Partner Article

Bdaily goes behind the business with Madventurer

Madventurer provide international volunteer projects, work experience placements, charity challenges and adventurous travel. We operate overseas Corporate Social Responsibility Projects across the world. From being founded as a student travel society at Newcastle University in 1998 (MADSoc – Make A Difference Society) Madventurer has since taken out over 5000 young people, professionals and adventurous travellers on volunteering adventures. Madventurer also has its own charity, called the MAD Foundation, whose diverse Patrons include the polar explorer Robert Swan OBE and the Spanish model Elen Rivas. Madventurer has built hundreds of classrooms and sanitation blocks in Africa, and coached sport to tens of thousands of kids as part of its Team Challenges.

What key challenges has your company recently faced?

You name it and we have faced it. Following our biggest growth phase around 5 years ago we took on a travel industry investor who, with hindsight, was not the right partner and did not deliver on their own promises. With the financial downturn that soon followed this partnership soon became toxic and which resulted in a major downsize and rebuild of the organisation which we have only recently recovered from. The experience was not entirely negative as we learnt many lessons on how to protect the downside and how to approach a partnership better placed.

What is your biggest achievement over the past 12 months?

The past 12 months has been great for us and we have found a niche in what has become a very saturated gap year and volunteer travel market. As we are now one of the most long established, safest and most reputable operators out there we are finding that we are being approached by professional organisations to run team-building and CSR trips for the them overseas as they do not want to take risks with the own reputation. This has recently culminated in Madventurer being the only UK organisation being represented on the Board of the Work Abroad Association as part of the World Youth Student & Educational Travel Confederation and we have also just found out that we are a finalist in the British Youth Travel Awards which are being held on next month.

What is your biggest focus for the coming year?

We recently moved our HQ from just outside Corbridge into Newcastle University Students’ Union in order to bring back the organisation to where it all started. After setting up new partnerships with corporates and school groups, we decided that our next growth spurt was to revisit the student market where the roots of Madventurer began and in doing so we are getting a phenomenal amount of interest that we are hoping to build on over the next year. As a student on my own gap year I was made a Ghanaian Development Chief and nurturing this fun, focussed and tribal element will be key in our marketing.

If you had to choose one top piece of advice for someone just starting out in business, or is currently operating within your industry sector, what would it be?

Financially for those just starting out in any business make sure that you operate with a low overhead where possible. Keep it low as you grow and realistically assess your income versus overhead at each growth stage. If you have the choice in any investment opt for a buy-in rather than a loan. Then be good and honest to all investors and they make sure that you fix any wrongs should you get deflected off your course. And remember that it’s OK to make a mistake but don’t make the same mistake twice.

Can you share with us your view of the current landscape of business, in this region or generally and where your organisation sits within it?

Compared to the 20 good operators there were a decade ago there are now over 100 good ones to compete with and also over 100 not-so-good ones who are unfortunately tarnishing the image of the industry. Competition is now fierce and some of the largest travel operators are giving the smaller organisations a run for their money – TUI Travel recently purchased 3 of the most profitable gap year companies which changed the landscape entirely. However our small, niche and quality ethos does make us stand out from the crowd and social media combined with word-of-mouth does amazing things when you can’t compete against another organisation’s marketing budget.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .