Jot Lynas

You are coming up to your busiest time of year how does that work?

This year we’ll depart on November 24^th and run through to December 17^th. That’s the key travel period.  But there are other periods throughout the year – this year for example, we released our 2013 packages in March, so we released in March this year for 2013 and next March will be for 2014.

We sold 1,200 packages in 12 minutes this year so you can see the demand. The kids get worried that they’re going to miss out and that they’re not going to get their first choice. A lot of travel agents around Australia have registered their interest, so as soon as we release our product then they’re onto it.

We take the majority of kids to Fiji. So out of the 3,000 we’ll take maybe 2,700 to Fiji this year, and I’ll always be in Fiji on site. The office is staffed also in business hours, and we have an emergency phone number as well.  Then on the 17th, when we fly back we have a quiet period till the end of the year, and then there’s a massive booking period in February again, so it’s straight back into it.

What’s the biggest contract you’ve secured, and how did you go about getting that?

One of the biggest contracts was getting a deal with the Flight Centre group. That was the first preferred retailer that signed a deal with us. They’re quite hard to get, and you can imagine any travel company wants to be preferred with all the travel agents, but we’re preferred with all of them now and it was that first contract with Flight Centre that really kick started our business. It really gave us that initial growth through all the Flight Centre stores in Australia.

So how did you get it?

We designed a product to sit on retailers’ shelves, so it was a product that they didn’t currently have, and that’s what set us apart from anybody else. They were crying out for a product that was commissionable that was also a product that kids actually wanted to do, and it was a responsible product compared to what else was on the market. They backed themselves to sell that product and we looked after them for doing so.

Why is your relationship with travel agents key when more and more people are booking their travel online themselves?

I think there is a trend of people moving to online but I think that there will always be the bricks-and-mortar travel agents that offer this service. When kids book with Unleashed they’re 15 and 16, booking for travel when they’re 17 and 18. So they’re very young and their parents need to get involved in the purchasing.

And whether the parents are paying or not, they have to be involved as the kid is a minor. So you find that parents like to engage a travel agent, and it works because they actually get a point of reference, they get some support from the travel agency and it helps the sales process.

When I was 16 or 17 I don’t think I would have been booking something online. Times have changed obviously, but paying the average cost of $2,000 online is an issue. Parents are playing more of a role in the decision-making process, they get more involved and hence we rely on our travel agents to work with the parents as well.

So what percentage of your bookings was online as opposed to through travel agents?

About 10%. It’s been growing slowly. We haven’t been pushing that as a sales channel, it’s just growing organically. People do like to book online but it’s probably growing in line with overall passenger growth. It’s not bucking the trend. It’s not growing more than our passenger numbers are growing.

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