Experience Yellowstone Like A VIP

I'm excited today to be joined by the president of Austin Adventures, Casey Morris.

Austin Adventures is a small group adventure tour company that does trips around the world.

They specialize in hiking, biking, and multi sport tours.

Casey, she is the daughter of CEO and founder Dan Austin.

What I loved about talking to Casey is to just hear her excitement and enthusiasm for both her family's business and the types of trips that they design.

If you've ever thought about taking a trip to Yellowstone National Park, I beg you, don't go alone.

You need to go with Austin Adventures.

And through this podcast, I'm about to show you why.

Let's go.

Hey guys, I am here today with Casey Morris, the president of Austin Adventures.

Welcome to the podcast, Casey.

SPEAKER_03: Thanks.

Good to be here.

SPEAKER_00: Oh, well, wonderful.

Well, I'm super excited to have you joining me today.

Austin Adventures is a as a travel advisor.

We plan all these amazing trips for our clients, but you guys are definitely one that I want to uh experience for myself.

So I'm like, you know what?

Let's have them on the podcast.

SPEAKER_02: So yeah, good way for you to get to know us a little better and all your listeners as well.

So I'm excited.

SPEAKER_00: Awesome.

Awesome.

Well, wonderful.

Well, for those listening, would you mind going ahead and starting off and explain to us who Austin Adventures is?

SPEAKER_03: Sure.

Austin Adventures is my family's travel company.

We're a tour operator.

We're based in Billings, Montana, and we run multi-sport adventures all over the world, actually.

We're best known for our Yellowstone programs.

That's right in our backyard.

I was just there last weekend, so it's where we play uh when we're not working as well.

But yeah, we do active tours, I guess.

We do hiking, biking, horseback riding, whitewater rafting, kayaking on a lake, that kind of thing, soft adventure.

And we handle pretty much all the details.

You get to the destination, and you know, from that point on, we take care of you.

We make sure all your meals are included, your activities are included, you have a couple of professional guides with you the whole week.

Yeah, you just sit back, relax, and have a good time.

Oh, I forgot your accommodation, of course, is included too.

Probably should mention that.

SPEAKER_00: So, so it's almost more or less like basically an all-inclusive type vacation.

Is that what I'm understanding?

SPEAKER_03: Yeah.

Picture it as like an all-inclusive resort, but totally on the go.

You're not staying in one place, you're moving around from hotel to hotel.

And especially here in the United States, we kind of base around the national parks.

That's what we're really known for.

So we're staying in the national park properties.

We found the best properties outside the national parks to stay at.

And we just create the best trips we can in these areas using, you know, our years and years and years of experience that we have.

SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.

That's so cool.

So cool.

Now, explain to me now.

I know us in the travel industry, we we definitely recognize the name of your dad, Dan Austin.

So explain to me though, you are now president, which is pretty exciting.

So would you mind explaining how that came about?

SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's kind of wild.

Dan Austin, yep, he's pretty recognized in the industry.

And I grew up in this business.

So I've been watching his every move, I guess you could say, since I was about six years old when he got involved in Austin Adventures.

It used to be called Backcountry Bicycle Tours, actually, back then, and it's shifted through a couple of different name changes ever since.

Some people might know us as Austin Lehman Adventures.

We had a partner out of Chicago named Paul Lehman for a while.

Um, Dan, my dad, bought the company back in 2010, and he has been running it ever since, and he's still very actively involved.

He's our CEO and founder now.

And I became president of the company in October last year, so not too long ago.

Of course, you know, with everything going on, it's been kind of a wild ride of jumping in with these reins.

But it's been a good job.

Yeah, to say the least.

It's been challenging, but you know, I have learned more in a couple of months than you could ever imagine.

So uh ongoing education, I guess you could say.

SPEAKER_00: That's right, that's right.

That's awesome.

Now, now, before becoming president, what would you do at the company before taking on this role?

SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so I was vice president of operations before I was president, which means that I was just basically handling all the operations of the company, hiring the guides, training the guides, guiding myself as, you know, an as-needed basis, especially emergency backup, just go wherever I'm needed in the US to jump in at the last minute.

So, you know, you got to keep those guiding skills fresh.

If you're trying to keep the team fresh and up to date and everything, you want to make sure that you're also on the ground seeing the same challenges that they are and all that good stuff.

So I think I've really learned from the ground and move my way up to the company.

I used to be the one, gosh, back in high school, like packing the boxes for the guys that they were taking on their trips and answering the phones and doing all the admin work.

And I have done a little bit of everything at the company at this point.

So, but that's always kind of been my main role is operations type stuff.

That's what I love.

SPEAKER_00: Okay.

That's awesome.

So now how do you remember like how old were you when your dad took over the company?

SPEAKER_03: Oh, he, oh gosh, when he officially took it over from Paul Lehman back in 2010, I guess I would have been around 20 years old or so.

Okay.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: Yes.

Awesome.

Awesome.

Well, that's great.

That's really good.

That's really good.

So so basically you you've kind of grown up in it, which is pretty awesome.

SPEAKER_03: Yeah, ever since I was a little kid, we, you know, had guides.

So they were my role models growing up.

Uh when we have our guide trainings in our backyard, like those were the people that I was like, I'll be like you someday.

You're so cool.

SPEAKER_04: That's so awesome.

SPEAKER_03: They're still way cooler than me, but you know, I I try and keep up with them, but they're they're a pretty, pretty awesome bunch.

I mean, when you work in the summer guiding in a national park, and then a lot of them take the winters off to maybe do a restaurant job and go like ski all winter or go on epic trips, uh, you know, travels around the world, it's like, man, I can never keep up with you guys.

unknown: They're awesome.

SPEAKER_00: That's so wonderful.

So now kind of tell me a little bit more about these trips.

Like what so I know you said we'll kind of give like kind of broad spectrum.

I know we wanted to talk a lot about Yellowstone and stuff today, but but you said that you guys do them all over the world.

So kind of give us a little bit better idea, like broad spectrum, like what kind of trips you guys offer and where all in the world you offer them.

SPEAKER_03: Yes, we have what we call kind of three buckets of travel.

So we have our own trips that we run with our own guide teams and everything here in the US.

We also have an office over in Nijmegen, Holland that's ran by our operations manager over there, Adam Beachum.

And then in any other destination, and I forgot to mention that Adam runs like all of our Europe programs over there.

So we have our own guides, our own bike fleet, our own vans, all of that stuff as well.

And then we actually run on all seven continents, but outside of the US and Europe, we use partner companies that we thoroughly research.

I mean, I've met so many great partners over the years at different travel conferences and going on trips myself.

And you just happen into these relationships with these awesome companies that, you know, we all we always try and go family-owned and operated just like us, if possible, and work with these other companies in destinations all over the place to train their guides, make sure they're running tours in the Austin Adventures way.

And outside of the US and Europe, we're probably best known for our tours in Costa Rica and Peru and the Glafagos Islands.

We sell a lot of that, but we do quite a bit.

We are, you know, pre-COVID, we're really getting into the Africa scene, really getting into the Southeast Asia scene, but you know, things have kind of dropped off a little bit with international travel with everything going on.

So yeah.

SPEAKER_00: Of course, of course.

No, what size like groups are these trips going to Yeah, they're as far as how many people?

SPEAKER_03: Yep, they're uh they're small groups, so we do usually a group of around 12 on some of our national park programs.

Here in the US, we go up to 18 people just because those are family trips, and we figure 18 people is around three, four, five families, and that makes the dynamics really fun with lots of kids on the trips.

So yeah, so anywhere between 12 to 18, 18 is our max, and then with that we have a six-guest to one guide ratio.

So that means on a 12-person trip, you would have two guides, and on an 18-guest trip, you'd have three guides.

SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's awesome.

That's very cool.

Very cool.

Now, now when somebody signs up for one of these trips and they go, is it for somebody who's not familiar with with group travel like this, is it basically a pre-assigned itinerary where you guys take care of all the thinking and all of that so you don't got to worry about what you're doing?

You guys have that all mapped out, or is there room for people to choose what they want to do?

How does that work?

SPEAKER_03: Uh, I guess you could kind of go either way on that question.

We do have a scheduled itinerary that we advertise, I guess, and that we book into.

So we do run things fairly close to that scheduled itinerary.

But that being said, there is some leeway with you don't want to hike the entire hike.

Like we have options.

We have plenty of guides on the trip that if you don't want to hike, you know, you're in Alaska, you don't want to go all the way up to the top of Exit Glacier.

I'm in the Harding Ice Field in Keenai Fords National Park, it's like an eight-mile round-trip hike.

And so we have a turnaround point halfway, we have a turnaround point a mile in.

If you just want to go to the base of the glacier, turn around and go to the Sea Life Center in the afternoon instead of a big hike for the day.

So we try and create different options.

And trust me when I say that we've had all different levels on our trip.

We've had people who are couch potatoes, I guess you could call them.

They've been sitting on their couch all winter long and they just come out of hibernation in June, and they're like, this is the first time I've really moved in months.

And it's like, okay, great.

Or people who haven't ridden a bike in, you know, in 20 years that are coming on a biking trip.

And then we have the opposite end of the spectrum.

We get, you know, Iron Man athletes on these trips sometimes, like, and sometimes all on the same trip.

So we're really good at juggling different logistics with different levels of abilities and you know, people wanting to do different activities and things like that.

And I also should mention, too, that we do custom tours, which means it's whatever you want.

You know, it's your trip, your dreams will build it for you.

So we do a ton of custom travel, about 30% of our business.

SPEAKER_00: So wow, now that's now for the custom travel, is that do you have to have a certain amount of people to qualify for something like that?

SPEAKER_03: Uh, you don't.

We've I mean we've made custom trips for one person, two people, uh wow, okay.

Families all the time of four that do custom trips with us.

The biggest thing is it gets a little bit cost prohibitive just because those fixed costs are spread over fewer people.

So, you know, it's better if you can get a bigger group together.

I would say a custom trip with like anywhere between six to twelve actually comes in at a fairly decent price, about the same price as our scheduled tours for the most part.

So if you have a good group or you want to get another family together to go with you, then you know, the more the merrier.

Better cost savings.

SPEAKER_00: That's so cool.

That's cool.

I mean, I'm sitting here thinking, what an awesome opportunity for I'm thinking of you know a couple of families who travel together normally.

I mean, what a wonderful way to do a vacation, something a little bit different, maybe than than people are used to.

So I think that's really cool.

SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and we've had, I mean, so like the latest trend as of the last few years is like this multi-generational travel, grandma and grandpa purchasing a scheduled trip actually for their entire family to go.

So they bring their kids and their grandkids, and it's kind of just like a traveling family reunion, which is really, really fun.

SPEAKER_00: That's very cool.

That's very cool.

I know, I know the whole multi-generational trips have been very popular.

I know of it with the cruising spectrum and stuff, but it's also very neat to see with you guys something that I think maybe some people maybe wouldn't ordinarily think of.

So I think that's awesome.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's fun and it gives some different, just like a cruise where you, you know, you can kind of be as lazy as you want on a cruise ship or as active as you want, moving around the cruise ship.

This kind of gives you that same feel where, you know, the grandparents and maybe the youngest grandkids, we've had kids as young as, you know, babies to toddlers come on the trips, and the grandparents might hang behind when they're doing kind of the more challenging activities, or we do an easier activity that the grandparents and the grandkids can do while the parents go out and do something, you know, a bit more strenuous.

So we've worked out all sorts of crazy trip detail that I can remember over the years.

But um, you know, we're we're pretty open to anything.

SPEAKER_00: So that's great.

That's really good.

Really good.

Now, I would love to kind of get a little bit better idea on the um the Yellowstone itineraries that you guys offer, the Yellowstone trips and stuff.

Can you kind of give us an idea of like what a trip like that may look like for somebody?

SPEAKER_03: Sure.

Yeah, so our Yellowstone itineraries, we actually have three tours that go in and out of Yellowstone based in different areas.

So we have two that are based in Bozeman, and we have one that's based in Jackson, which is just south of Grand Teton, and goes into Yellowstone, I guess, which is north of Grand Teton National Park.

So a combination of two national parks on that tour, which is pretty cool.

But for the purposes of this podcast, I'm going to stick to just our regular Yellowstone tour, which is awesome.

It's our classic tour.

SPEAKER_00: Okay, definitely.

We we want the classic.

We don't we don't want any of these deviations.

Let's get the good stuff, Casey.

Give us the good stuff.

SPEAKER_03: Okay, perfect.

So on our Yellowstone trip, we start in Bozeman, Montana.

That's a couple hours from where Austin Adventures home base is at in Billings.

And Bozeman is a really neat, outdoorsy town.

It's a college town surrounded by mountains.

It's absolutely beautiful.

And um, people fly in there, and you know, you just feel your stresses slipping away as you're looking at these beautiful mountains surrounding the town.

And it's a great place to start a trip.

Lots of fun things to do in the downtown, super charming little uh restaurants and all sorts of good stuff to check out down there.

So really like Bozeman.

And we just overall do a loop through Yellowstone that goes in through the Gallatin Canyon, which is a river-carved canyon carved by the Gallatin River.

We do a zip line in that area, which is pretty fun.

And we enter through the west entrance of the park at West Yellowstone, and we're staying at different park accommodations like Old Faithful Inn, which is kind of the classic park accommodation, Lake Hotel, Canyon Lodge, and the Mammoth Cabins.

So we're staying at a combination of those usually on any given Yellowstone trip.

It kind of changes year to year just based on which direction we want to go next.

Next year it'll be Old Faithful Inn, Lake Hotel, Mammoth.

We're skipping uh the Canyon Lodge next year.

But yeah, and along the way, we're just doing a ton of cool hikes to see the different sites in the area.

You know, of course, we got to check out Old Faithful Geyser.

That's like the number one thing people want to check off their list.

So we do that, but we don't just pull up and let you get out at the geyser.

We drop you off with one of our guides at a trailhead that's a couple miles away, and you kind of hike in this back way to the geyser.

And along the way, you're passing these really beautiful blue hot pools, and you're crossing under Lodgepole Pine Forests, and you're getting to hear the bubbling, you know, of the different geysers and hot springs that are starting to surround you more and more as you get closer and closer to Old Faithful.

And you start with absolutely no people around you because no one's hiking in this backway because it's like a one, you know, you no one wants to start one place, hike a couple miles in, and then have to get back to their car.

The magic of a tour operators, we have a van that can drop you off there with one guide or other guide drives around to Old Faithful and picks you up on the other side.

So you get to come in this really neat backway.

You're starting to see more and more people as you're getting close to old Faithful and the excitement is building because you're like, oh man, what am I getting here?

And then, you know, we go and check out the visitor center, the old Faithful Inn, which is really, you know, the largest log cabin in the world, which is a really neat building, and just waiting for that ticker to go down so we can see Old Faithful go off, which happens about every 90 minutes or so in the park.

That's quite the spectacle.

They have like leechers around Old Faithful now for people to sit at, basically.

It's gotten quite huge over the years, but it's a really cool experience because when it goes off, like there's this collective intake of breath as everyone is just watching this geyser, and then literally you start hearing people go, ooh, ah, you know, that's what's going on.

I can't go and watch the geyser itself.

I just start watching the audience around the geyser.

It's so funny, but but yeah, it's a really, really neat experience.

That's how we check out the old faithful area, but that's part of the entire Upper Geyser Basin, and there's just so much more to see beyond Old Faithful.

So we spend you know an entire day there just checking out all the cool stuff that there is to see.

And of course, the night too.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: That sounds so awesome.

So awesome.

So now I gotta ask you a question.

Have you ever heard of anybody?

I had read a book one day and it was written by a guy who was blind, and he had talked about going to Old Faithful and to kind of heighten the experience for somebody who's blind, talked about laying on the ground and said you could put your ear to the ground and you could almost hear it as the pressure would build.

Have you ever heard of such a thing?

SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I don't know necessarily about old faithful, but there are a couple of hot springs in the area that have what they call like these imploding bubbles.

They're like exploding basically underwater, and it rumbles the ground near the hot spring when it's happening.

So yeah, if you lay down and just listen, you can hear and feel these bubbles imploding in the hot spring, which is so cool.

And I've that's old faithful something cool to do.

I've done this on winter trips too, because it gets dark at like five o'clock in the park, is you go out to the geyser basin at night, and you know, just like a blind person wouldn't be able to see.

We also can't see in the dark, of course.

And that's a really neat experience too, because you're getting to go out.

Of course, you know, you want to go out with someone who's not going to have you falling off the boardwalk or anything like that.

But you're making your way through the geyser basin in the winter or, you know, later in the summertime at night.

And that's a really neat experience too, just listening to the geysers around you and the hot springs bubbling, and you definitely start to notice things that you wouldn't necessarily notice if you were just looking at the geyser in the daytime with lots of people talking around you and different things like that.

That's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00: Wow.

Now now that's pretty cool and kind of funny from my perspective, is I'm sitting here thinking to myself, oh my gosh, that sounds out of this world.

And then I'm like, Kevin, it would be like that for you in the daytime.

So stop getting so excited.

SPEAKER_03: You know, it would be a little different at night.

At least there's no there's no one at night, it would just be you there.

So, you know, you're the one who's getting to experience that geyser or that hot spring all to yourself, which is pretty amazing.

SPEAKER_00: So that's that does sound really awesome.

And and in your story talking about you know going to see old Faithful, that actually answered one of my other questions that I had for you was wondering what would make a trip to Yellowstone different going with with you guys versus we think of most people who who don't do a guided tour, you know, who just go by themselves.

And and I I sat there as you were talking, I'm like, she's answering it with talking about the different way you go to see Old Faithful by taking the hike and stuff.

You know, it makes it truly much more of a uh overall amazing experience, more than you just pulling up to see it from the car or whatever.

SPEAKER_03: So yeah, that's so true.

And that's what I always train our guides on is how can you deliver this experience for these guests differently than what they could do on their own?

Because anyone can rent a car and go into Yellowstone National Park and see it for themselves.

But you know, you have to figure out as any tour operator or any day trip operator in and around these national parks, like what makes me different and what would our guests think, like, you know, wow, this is what I hired this tour operator for.

This is what really helps them stand apart.

So for us, I think what we we really focus on is the smooth logistics of the trip.

You know, in Yellowstone, it's it's pretty crowded.

There's, you know, traffic on the roads, there's stress when you're um walking around these geyser basins, when you're around all the other people.

But there's so many places in these national parks that have no people there that people don't know about, that they buy.

Pass because they hear, I want to see old faithful Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, Mammoth Hot Springs, and they're just going to the parking area, getting out of the boardwalk, getting a quick picture, and getting back in their car.

But there's a thousand miles of hiking trails in Yellowstone that see no one.

People are afraid of bears.

They don't want to hike in the backcountry.

That's honest.

Like I have had so many people tell me, like, I'm scared to go to Yellowstone because I don't know how to hike in bear country.

But you know, when you're going with the guide, you can get out into these cool areas behind the scenes.

And, you know, rarely we actually see bears, but every now and then when you're hiking, you might come across one, but you're pretty safe when you're in a group.

So, you know, we do a lot of training on that with our guests.

But yeah, ultimately it's those smooth logistics.

You know, that the lunches that we're preparing behind the scenes while one guide is with the guests touring an area, we are prepping lunch with another guide in a neat spot away from the crowds where they show up.

There's a bunch of chairs set up, they can just sit down and relax, get their lunch, eat it.

The guides are putting stuff away as you're eating your food, and uh, we're moving on to the next site.

So you're not having to wait in line, you know, at the cafeteria in the old faithful inn or whatever for an hour while you're battling all of the old faithful crowds who just came in after the geyser and things like that.

We avoid that altogether.

And also just, you know, if you're on a hike and we have a hotel nearby, one guide might be shuttling your luggage and checking into your room for you and getting all your luggage in your room so that when you get there, you just get to relax and you don't have to deal with the whole check-in process and trying to find your luggage and 18 people's luggage in the back of the trailer and things like that.

So we're just trying to think through like, okay, what can get a group of 18 people moving as smoothly as possible through one of these national parks and getting these people's, you know, giving these people their money's worth because our tours aren't the most inexpensive thing you'll see on the Yellowstone trip market, but we want to make sure that people are, you know, they're paying us for a reason.

We want to take care of you and we want to make sure that you're getting the best experience you possibly can when you visit our world's first national park.

SPEAKER_00: So yeah, and I mean I think that goes back to a lot of things in in the world, and I definitely see it in the travel industry, is I mean, you plan for a trip like this.

I I mean, I think Yellowstone is a bucket list destination for many people.

And especially if you're doing like a multi-generation trip and you have it's hard enough to get the whole family together to come over for dinner one night, much less to go on vacation together.

And and so I I look at that and I think when you do finally do it, don't you want to do it right and really make it into something more than than it could be, you know, if you didn't go with somebody like Austin Adventures.

SPEAKER_03: Yeah, exactly.

And I think that a lot of people, you know, hindsight is 2020.

You book something that you're like, oh yeah, that wasn't that expensive.

It looked cool, but it really wasn't the experience I was looking for.

We get such great feedback on these trips, you know, after the fact that people are just like, what did I just experience?

Like I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

They come out the other side and they're like, all right, I get it now.

You know, like that's because we have different destinations, like after Yellowstone, people might want to go to Alaska and then they might want to go to the Canadian Rockies, and then maybe they're starting to feel pretty comfortable with domestic travel with their family, so they want to try something international.

So they go to Costa Rica, and you know, it's just an ongoing process.

We have people who've been on 20 to 30 trips with us over the course of the years, you know.

People get addicted to this kind of travel.

It's it's easy and it's fun and you learn a lot and it's relaxing, it's what you want out of a vacation.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that sounds wonderful.

Wonderful.

Now, now can you talk to me a little bit?

You've mentioned mentioned the guides, and I can imagine the guides play a huge role in in who you guys are because that's who who the guests are are are with all the time.

Now, can you kind of speak a little bit to me about the guides?

Like what kind of people can we expect?

Are they trained?

I would imagine they go through rigorous training and they know what they're doing before they take a group of people out.

But but would you mind speaking a little bit more about the guides?

SPEAKER_03: Yeah.

Oh my gosh.

Our guide team, they're some of my favorite people on planet Earth.

They're, you know, we consider our guide team a part of the Austin family, basically.

These people have been with us for years and years.

When we do hire new guides, you know, they get automatically ingrained into the Austin Adventures family.

And, you know, we take care of our own, basically.

That's, you know, who is on our front lines.

You have to take care of those people and make sure that they're comfortable and they're loving their jobs and they like the employer that they work for.

So we have a really, really awesome guide team.

They come from all sorts of different backgrounds.

I don't I do all the hiring of our guide team, and I can't say that I look for any one thing when I'm looking for a guide.

We have type A personalities, we have guides that are a bit more reserved, we have guides that are snee bums all winter long and just guide in the summer, we have guides who are teachers in the winter and guide for us in the summer, we have guides who are retired and then they just do this as their fun day job in the summertime and just travel the world in the wintertime.

So they all have these really neat, interesting stories.

They're all very passionate about what they do.

And they, you know, they just are amazing individuals.

I love them all, and they really are the front lines.

You know, we can do all the talking we want on the phones behind the scenes, but they're the ones delivering the product to the guests in person.

So you gotta make sure you have a rock star guide team, and we definitely do.

SPEAKER_00: That's wonderful, wonderful.

Well, I know just from experience of just doing little like day tours, like on different cruises when we've gone to like the Caribbean and we've we've signed up for the different excursions.

And I can say just from that, I can tell you a good guide makes all the difference in the entire experience.

So I can imagine that in a trip like this, I mean, that's just you know, trifold in in importance.

So that's great.

SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that is so true.

And we've always said that like you a good guide can save any situation.

You know, there are gonna be weird things that come up on these trips sometimes.

You might have a trail that's closed, you might have with coronavirus going on right now, we're dealing with all sorts of crazy stuff going on in these national parks that we're having to pivot at all times with our guide team.

And I'm very thankful.

We don't even have a single new guide this year.

I had all veteran guides on the team want to come back from last year for this year.

So I'm very grateful to have so much experience on the team this year being able to roll with the punches of running trips during the time of COVID-19.

It's been a little bit nuts, but they're they've been amazing so far.

And our guests have been pretty impressed, you know, with everything going on that we've been able to make things work.

SPEAKER_00: Well, that's good.

That's good.

Now, speaking of that, like what kind of changes have you guys had to make in in the way your trips are designed or or the planning of the trips in relation to you know COVID-19?

SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so we have canceled all, or not even canceled, I would say transferred all of our guests on any international product that we have going on right now.

It's just too crazy to fly around, get into country, all of that fun stuff.

So we've been really focusing on our domestic product, and we're extremely thankful to have domestic product to fall back on, because I know a lot of companies out there don't.

But we've been putting a huge focus on Yellowstone National Park and running trips during the time of coronavirus is a little bit crazy.

Like I think our biggest yeah, exactly.

Our biggest, our biggest focus and our biggest goal has been communication.

So communicating with our guide team.

I've been sending out weekly emails, keeping in touch with them since March on everything that's been going on, communicating with our guests and just having an open and honest approach, and just making sure that we communicate with our partners around the world and anyone else we can think of to communicate with.

Like that's our biggest goal is just open and honest communication.

So we've been doing a lot of that, but just running the trips themselves.

We started running trips in Yellowstone, middle of June, and we have been, you know, we have protocols in place.

We have a guide operating plan for how they're going to be running trips in the time of COVID.

Yellowstone National Park's lodging is actually closed this year, which was kind of a crazy thing to deal with a couple of months ago when we first got the news of that.

But Santerra ended up actually shutting down their major lodges like the old Faithful Inn, Lake Hotel, Canyon Lodge, Mammoth Hotel, and only opening the cabins to travelers.

And most tour operators don't have cabins.

We have them in Mammoth, but that's it.

So we ended up having to kind of scramble to get different lodging outside the park.

And I'm really impressed with our guests because they've really been rolling with the punches with, you know, here's one itinerary that you booked, but now we're gonna run this different one because we're not staying in the same lodging, and that means we need different activities.

And it's been a little bit crazy, but you know, we've we've dealt with it.

We've and it's so funny.

Our guides, we have one guide in particular who's been running our Yellowstone trip for 10 years, and he's like, Casey, it is like I'm running a brand new trip.

This is so crazy.

Like it's it's fun, it's interesting.

Like I've he's had to make new relationships with different restaurants outside the parks that we haven't ever had before.

We've done some different activities because some of the activity operators are closed this year with everything going on and restaurants too.

Yeah, a couple of restaurants you know have shut down altogether.

I'm sure where you're at as well, there's restaurants that aren't open with everything going on.

So we've been dealing with all sorts of crazy stuff like that, and it's almost like you're relearning an old classic and reimagining how it can be during the time of COVID.

So that's one thing we've been dealing with, and then of course, like dealing with all of the cleaning measures and things like that that we need to have in place for these trips.

And one thing I can mention is that we already have really good protocols in place for cleanliness on our trips because we've been dealing, just like any other national park operator, like norovirus goes around these national parks every summer.

And we've been dealing with that for years.

So we just kind of amped up our protocols that we were already using to deal with norovirus going around the parks.

You know, it's tenfold now in the time of coronavirus.

There's hand washing stations at lunch, there's hand sanitizer everywhere, including giving individual little mini hand sanitizers to each guest.

There's, I mean, I ordered so many cleaning supplies before this season started.

They weren't like dreading every time I'd come into Target because I was that lady who came in every day at seven o'clock on the dot, ready to get my max of two things of each item that I could get if it was on the shelf.

So I've been, yeah, stockpiling cleaning supplies since March, getting ready for these trips.

And yeah, just uh we have you know two vans instead of one for smaller groups because a lot of the national parks are have a new rule basically where you can only have 10 people per van and we have 15 passenger vans.

So we've been bringing on another van for trips that have nine guests or more.

So that's helped create some social distancing on the transportation front.

But yeah, it's been a lot of jumping through hoops, but we're happy to do it because we want to run trips in these parks if we can, and we're just rolling with the punches as they come.

There's been a lot of pivoting, a lot of uh figuring things out on the go this year.

It's been a whole different experience, I can tell you that.

SPEAKER_00: That's right.

It's it's tw year 2020, the year that kept us on our toes, you know.

SPEAKER_04: So hi.

Yes.

SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.

Well, I just have I have um just one more main question that I wanted to ask you about the trips and stuff.

Are you guys able to make any accommodations for people with any different disabilities?

SPEAKER_03: Yes.

Um definitely.

We've had people with all sorts of disabilities over the years, and we're happy to make those changes to the trip or work with that individual to figure out you know what they need to be able to travel.

Um, we want to make travel accessible to everyone.

So we've had blind people on our trips before, we've accommodated seeing eye dogs, we've brought in tandem bikes, things like that.

And that's awesome.

And you know, we've had people in wheelchairs on our trips, like there's you know, all there's all sorts of different disabilities out there.

And the last thing we want is to see those people not out traveling and seeing these beautiful places.

So yeah, we're more than happy to help figure that out and what what travel might look like for you with awesome adventures.

So yeah.

SPEAKER_00: Well, wonderful.

Well, that sounds wonderful.

Well, I don't know if this was a sales pitch, but you've definitely sold me on on one of these Yellowstone trips that's returned.

So awesome.

SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, come anytime.

SPEAKER_00: Yes, well, well, Casey, is there anything else that you would like to add that I've forgotten to ask or that you think would just, you know, kind of help people learn anything else that they need to know about the company and what these trips may look like?

SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, I think I don't have a whole lot more to add other than I just think from what I've been hearing in the industry and what we're very much planning on is that domestic travel is going to be huge in the next year or two with everything going on.

And I can't encourage people more to get out and explore what's in our own backyards.

And the national park system of the United States is incredible, and people have no idea what they're missing out on if they haven't been to these national parks, especially out here in the West.

I don't know the Eastern National Parks so much, so I apologize for all those national parks I'm missing out on.

But you know, we have so many cool areas to see out here, and I just hope that with everything going on, people will start to feel more comfortable with traveling as they start to see other people start to travel and the airlines start stepping up.

And they've done so much already to get people feeling more comfortable with getting on an airplane.

But yeah, I just want to see people start to travel as things start to get safer out there.

And I know we're still very much in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, and that there's you know hot spots all over the place still.

So we of course have to be safe.

That's the first and foremost goal.

But man, I can't wait till this is over and we can get back out there traveling for real again.

SPEAKER_00: So you and me both, I think so many of us are so over the word virtual, virtual travel.

We're like, we're tired of traveling virtually.

SPEAKER_03: Yeah, get me out there, man.

SPEAKER_00: I hear you.

Well, well, listen, well, Casey, I want to sincerely thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.

It's meant the world to me to have you on here and and get to feature such an amazing uh opportunity for somebody to do a vacation all over the world or right here in our own backyard.

So thank you again, Casey.

SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's been awesome talking with you.

It's getting me all amped up on Yellowstone again.

As usual.

It doesn't take much with me.

SPEAKER_00: That's right.

Well, awesome.

Well, to everybody listening, thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of the Lowdown on Life and Travel.

Hope you have an awesome day.

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