The People Behind The Business

Throughout their trips, guests will meet our guides, drivers, local guesthouse owners, craftsmen and others, that personalise their discovery of Romania and its people. I think it’s safe to say after all these years, what guests repeatedly mention as “priceless” from their trips are their encounters with the local people and nature’s beauty whether they go hiking in the Carpathians or exploring the bucolic areas of Transylvania, Maramures and Bucovina.

Behind every detail of these trips there is a dedicated  team working to create, plan and coordinate all experiences for our guests. Sometimes the team has direct contact with guests, sometimes we don’t because we work solely with their travel agents.

There’s a third layer of people that nobody ever sees, but they keep the company going! These are our shareholders and advisory board. As one of the shareholders but also CEO, I’ll share that whatever we do and have achieved so far is because of all the people involved from the most visible, to those you will never get to meet. It’s humbling for me to realize  how everything we’ve built has been possible because of the great people involved and those who we got to meet along the way.

But today I want to focus on our board, those people who believed in the business and took the time to help it develop when it was still young and figuring out its way. And I will make this a personal account because I am personally indebted to them.

For 3 years now, we meet every 3 months and for 1 hr or so we go through a series of points pertinent to the business at that particular time. Do we need a CRM? How can we improve the way we work with our guides? What else can we do to add value to our trips? How to manage growth? And so on.

Having a board came from my need to have people from outside of the business, to confront me with questions about it with an external vantage point and a variety of experiences. When we selected them, they had to know the company, Romania and have an affinity for both. Leana, Mary Ann and Mouna all traveled with us and all came into our lives as guests who found us online, through friends or colleagues.

From these meetings with the board, I am always left with notes that are pure gold and slowly things began to get implemented. The company grew organically and intuitively, but now we need more structure, more specialized people in key roles, and more processes. The way to navigate all these changes goes  much smoother with these 3 ladies guiding me from afar. They have different backgrounds and experiences, live in different countries and above all, are invested in our mission. Their sole benefit is knowing that their input makes a difference and for this, I am not only grateful, but very inspired.

So now you know that when you travel with us, you’re in the great hands of all these layers of people. We are all involved and dedicated to making this company what it is and your best experiences possible.

PS: I will share more about my partners in a future article.