This week Al goes downunder in downtown Toronto when he visits with Jason Webb from Downunder Travel. Jason and his team have been helping travelers get from Canada to Australia and the South Pacific and back since 2004. Business got off to a strong start for Jason and his team, but the travel industry can be quite a turbulent one…so to speak. Pilot strikes, airline closures, terrorist attacks, can all threaten to put you out of business. Downunder Travel managed to survive all challenges thrown at them, but none of these would come close to preparing them for what was about to happen to the world in 2020. How did they survive? Listen to find out.
Downunder Travel
This week Al goes downunder in downtown Toronto when he visits with Jason Webb from Downunder Travel. Jason and his team have been helping travelers get from Canada to Australia and the South Pacific and back since 2004.
Business got off to a strong start for Jason and his team, but the travel industry can be quite a turbulent one…so to speak. Pilot strikes, airline closures, terrorist attacks, can all threaten to put you out of business.
Downunder Travel managed to survive all challenges thrown at them, but none of these would come close to preparing them for what was about to happen to the world in 2020.
How did they survive? Listen to find out.
You can learn more about Downunder Travel at downunder-travel.com.
Al Grego:
Hello everyone. I'm Al Grego and this is the Yes We Are Open podcast.
Wellington Place, a small district in the southern part of Toronto, Ontario, one of the city's 158 neighborhoods, bordered west to east by Bathers Street and Simcoe Street and north to south by Queen Street West and Front Street West. After the town of York was founded in 1793, Wellington Place was part of the military reserve, an open piece of land swept by the guns of Fort York. Hard to believe considering it's now part of Toronto's bustling downtown core. In fact, private buildings weren't allowed to be built in Wellington Place until 1833.
Then in 1837, two squares were planned, Victoria Memorial Square and Clarence Square, both now parks connected by Wellington Street. According to the 2016 census, the population of Wellington Place is just over 17,000. Today, the area is a mix of casual and higher end restaurants, several nightclubs and chill bars, mostly along King Street West. That's where I am walking just a block west of the fashion district is Spadina and King West. I walk into a four-story brick building with multiple tenants.
I take the elevator up to the third floor where I'm about to meet the subject of this week's story, Travel.
Jason?
Jason Webb:
Yeah, how are you? I recognize you. Good to meet you.
Al Grego:
Good to meet you too.
Jason Webb:
Yeah, welcome.
Al Grego:
Thank you.
Jason Webb:
Here we are.
Al Grego:
That's Jason. He's just flown in from Calgary where he lives and the location of Downunder Travel's head office. Today, we're meeting in their temporary Toronto location.
Well, first of all, where are we going to record or where would you like?
Jason Webb:
We'll be in that room there.
Al Grego:
Okay.
Jason Webb:
Do you want to have a look in there?
Al Grego:
Jason leads me into a quiet meeting room where we set up for his interview.
Jason Webb:
Hello, I'm Jason Webb. I'm the managing director of Downunder Travel Limited.
Al Grego:
When was Downunder Travel founded?
Jason Webb:
We started Downunder Travel in 2004, April.
I grew up in Australia, in Western Australia, in Perth, and moved here in 1996 and I was in travel before that and continued that when I came into Calgary.
Al Grego:
So you've always had a background in travel and tourism?
Jason Webb:
That's right, yeah.
Al Grego:
In the travel agency capacity or did you have with the roles?
Jason Webb:
Largely been in retail travel, did a little bit of corporate travel when I came to Canada. Didn't like that. It was horrifying because it was very different to retail.
Al Grego:
Okay.
Jason Webb:
Corporate travel is largely around dealing with business travelers all the time, and they're really not happy about traveling. Whereas when we're looking travel for our retail passengers, they're all very happy and very nice to work with. So much prefer retail travel, and that's where I went back to after my stint in corporate.
So when I was working for Anza Travel for seven years, my wife and I were actually on a holiday in Australia and it was in March and we were talking, and when we first came to Canada, my wife is from Canada, but when I moved here, our plan was to save hard for a couple of years and then go back to Australia and buy a business and do our own thing. But things were really good in Calgary and we love Calgary. It's a great city and we love Canada. And my motto is, if it ain't broke-
Al Grego:
Right.
Jason Webb:
... Why fix it? So we thought, well, let's just stick it out. It became three years, four years, five years. But then when we're on that trip in Australia in March of 2004, we said, if we don't buy a business now, we're never going to buy one. So we just need to make that commitment. So when we came back to Calgary, we'd made an appointment with a business broker. That was on the Wednesday, and then on the Friday we got an email from our company saying, don't let the door hit you on the belt on the way out. We're closed. So took about 24 hours and when the smoke settled, we knew what to do. Always treated my clientele like my own business.
So I had my own database. I was one of the early pioneers of email marketing back in early 2000s. I would get a C cell in, I'd email out to 800 people on my database and people would come in and book with me. So I was very much involved with keeping a clientele base, but it was all under the umbrella of the company I was working for, and I knew I could never take that business with me because they would sue me. So I was looking to buy business outside of travel, and then after about 24 hours of being told the company was out of business, we knew what we were to do.
So I was able to take that database and just start my own business, which was perfect timing.
The stars lined up and you always hear people say, you've got to strike when the opportunity presents itself.
Al Grego:
Absolutely.
Jason Webb:
But when you hear that, you don't know when that is. But then when it does hit you, you know it.
Al Grego:
Yeah. You have to be ready to jump on it.
Jason Webb:
Yes. That's crazy.
Al Grego:
That's great.
What was the makeup of the company? Was it you and your wife basically leading it, or did you have partners?
Jason Webb:
No, it was me running it. My wife was working also in human resources for an oil and gas company, and I was running the business. I took one of the staff members with me from the other company and we just started building from there. Then in 2007, we started Toronto. We found Stephanie here as a great partner, and we started our Toronto office. And in 2009, we found Jane in Vancouver and started our Vancouver office.
Stephanie Delaney:
Hi, I'm Stephanie Delaney, destination specialist and part business owner of the Toronto office for Downunder Travel.
Jason and I met at a Tourism Australia event in Toronto. We didn't know each other. We just struck up a conversation and that was the end of that conversation and later I heard that he was looking to expand in Toronto, so I called him.
Al Grego:
What was your background in travel?
Stephanie Delaney:
I worked for other travel companies specializing in Australia. So I had quite a bit of knowledge on that side and I was looking to grow from where my position was at the time.
Al Grego:
So how do you become a specialist in Australia?
Stephanie Delaney:
The tourism board helps you with some programs to get your bearings right, I guess. Traveling there, of course, Downunder will send staff to Australia to get knowledge on that area.
Al Grego:
How do I sign up for that? I've always wanted to go to Australia. Where are you from originally?
Stephanie Delaney:
I'm a Canadian. I'm from Ontario.
Al Grego:
Ontario.
Stephanie Delaney:
Yeah.
Al Grego:
So you became an expert in Australia. You meet Jason at this event. How do you get to become a partner in Downunder Travel?
Stephanie Delaney:
He was scoping out people in Toronto, and I didn't know he was doing that at the time. So when I called him, I think he was setting up appointments to meet with people. So I met with them at that time and he showed me the business proposal and the plans and I was excited. So I said I was on board. We grew over time up to about four people in Toronto, and then of course the pandemic hit and we had to lose some of our staff, which we've been trying to bring back.
Al Grego:
Was Ryan one of those people?
Stephanie Delaney:
Yeah, Ryan was one of those people.
Ryan Kennedy:
Hi. My name is Ryan and I'm a consultant here at Downunder Travel. I've been here maybe nine years in total, not including the pandemic. I really like the kind of small, intimate kind of family atmosphere that we have here at Downunder. That really is what made me stay, for sure. I'm usually more used to more of a corporate atmosphere where this is more of family-oriented, I would say. We're all friends.
Al Grego:
So you have three locations?
Jason Webb:
Yeah. And our model is that Jane is my business partner in Vancouver, and Stephanie is my business partner in Toronto. We're both equal shares in each office, and it seems to work. It really works because it's their business. They run day to day. I am there for sounding board and help them along the way, but they also helped me. And what we didn't know, which came to the table at a time, was my expertise more leans to the sales and marketing, Stephanie's expertise more leads to the IT side of things, and Jane's specialty is leaning more towards product procurement.
Al Grego:
So it was a very complimentary kind of-
Jason Webb:
Yeah.
Al Grego:
... Partnership.
Jason Webb:
Quite accidentally, we created this team that we had all facets that we needed. Yeah.
Great. How did it go in the beginning?
Great. Yeah.
Al Grego:
Right away?
Jason Webb:
We borrowed $40,000 from the bank to start this business, and we paid it back within five months and we just kept going from there on. Yeah.
Al Grego:
Jason said when he started in 2004, it was pretty much an immediate success for Downunder in Alberta. How was it in Toronto? How was it received?
Stephanie Delaney:
It was an immediate success in Toronto as well. Jason had already had some contacts in this area, so it was a little bit easier to get going. And I think people were just looking for our type of business. We're very specialized in what we do.
Al Grego:
Right.
You're basically catering to folks who want to travel to Australia. That seems interesting that you have a travel agency focusing on one country [inaudible 00:09:11].
Jason Webb:
It's really strange. In fact, I thought the same thing when I came here before I started working at the Anza Travel Company that I worked at for seven years prior. First of all, we actually do the whole South Pacific basin-
Al Grego:
Okay.
Jason Webb:
... So it's bigger than Australia, although Australia is our bread and butter. Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, that's your Bora Boas and those sort of places, Fiji Islands and Cook Islands and Samoas. So we do all of those. We do African safaris, and we recently expanded into India and Central America, and we've also always done Asia vacations too. So we're called Downunder Travel. Most of our business goes to Australia, but we have a lot of supporting destinations as well, which are also long haul, where people are generally making this long haul trip and they want to make it right the first time because they're not likely to do it two or three times.
So that's where we come into it in our expertise.
Al Grego:
Were there any challenges early on to have a travel agency dedicated solely in getting travelers to the South Pacific?
Jason Webb:
No, not at all. There is a lot of business going to the South Pacific. Canada and Australia, New Zealand have a love affair with each other. Very similar lifestyles, very similar people. It's a perfect fit.
When I was in Australia, my first company was working for a company called Jet Set Travel, or actually it was called Blue Ribbon Travel in those days. And the company I worked for was a small ma and pa shop that they had 10 employees in one shop and they were very, very good with the sales and marketing. So I feel like I took the best from John and Miller and adapted that to my own style as well. And I think that helped us, well it's helped me in my career go to where I have. And I actually really enjoy working with my clients and I enjoy running the business as well.
So it's kind of a good match for me. It works really well.
We promote ourselves as destination specialists. So my key to this whole equation is that our agents know the destination better than our customers know it. The minute our customers know the destination better than us, we don't have a business. So that's what we look for, destination specialists who know the areas like the back of their hands so we can actually really help people and not just be order takers. The customer service is paramount. We make sure all our customers are happy. We do everything possible to make our customers happy and that one-on-one, so we don't have an online booking engine at all.
Our customers talk to our agents-
Al Grego:
Okay.
Jason Webb:
... And I think that's been part of a success story in that one-on-one, being able to talk and go back and forth and get ahold of their agent and not deal with someone different every time they call in or email, they can actually deal with the same person right through.
Al Grego:
So would you consider yourself a kind of boutique travel agency?
Jason Webb:
Yeah, I'd consider ourselves boutique for sure. We don't belong to any large alliances or other chains or anything. We're just independents, but we're actually a big fish in a small pond. So the South Pacific industry is quite small in North America. Everybody knows everybody. And we do a lot of business down to that part of the world. And what that does for us is that actually gives us better commission rates because we concentrate our volumes down there. So they entertain us with larger commission rates than what they would do somebody who just books once in a blue moon.
So by focusing our business in that area, we earn more money, but we also do a better job of it, and we offer a better experience to our clients.
Al Grego:
Up next, Jason and his team have built a successful agency focused on providing personalized expert service to the South Pacific. What happens when the pandemic shuts down all travel to the area? Stay tuned to find out.
You're listening to Yes We Are Open. For the past 18 years, Jason Webb and his team have built Downunder Travel into one of the top agencies in Canada catering to the South Pacific. They've survived pilot strikes, airline closures, even a global financial crisis, but nothing would prepare them for what was coming in 2020. How did they get through it? Let's find out what,
What's been your biggest struggle maybe that's threatened to shut you down? What would that be?
Jason Webb:
I'm a forward thinker and I'm always looking at the future and looking at the bookings, the business we have on the books and where that's going to take us into the future. And I compare our statistics all the time, and sometimes when we have a down month, I look at it and go, oh, we're down about 15%, and I'm constantly doing that. Or if I'm up, we're up, whatever, and we celebrate those ones, of course. And when we are down a little bit, I always think the worst, so I start to panic.
Al Grego:
Oh no.
Jason Webb:
But when COVID hit us in March 12, 2020, nothing, we're an international travel company. We sell international travel. And when our PM announced that the country was closed, that was hard, very hard.
So we did our best in line with our whole business outlook. Our first steps were to look after our customers that we had all around South Pacific and other parts of the world.
Al Grego:
Get them home.
Jason Webb:
Get them home. We formulated a plan, we fought fast, and we made a quick plan. And part of that plan was with our team in Calgary, Vancouver, and Toronto. We just get people home best we can.
Al Grego:
Was there a point where you said, okay, everyone's home, we can relax and move on to the next phase there or?
Jason Webb:
A little bit like that, but the next phase was awful. It was worse because the phones were quiet. We weren't doing anything. We were just sitting there going, what next? So once the storm sort of passed, that initial storm passed, we didn't know. We've never seen anything like it. Our whole industry was shut down.
Al Grego:
Sure.
Stephanie Delaney:
I didn't believe it. I'll be honest. I downplayed it in my head because I don't know if I could face the fact that knowing that the business was going to be hit that hard.
Al Grego:
Right.
Stephanie Delaney:
Yeah. Getting emotional.
Al Grego:
Yeah.
Jason Webb:
A lot of strategizing and a lot of tears from all of us. It was an emotional rollercoaster for sure. Yeah.
Al Grego:
I guess there were layoffs?
Jason Webb:
Yes. Unfortunately. And in Calgary, I had what I call my dream team. I had amazing team in Calgary, and I didn't just call them my dream team after COVID. I called them my dream team before COVID as well. We all got along well. It was a great office. The energy was there, the commitment, the passion for what we do, and the bookings just flowed. Because you've got to have all those things before you have the business. You can't fake it. You're not going to get it right. So everything was just, we were riding high. It was fantastic.
And it was very, very difficult to sit around the table with each one of them individually and say, I'm sorry, but we just can't. I was just heartbroken, but I was losing the best team I've ever had at one time and 18 years of my business building was just gone. I didn't know if I was going to be able to put food on the table next week. What I found out after that as well is when you look at my resume, it's great for what I do, but it ain't great for anything else. I'm especially trying to get into travel when the world's shut down.
So I was. I was very, very heartbroken that I had to let my team go. It was very, very difficult.
Stephanie Delaney:
The hardest thing was losing the staff.
Al Grego:
Right.
Stephanie Delaney:
Because we invest a lot in our staff. So to just say goodbye like that was tough.
Al Grego:
You were one of the layoffs?
Ryan Kennedy:
Unfortunately. Yeah.
Al Grego:
Yeah. I mean, how'd you feel or were you expecting it?
Ryan Kennedy:
I definitely wasn't expecting it. When this first popped up in the media and everything about how people are getting sick, and I thought, it's much ado about nothing-
Al Grego:
Sure.
Ryan Kennedy:
... And no way this is going to shut down travel. And when that kind of came to fruition, I was shocked. I was very upset about it, kind of bitter about it too, to be honest. It was a very, very tough to be working at the same company for a long time and really not know what your future is.
Al Grego:
Right.
Stephanie Delaney:
I mean, we're not family, but we do consider ourselves a family-run company. So yeah, it was tough. And to be on the brink of losing your business in any industry, it's your heart and your soul.
Al Grego:
And it wasn't through any failure of yours. It was-
Stephanie Delaney:
Yeah, all outside of my control.
Jason Webb:
Being a forward thinker, I actually did put a strategy together, a three-pronged strategy together to help us get through COVID, what I thought would help us get through. Now, we knew it wasn't for the long haul. One of them was to sell domestic travel to Canadians within Canada. The other was to sell domestic travel within Australia and New Zealand to Australians and New Zealanders, and we changed our website all around those two components, put it in Australian dollars and New Zealand dollars.
And the other was to promote and sell a new region that we thought was closer to home and be coming out of COVID quicker than Australia and New Zealand. So we embarked on a Central American adventure, and we've put together packages and learned and been down there since during COVID to specialize in Panama, Belize, and Costa Rica. All of those things, none of them worked at the time, none of them. Australia and New Zealand, selling trips to Australians and New Zealanders within Australia and New Zealand, they were tied down in some cities to within five kilometers.
They couldn't leave the house. It just was no good. It didn't work. Then selling travel to Canadians. Canadians, when they're booking their travel to travel within their own country, generally don't look to use travel agents that we found out. So that didn't work for us. And selling our new regions in Central America didn't work at all at the time, but actually has come into fruition as we're coming out of COVID and has been a good supplemental business.
Al Grego:
You continued with that. Yeah.
Jason Webb:
Exactly. But it just didn't work for us at the time, so it was a good investment for us, for sure, in time and money, and it's starting to pay off now. So we're happy with that. And we're happy to be offering a closer to home destination because we've never had that before. We've only had long haul destinations. So here we are now selling these three countries in Central America, which funny enough, not many people do in Canada. We kind of found a hole in the market.
Al Grego:
So from July to July, what were you doing?
Jason Webb:
Yeah. Well, that's where we really found our pivot point purely by accident. We developed another line of business, which was repatriating passengers back to Australia one way. Australia was very difficult to get into because of the flight capacities. The flights were capped at 6,500 passengers a week initially. So some flights would only have ... Well, most flights would have about 40 or 50 passengers going in.
Al Grego:
That's 6,500 total to the entire country-
Jason Webb:
Yes.
Al Grego:
... From all countries, not just.
Jason Webb:
Into all ports.
Al Grego:
Wow.
Jason Webb:
So every airplane that was going in, and there wasn't that many that was going in anymore, was about 40 to 50 passengers on board. So getting a seat, getting a ticket was getting the golden ticket on Willy Wonka.
Al Grego:
Right.
Jason Webb:
So what that did, there was a lot of Australians overseas, a ton of Australians in North America, and we ended up helping Australians get home one way, but we were instrumental in getting them seats on planes without them being canceled and getting them down there. Now we don't earn a lot of money on airline tickets, but just the sheer volume, it was phenomenal. We ended up actually making more money in 2021 than we did in 2019 pre-COVID.
Al Grego:
Really?
Jason Webb:
And we had a good year in 2019.
Al Grego:
How did that work?
Jason Webb:
Yeah. So just the oldest economics lesson in the book, I guess, is supply and demand. And we had very, very few airlines going in, massive amount of demand. And even into the few airlines that were going in, we had sometimes seven seats available, but we were able to get seats on those planes. Sometimes there might be seven seats in the plane, and we had four of them. We worked 24/7. There was no day off. We were taking phone calls three, 4:00 in the morning, people stuck at an airport trying to work through things and get them help.
I remember taking a call at four in the morning from somebody in Dubai who needed help one time. So it quickly became global. But what we also realized soon was that the people who were calling us from Copenhagen and UK and Germany and wherever else, it was a lot more difficult because there was more regulations for those countries and we just couldn't keep up.
Al Grego:
Sure.
Jason Webb:
By August 2020, we cut it down just to North America. The US and Canada was the only people we could help effectively.
Al Grego:
Was it a momentous occasion when you booked your first trip back?
Jason Webb:
Yeah, there's been a few momentous occasions since that all happened. And when you look back and think about and reflect, it just seems a bit of a blur right now. But it all happened so quickly at the time. But yeah, when we started to make some bookings going back to our part of the world, it was good.
Tahiti opened up before anybody else. They were the leaders in opening up, and they had a number of conditions, of course, but we were getting some Tahiti bookings coming in first.
Al Grego:
I guess Australia was kind of officially opened up in October.
Jason Webb:
Australia announced that, I think it was around the 3rd of October 2021, they announced that they would open up to non quarantine travel for Australians only initially, as of the 1st of November 2021.
Al Grego:
Did you find the floodgates were open? Was there a big rush?
Jason Webb:
No.
Al Grego:
No. It still kind of attended.
Jason Webb:
No. Floodgates were not open in the early new year. It has grown steadily. Where the floodgates open was actually in July, August this year.
Al Grego:
Okay.
Jason Webb:
And people definitely have that confidence for travel now, and that's where it really kicked in. And yeah, just absolutely flat out and we can't employ people fast enough.
Al Grego:
Have you gotten back to your pre-pandemic numbers yet?
Jason Webb:
We have. Yep. So we've definitely gotten back to our pre-pandemic numbers and some, which is not without surprise because there is that pent-up demand that with people who want to go, people who were going and canceled and now re-booking. So it's not without surprise. Yeah, we're definitely in front of where we were in 2020.
Al Grego:
Coming up after the break, we found out what the future holds for Downunder Travel.
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Al Grego:
Welcome back to Yes We Are Open. Jason Webb survived a monumental threat to his business, Downunder Travel. Now business is back to pre-pandemic levels. It's so good in fact, he can't hire enough people to keep up with the demand. It seems the future looks bright for Jason and his team. How bright? Let's find out.
What does the future look like for Downunder Travel?
Jason Webb:
It looks bright. We are very excited where we're going. We've got a renewed energy. We're very thankful that the pandemic is over and restrictions are over and people are getting their confidence back to travel. Our part of the world is pristine and beautiful. We're very fortunate to be sending people to such a beautiful, pristine place. And there is lots of business out there. We're very excited. We're moving forward. We've got a plan in place, which will take us into the next 10 years, provided we have no more shutdowns, of course.
But even if we do, crazy as it seems, we know we can get through it now.
Al Grego:
Right. In terms of growth, I mean, do you see any expansion happening for Downunder Travel, other cities in Canada or anything like that?
Jason Webb:
We do have some quietly ambitious plans. We are definitely not the type of company to move too fast, and we're not the type of company we need to go heavily into debt to expand.
Al Grego:
Sure.
Jason Webb:
We expand with our own money, and so we do have some quiet plans. We would like to expand a little bit into the USA.
Al Grego:
Sure.
Jason Webb:
Into the year five of our plan. First of all, we're more concentrated in just getting back to where we were and a little bit more and consistently.
Stephanie Delaney:
I'm going to continue to what I'm doing here in Ontario, keep up the eastern sign of Canada, I guess, and grow smarter than we did before. We have the option now to reevaluate everything we did before, what was working, what wasn't. And we've done just that. We've decided on how we're going to take further avenues, so we'll just keep plugging away at getting people to Australia, New Zealand, and the South Pacific.
Jason Webb:
We'll grow within. So we'll grow our team within each office, Western Canada, Calgary, and Vancouver and Toronto. I know it's not national, but it's kind of national and it gives us good scope. So our Toronto office feeds into everything from Manitoba through to Maritimes. And Calgary is the other half of Manitoba through to BC. And BC is just BC.
Al Grego:
Yeah.
Jason Webb:
And we find that there's more than enough growth for us there to grow within and grow our staff within.
Al Grego:
And in terms of destinations, I mean thanks to the pandemic, you've discovered Central America as a destination. Are there any others you're looking at?
Jason Webb:
Well, just before COVID, we actually just developed and produced our first India brochure. Now, India's a really, really tricky one because the Canadian public aren't as familiar with India and maybe fear it a little bit. So that's something we're continuing with, building that market up. We've developed a little bit more of our Southeast Asia market and then really just developing more product within the destinations we have. We don't want to take on too much. We want to stay true to our destination specialist specialty. We don't want to be everything to everybody.
We want to be the best at what we do to anybody who comes along. And I think that's why we got through COVID as successfully as we did, was because we are destination specialists and we stay true to that. And that's why people knew they could come to us to help them get home.
Stephanie Delaney:
I'm super excited about it. We did see, unfortunately, a lot of travel agencies out there fold or just quit. So we realize we're really in demand right now because they're kind of few and far between now. And we have excellent staff. We have excellent knowledge base on what we're doing. So I just see us growing. I'm super excited about it.
Ryan Kennedy:
I think it's very bright. I mean, we're looking at expanding. Even some of my old clients are all coming back and, oh, I'm so glad to see that you're back and I can't wait to travel again. It's just the world's open to Canadians again, and I can't be happier about it and can't wait to get going, do some traveling on my own.
Jason Webb:
In the last 18 years, we've built a solid company. We've built it with a long term view with every customer that we book. We look to the future very brightly. We know that we are going to grow, but we're probably not going to grow too big. We're going to grow with control. We're going to grow our business in a way that will work for us and grow our business that will work in a way for our clients. We always want to keep that personal touch. We don't want to lose that. That's part of our philosophy. We are here for our customers to provide them with the best service and the best destination knowledge.
We know that there is always going to be a demand for our services. We know that our business is going to survive. We know now that we can survive pretty much anything. I don't want to tempt fate with that, of course. We know that we can go on and we know that we will always be able to offer that service to our customers. And as long as our customers want and need us, we'll be there.
Al Grego:
So I only have one last question for you guys, is Downunder Travel open?
Multiple people:
Yes. We're absolutely openly open.
Al Grego:
Excellent. Thank you so much.
That's the story of Downunder Travel. I think one of the main things that keeps more people from becoming entrepreneurs is doubt, doubt in whether the business idea is a good one, doubt in whether there'll be demand for the product or service. And yes, doubt in whether the business can withstand adversity. I believe Jason, when he says he knows that they can survive anything. Imagine how freeing that must feel. All those doubts are gone thanks to the adversity they survived over the past two years. Adversity, a state or instance of serious or continued difficulty or misfortune.
That's according to Miriam Webster. Adversity plus doubt can end a business before it even begins. But adversity plus survival, that is if you can find a way through the adversity, you'll invariably come out the other end much stronger for it and with fewer doubts. As the saying goes, the strongest deal is forged in the hottest fire. And if that's the case, you won't get much stronger than Downunder Travel. Confession time, Australia has been one of my bucket list destinations since I learned about their history in geography in eighth grade.
I hope one day to enlist Downunder Travel to help me make that dream come true. And when I do, I know I'll be in good hands.
Yes We Are Open as a Moneris podcast production. I'd like to thank Stephanie, Ryan and Jason for taking the time to share their story. You can learn more about Downunder Travel at downunder-travel.com. You can also follow them on Instagram and Pinterest at Downunder Travel. On Facebook, they're at DownunderTravelCA and on Twitter, they're at DownunderTvlLTD. For more information about this podcast, visit our site, yesweareopenpodcast.com. If you'd like to support us, rate us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
And if you're a Canadian small business owner or know of one with an interesting story of perseverance to tell, I'd love to help tell it. You can contact me at podcast@moneris.com. Tune in next week for another story of small Business struggle and survival on the Yes We Are Open Podcast. I'm Al Grego. Thank you for listening.