are a few more details about how we see the business working.

We'll advertise specific weeks with a full week's activities planned for each. Some weeks we'll cater to those who really love hiking but don't want to mountain-bike, or maybe plan a week with lots of paddling. Maybe some weeks that have more cultural adventures and fewer exercise-based ones. (But our focus will always be the outdoors.) We're also probably going to come up with some kind of internal rigour-rating system and aim weeks at different ability levels. We'll also rely on feedback from people who take our trips as we get going. When we post a calendar on our website (in progress), people will be able to compare different weeks' schedules side-by-side and plan to come for a week that suits what they are looking for. There will be a description of each activity and a recommendation about the technical-difficulty of each to make it easier to find a good fit. They'll have a way to contact us for additional questions, too (obviously!).

We'll also need to figure out a way to 'manage the girlfriends', as one of our friends puts it...if there are couples of differing abilities or interests travelling together, we'll have to take that into account. Maybe folks who fall into that category might be encouraged to rent a car so that the less-outdoorsy person is free to explore independently. Ideas?

Who will be our clientele?
We at first imagined people a bit like us; headed towards middle age, outdoorsy. Well, like D anyway. G is the indoorsy, homeschool-the-kids, keep-the-home, write-the-business-plan partner in this enterprise (also the design-and-execute-the-renovations partner when we come to that...can't wait!). We've had some great brainstorming sessions with lots of friends and some of the ideas so far have been to market to: Retirees, corporate teams, college students, homeschool families, singles, GLBT, church groups. At the moment our focus is on an American market. We see our company catering to people who like to travel and love to explore the outdoors, but who don't want to put the time and effort into finding where to rent mountain bikes and kayaks or spend days researching where you can put in to the rivers. And we know how valuable a service this is in Aveyron because we're doing some intense research with my Dad on the ground there with a fluent ability with French and it's STILL taking a very long time to find all the local resources that we're looking for. We'll take care of all that for our clients!

We're thinking that 5-8 guests at a time is ideal, depending on the week's activities.

Some marketing ideas that have come up:
* Play up the health of our trips. Not only will people be outdoors exercising nearly every day, but will be eating healthy, local, fresh French food. (Not to mention the heart-healthy French red wines, right?!)
* Green business/eco-travel. Now, no-one flying in a passenger airplane to Europe is going to be completely green, but we plan to emphasize a 'take only pictures, leave only footprints' philosophy. Once we buy a place, we'll make every effort to renovate using green building principles (which we'd do anyway...we want our kids raised as chemical-free as we can manage). And the local food thing is green as well as yummy and healthy.

Advertising ideas have ranged from taking advantage of social networking, registering our trips with existing companies, and making a table of info to take to travel shows. We're relying at the moment on word-of-mouth to get up and going. After our trip in September we'll have a lot more information and something more tangible to market, so we'll aim to really push advertising then.

Again, if you have an idea, feedback, comment, just make use of the 'comment' box below. We'd love to hear from you.

Thanks,
The MacCs