All good things have to come to an end, and sadly my trip down to South Africa is no exception.
The last two weeks have been great, taking my young family down to South Africa, really underlines how lucky I am to be able to call Ticket to Ride work. The reality is that for all of us here at Ticket to Ride, the courses that we run are much more than work, they represent just about everything that we live for in life.
The global surfing lifestyle at the centre of eveything that we do here, and this is what keeps us right on the mark when it comes to our continued development and never ending search for the next adventure to put our precious ticket to ride name to.
As i have already said, the team we have both out in South Africa as well as back here in the UK, is as strong as it has ever been. The entire UK team have had direct experience of either running or experiencing each ticket to ride adventure, most have done both, there are very few sales teams in our market that can genuinely say this. A sales team with direct expereince of what it is like to be on a surf course with ticke to ride goes a long way to explaining why all our riders enjoy them so much.
On the subject of competitors, there are those that have tried to immitate Ticket to Ride and for various reasons nearly all have failed. There are others in gap year market that see the benefit of surfing from a marketing point of view, however when it comes to getting their feet wet, they simply have no clue.
7 years in, and the original ticket to ride gap year surfing course, remains as strong as ever.
Travelling along the coast of South Africa, is in itself a memorable experience, add in surf coaching at the hands of our team of proffessional trip leaders and local coaches, plus getting involved in a handful of local township initiatives, plus the chance to become a internationally recognised surf instructor, and you've got what is proven, time and time again to be the surf adventure course of a lifetime.
Coming back into the head office there is a real buzz about the place, did they miss me? Seems not, which is definately a good thing. Our recent open day was fantastically well attended, enquiries over the phone and via the website are higher than they have ever been. The recent expansion of our team has definately come about at the right time.
As a group (which as you may or may not know, also includes Basecamp Ski and Snowboard Courses) we are currently running Surf courses in South Africa and Costa Rica and ski and snowboard instructor and performance courses in France and Canada.
Our 3 week Mozambique Surfari is right round the corner too, 4th-26th April 2012 Find out More
Mozambique is definately our most adventurous african surf travel experience.
Linley and I are off out to Canada on Saturday to catch up with Basecamp courses in Whistler as well as develop new Basecamp courses for next winter.
So from sunnny South Africa, its back here to good old England and on Saturday it is off to snowy winter in Canada.
Hot or Cold, Summer or Winter, Surf or Snow……It all good, super busy, extremely exciting and lots of fun..!!
Just how we like it!
Will