Reputation is our biggest marketing tool

When people ask: ‘Do you view the internet as a threat?’ I tell them: ‘No, it is a huge opportunity that we must embrace in our business. I started pioneering the internet twenty years ago and as a result fifty percent of our trips is now booked online’. It is this credo of ‘dream, dare and do’ that drives Business Woman of the Year 2017 and travel business innovator Elske Doets, CEO at Jan Doets America Tours.

‘More and more people want to become an entrepreneur. Hence all the start-ups in The Netherlands and all the young people starting their own businesses,’ observes Elske Doets, who took over her fathers travel business Jan Doets America Tours when she was 28 years old. ‘I think it is beautiful when people follow their passion and choose to be the architect of their own lives instead of being dependent on someone else. I studied Law myself and I thought about this in college: will there be enough room for me to be enterprising and creative or will I just be solving others people’s problems? As a lawyer you are more a facilitator that a creator. I want to take personal risks and build things.’

The numbers prove that she has a knack for it: the revenue of Jan Doets America Tours has grown with over 60 percent to 27 million euro since 2013. ‘Several factors are contributing to that success. It all begins with what we do and how we do it. We organize holiday trips and do that so well that we barely have to advertise. It is our goal to provide the best experience. That sounds like a cliche, but it is the difference between going go to the Grand Canyon at the right time and finding yourself there almost alone having a profound experience, or staring down a bleak hole surrounded by hundreds of other tourists. We make sure that booking with us guarantees the ultimate experience.’

Winning the travel industry ‘Oscar’

As the world population is getting more affluent, it is a challenge to keep providing unique experiences. ‘Overtourism is a serious problem. I am very aware of that and not a fan of the low cost holiday flights that Lelystad airport is vying for. It is not sustainable. We are going to have to find a alternative ways to travel. The government, together with the industry and the consumer will have to become more aware and work together. That is a process, but I think it is important to have that conversation. We are now mostly talking about marketing aimed at redistribution of tourists, which is supposed to be the Holy Grail remedy for excessive tourism. Political rhetoric is all that is in my opinion.’

Jan Doets America Tours is already offering alternative ways of travel. ‘In the US, five times in a row we have won the Oscar of the travel industry: the Chairman’s Circle Honors Award, that puts us in the top 50 travel organizations based on quality, quantity and marketing approach. That is a big deal. It opens doors to operating at more exclusive places. For example, to see the beautiful lakes of Canada,  like Moraine Lake, nowadays you have to stay at the lodge. We have almost all the rooms in the Moraine Lake lodge available, sixteen in total, so we can offer our customers a unique experience.’

Happy manager

The approach of Jan Doets works, as seventy percent of all bookings come from repeat customers and spin off.

Reputation is our biggest marketing tool, supported by technology. ‘A lot of people ask me: “Do you view the internet as a threat?” I tell them: “No, it is a huge opportunity that we must embrace in our business. I started pioneering the internet twenty years ago and as a result fifty percent of our trips is now booked online”. We are not talking about just hotel bookings here, we are talking about fully organized trips that start at 10.000 euro. To accomplish that, customers have to trust you. We make sure that we never lose touch with the personal side. You’ve got to keep interacting with people to stay successful.’

But interaction by itself is not enough. ‘They have to see that we enjoy our work and are passionate about it. Managing the organization in a transparent way nurtures this. I communicate very clearly with my team members and then let them make their own decisions. We have targets and a framework, but within the margins I am not all that interested in how the job gets done. As long as they enjoy what they are doing. That is important to me. A lot of our team members are millennials. Some entrepreneurs see that as a challenge, but in our case it is not. That is because I give them free range. It is actually quite simple: when the manager is happy and the team members are happy, the customers will be too. That brings me to the final step in our success: the way we approach marketing.’

Customer delight

At Jan Doets they prefer ‘customer delight’ over ‘customer journey’. ‘Customer delight stands for a playful way of marketing: we did a pop-up night at the Omniversum in The Hague (Omniversum is a wide-screen film theater in The Hague that shows spectacular films on a giant domed screen.) Customers that had booked with us for the first time this year, could watch a movie about America’s music cities, get food at our camper and let their imagination run wild at the drivers seat of an iconic Ford Mustang. They all were positively surprised: wow, how cool that I have been invited for this! If you are only looking at numbers, and many marketeers are, you’ll ask: what is the gain? I don’t know and I don’t care. All I want is to create a welcoming place where people can meet Jan Doets in a playful way. That works.’