July 2007 Newsletter

IN THIS MONTH'S NEWSLETTER...

Creating our New Private Journeys
for 2007-2008 and early 2009
The schedule for our Fall Slideshows

The sidebar pictures were taken during our recent
inspection trips in Turkey, New Zealand, Mali and Egypt.

Each picture can be seen in a large format by simply clicking on it.

It's 'Construction' Season at TrailFinders

In late 2006 several clients came to us with the same question.

"Now that we have travelled with you on most or all of your current Private Journeys, what's new for the coming season?"

It was obvious that the demand for our journeys was exceeding the supply and we had to create some new ones fast.

So Miral, Lenore and I sat down with a big map of the world and asked ourselves the same four questions we had asked a few years ago when we created our very first Private Journey.

1. Which countries are interesting, safe and have a lot to offer?

2. Of those, which offer the best value for the traveller?

3. Of those, which have reasonably good infrastructures and reliable ground handlers? and,

4. In which of these countries are we unable to find a small-group journey with high standards of comfort which would be similar in style to our Private Journeys.

When the dust settled we were left with dozens of possibilities which we reluctantly whittled down to six: Egypt, Chile, Mali, New Zealand, Argentina and Turkey; and, after fitting these into the best possible combinations we finally had our "new journeys" for the coming season.

Timbuktu & the Sahara Desert
Best of Egypt and Turkey
Highlights of Chile and Argentina
Best of New Zealand

Now all we had to do was "construct" the trips and schedule them into the coming year. Simple.

We started by naming the 'product manager' for each journey and identifying who would be 'prime' for each of the following pieces: itinerary creation; site selection; hotel, restaurant and bar selections; supplier contacts; costing; inspection trips; website creation; marketing material design; newspaper ads; window displays; slide shows; sales activity; and, selection of tour leader and backup tour leader for each journey.

It took the months of March and April to create the itineraries and the months of May and June to complete most of the inspection trips to each of the countries. Since then we've been getting the details on our web site and we now begin the process of creating the individual slide presentations for our fall series. All the remaining work is still ahead of us but we are very optimistic and satisfied that we've created some truly beautiful journeys. We hope you find them as interesting as we do.

Here's the resulting Private Journey schedule.

Oct 7, 2007 22 Days	South Africa & Namibia
Nov 10, 2007 11 Days	Timbuktu & the Sahara Desert
Jan 12, 2008 21 Days	Thailand, Laos & Cambodia
Feb 3, 2008 26 Days	Thailand, Laos, Vietnam & Cambodia
Feb 12, 2008 21 Days	Northern India
Mar 24, 2008 26 Days	Ecuador, Galapagos & Peru
May 6, 2008 21 Days	Egypt and Turkey
Nov 2008 24 Days	Chile & Argentina
Feb 2009 26 Days	Thailand, Laos Vietnam & Cambodia
Mar 3, 2009 21 Days	New Zealand
Apr 2009 22 Days	South Africa & Namibia

Please see our website for full details on any of these trips.

If you need more information please call us.

We also encourage you to attend our slide shows. The schedule for Ottawa is shown below. If you live outside the Ottawa area and would like to see our slide shows in your part of the country, please let us know.

In the meantime, take a closer look at a few images from our newest journeys - the pictures at the right. Each picture can be seen in a large format by simply clicking on it.

Thanks for your interest.

Cheers,

Rick

Our Free Slide Shows start September 11

The demand for these presentations is very high
and space is limited in our Ottawa office so
please register early for each show you wish to attend.
TO REGISTER
Please call us at 613-789-1900
or
click here to send us e-mail
Please indicate which dates you would like to attend and the number of seats you require.
Also, please include your telephone number
in case we have any last minute changes.