Girl Gone Global: Building a Bold New Kind of Travel Brand with A Dose of Travel

We’re kicking off our new Emerging Multi-Day Operators series - spotlighting how a new wave of founders is reinventing group travel for modern explorers. The multi-day category is poised for growth in the next 5-10 years an impressive average of 20–30% annually, driven by travelers seeking deeper connection, curated itineraries, and shared experiences.

In this episode, we meet Dr. Nabila Ismail, pharmacist turned founder and creator of A Dose of Travel, who turned her solo travel storytelling into a thriving small-group brand that celebrates belonging for South Asian travelers while welcoming all who share that spirit of curiosity and connection.

Nabila shares how her first “MVP” trip to Bali sold out without even a website, and how scaling meant moving from spreadsheets to modern systems, partnering locally, and building SOPs that protect traveler experience. We unpack how A Dose of Travel differentiates through community rituals, women-only and singles formats, immersive local partnerships, and value-forward stays that prioritize culture over flash.

We also explore how distribution is evolving beyond social—through tourism board collaborations, co-branding, and the growing role of travel advisors as travelers crave human guidance in a digital world. 

As multi-day travel continues to surge, A Dose of Travel shows how small, tech-enabled brands can punch above their weight - staying human, connected, and true to their mission. For more information on A Dose of Travel, please visit doseoftravel.co/.

👉 Listen to Girl Gone Global: Building a Bold New Kind of Travel Brand Now

🔥 Special Thanks to our Season 6 Title Sponsors for their Support: Holafly, Propellic, PayCompass, Kaptio, Civitatis and WeRoad

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Chapters

• 0:00 Cold Open On AI And Virality
• 0:35 Host Intro And Series Setup
• 2:31 Why Multi‑Day Tours Are Surging
• 4:14 Sponsor Shoutouts And Events
• 5:17 Meet Nabila And Her Origin Story
• 8:28 From Content To Community To Tours
• 11:28 Serving The South Asian Traveler
• 15:42 Early Trips, Product-Market Fit
• 19:03 Sourcing Markets And Global Reach
• 21:05 Operations Reality And Tooling
• 23:05 Tech Stack And Why Torsetta
• 25:24 Distribution, Partnerships, OTAs
• 28:00 Private Vs Group Demand Signals
• 31:40 Inclusive Community And Safety
• 33:58 New Destinations And Risk Perception
• 37:10 Audience Demographics And 45+ Expansion
• 40:06 Differentiating The Product Experience
• 42:10 Social Strategy And Channel Focus
• 46:03 Repurposing Content With AI
• 48:36 Beyond Marketing: AI For Ops
• 51:17 Vision: Club, Membership, Belonging
• 53:08 Dream Collaborations And Partners
• 54:28 Impact Stories And Community Proof
• 57:40 Rapid Fire: Gear, Apps, Places
• 1:01:20 How To Connect And Final Credits

Transcript

SPEAKER_03: 0:04

I mean, I really just use Chat GBT. And one tip that I've really learned is it's pretty easy to come up with that formula, and ChatGBT will know it. So if you need something to go viral, not that virality equals sales or conversions or anything like that. But if you're looking for brand awareness, you can really just pump everything into Chat GBT. I also really like to use successful videos and translate them or transcribe them and then copy and paste that into chat GB, okay, this went viral. Why did it go viral? Do it for me now.

SPEAKER_01: 0:35

Hello everyone and welcome back to Travel Trends. This is your host, Dan Christian, and we're about to begin a deep dive into emerging tour operators. We are now in season six, episode seven. We just had two fantastic captains of industry episodes with Tao Tao from Get Your Guide and then Heidi from EF, who was just at the ATTA conference where I was in Chile. I had the most extraordinary time at this conference, the pre-trip cycling that I mentioned on our last episode. And I have just arrived in Sevilla in Spain for the Tourism Innovation Summit. I'm speaking here over the next couple of days. And I'm really thrilled to bring this series together now because I have also just learned in speaking to Bruce Rosard from Arrival that we are back on again for a multi-day tour in Valencia at the end of April of 2026. I'll be back MCing again. And the reason I really wanted to focus on this series, especially after arrival and ATTA and then now being here at the Tourism Innovation Summit, is because I'm incredibly bullish on multi-day tour travel, the power of small group tours to be able to transform people's lives. I've just experienced it again for myself, and I know how meaningful this style of travel is. And so what I wanted to do with this series is I wanted to line up three emerging tour operators, three smaller operators that are having significant growth that would be beneficial for our global community to understand. So we actually have today, we have Nabila Ismail, who is the founder and CEO of a company called A Dose of Travel. She's based in New York. She started as a pharmacist, she became an influencer and ultimately a tour operator. And of course, the brand name couldn't be any better. A Dose of Travel, given her background as a pharmacist and it being the ant antidote to so many things in our life. She is a real inspiration, and you'll hear the growth potential that she has is phenomenal. She works with a company called Torsetta, which is owned by a friend of mine named Alex Reagan. And Alex offered to kindly sponsor this series. And it's really fascinating for me to see companies like Torsetta introduce the type of technology that didn't exist before for multi-day tour companies to thrive, the reservation platforms to handle all the back end that a company like Nabilia is creating with a dose of travel and to enable them to thrive. So thank you to Alex and the team at Torsetta for sponsoring this series. We're also going to have two additional amazing guests. You're going to hear next week from Lisa Pagato, who's based in Sydney, and she created a company just over 10 years ago called Get This? Crooked Compass. It's a fantastic brand name. I really like it. Some people may be familiar with Crooked Compass. They focus on Australians traveling to really unique destinations around the world. This is not for the first-time adventurer. These are people that are looking to go further afield and love the experience of small group travel. And then we're going to bring in Will, who's the managing director of Active England Tours. So we're going to have a full global perspective amongst these three individuals. You're going to get a really fascinating perspective on three different emerging tour operators that will highlight the growth of this category. And as you'll hear in my conversation with Will, I focus on the growth potential of this category, which is why many private equity firms have gotten into this space because it is an industry that is poised for growth over the next five to 10 years with an average of 20 to 30% increase per year. So if you just do the math on that, that means you're going to double your money in five years. So investors see this as a very sure thing and a safe bet. And sure enough, those are the numbers that Will is looking to achieve. And I think everyone will learn a lot from this three-part series. So I look forward to you meeting all of these guests. And don't forget, just before we kick off, we have our AI summit coming up next week. So make sure that you are registered to join us October 28th and 29th. Register at traveltrendspodcast.com. And if you are listening to it after then, don't worry because that means that all the sessions are available on our YouTube channel. So you'll be able to check them out right away. And then, of course, we post clips and highlights on all of our social channels from these conversations and we send out a monthly newsletter that you can sign up for. And I am traveling to many conferences in this next couple of months. So be sure to reach out. We have some fantastic incentives to join us at Focus Right in the middle of November in San Diego. So check out traveltrendspodcast.com, our homepage, to be able to save$250 off a ticket to join us at FocusRight. And I'll be at WTM in London the very first week in November, and we're hosting an event on the Tuesday night. So lots happening here at Travel Trends, but let's jump right in to episode one of our emerging tour operator series brought to us by our friends over at Tourseta.com. I'd like now to welcome Nabila Ismael, the founder and CEO of A Dose of Travel Club. Welcome, Nabila. Great to have you on Travel Trends.

SPEAKER_03: 5:35

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02: 5:36

Absolutely. You have such an inspiring story to tell. And I really want to start from the beginning because I find it so fascinating, and many people heard from that introduction. You started as a pharmacist. My wife is actually a pharmacist, and you all clearly always. Yeah, my wife is a pharmacist. She worked in retail and she's now moved to clinicals. So she works in a hospital and loves it, taking care of uh young kids in a rehabilitation hospital. So she loves her profession, and obviously you did as well, becoming a pharmacist because it's such an uh extensive education program you have to go through. And I understand from your background that you you were traveling throughout that time, and somehow you were able to combine both of your passions and ultimately move into travel. And you've created this really cool company called A Dose of Travel, which couldn't be more fitting for a pharmacist. So I was telling my wife last night how much I was looking forward to our interview, but and I know she's gonna be keen to hear this. But tell everyone that has just learned a little bit about you, Nabila, um, even though you've got such an impressive success story already. Tell us a little bit about your background as a pharmacist and your journey in creating a dose of travel.

SPEAKER_03: 6:39

Yeah, thank you. It is a pretty wild one. I can't say that I thought I would ever be here. Um being a pharmacist is quite different than being in the travel operator space, but there are a lot of similarities as well. Um, it started off when I was just like in college, as really passionate about travel as one would be. Since I did go to school for so long, I had the perks of having lots of summers off, seven years of summers. So that was the one perk of going to grad school. So I fit in a lot of solo travel. I'd been to about 40 countries by the time I graduated, and I started to document it all on social media. So my story really started with content creation and freelance journalism. And then I just got really lucky in the sense where I noticed that people were online were asking me for more than just travel tips. They were asking if they could come with me. So that's when content turned into this movement and a way to create trips and bring people along with me. And that's really how just a travel club was born.

SPEAKER_02: 7:40

Yeah, it's incredible. And I the part you mentioned too is the travel club, which I want to get into as well, because I know you have private trips and group trips. And so one other part that's really interesting about your story is the cultural background. Now, actually, we should just establish for all of our listeners where you are today. Um, tell everyone where in the world you I'm in Toronto, but you're much somewhere much more exotic. Tell everyone where you're recording today and where you're usually based.

SPEAKER_03: 8:02

I am usually I'm always all over the place, but I'm from New York, but I'm currently in Bali, um, Indonesia, which is so beautiful if you haven't been before.

SPEAKER_02: 8:12

Yeah, it's extraordinarily beautiful. I lived in Australia for a while, and I know that's such a tourist destination for many people in Australia, of course. But I mean super close. Totally, yeah. But it's um it's fascinating that when I looked at the destinations that a dose of travel offers, like Morocco, you have Japan, you have a great mix of destinations. But in terms of how you actually got to where you are, I think that is obviously such an important part that I'm really keen for our listeners to understand, given that we have such a large global audience of people that are taking inspiration from conversations like these to improve their companies or their career. And I see so much uh insight that you can offer to our listeners based on your journey and exactly where you've positioned your business at the moment, because I see so many opportunities for growth. But tell us how you actually made the leap from influencer to actually creating and organizing trips and how that specifically connects to the cultural background and the types of people that you are marketing to.

SPEAKER_03: 9:06

Yeah, you know, it was a really long time in the making. A lot of times it was just showing up online, and I think that was the biggest thing was I created a brand presence for so long before there was any sort of business or any sort of value coming back directly to me. I just genuinely love talking about travel and my personal experiences. And by showing up on like being totally authentic and genuine, I cultivated trust, which I guess is great because pharmacists are also really trusted professionals. So I feel like I just carried that over online and I posted content for 10 years, then I started writing, and I believe that I got a good following in that sense where people just wanted to follow me because I knew that they knew that I wasn't selling anything to them, and then there was actually a specific trend that I hopped onto on social media. This is why I I love social media, it could just take one video to find your tribe and your community, and that's kind of how it unfolded for me. I was lucky where I hopped on this one specific trend, then Business Insider covered it. And what helped me pivot into this was being able to read what was coming in from my audience. I was directly, because I was a microcreator, was able to filter in through every comment that was coming in, being able to connect with my community. And I realized that most people who were following me looked like me and didn't really have anyone to look up to in the travel space. And that's kind of how I connected the dots.

SPEAKER_02: 10:33

Yeah, there's so much there to unpack for our listeners. Obviously, one of the big trends that we've followed very much closely on the show, and as part of my background, and as Nabila, you kindly mentioned just as we were kicking off before we started recording, which is group travel, which is set for, you know, really from my perspective, the next 10 years, both uh retirees that are deciding to take group trips, and also all the younger generation, whether it be the loneliness epidemic, the brands like Intrepid highlight, even companies like EF that highlight the fact that more young people are abandoning dating sites and going on trips so they can actually find someone they have real chemistry with. There's so many shifts in consumer behavior that are pointing in the direction of group travel. But I mean, I know you also offer private travel. But the part that I find really fascinating is, you know, when you mentioned you know traveling with your tribe, you know, having been in this uh industry for more than 20 years and about 15 years in the uh group travel sprace with brands like G Adventures, uh Intrepid, Kentiki, one of the big things that we always understood about consumer behavior and why they were drawn to be traveling with a group is that they didn't want to travel alone. They wanted to be with other like-minded people. And there typically had to be some point of connectivity that would actually encourage them to come together. And I think, and you can see those brands keep offering different trip styles, as they often refer to them. So they try and figure out what is it that people are into that we can create a custom trip for and and explore our new market. One of the things that you have very successfully tapped into is the South Asian community. So tell us a little bit more about that and I guess how intentional you were from the beginning to be able to attract people from the South Asian community to take group travel trips.

SPEAKER_03: 12:11

Yeah, like I said, it it was very personal. I didn't have any intent of doing group trips, but when I started solo traveling myself, it was quite a challenge to get my family, my community to support it, and especially with my career being so different and not really conducive to travel. I did not see representation in the travel industry myself, whether it was being a creator or a journalist. And that is kind of why I found this niche. But also, again, my audience kept telling me, hey, wow, it's so cool to see another girl who looks like me. Like, oh my god, how did you get your parents to let you go on that trip? Or how do you do it with as like a Muslim woman? Or like, what about like dietary restrictions? What about cultural restrictions? How do you find these places while you're traveling and like make sure that it caters to you safely and in an enjoyable manner, right? And so it was just going through my own journey and realizing that like there's gotta be other people who want to do it or are doing it as well. Up until like this point in my solo travel journey, I have probably met only a handful of people who look like me. And so I really just took what was being fed to me and started to see, hey, okay, I am a South Asian woman who travels. And if you're also South Asian, you want to travel and your parents won't let you because they say they don't see other South Asians. That was really how that happened. Um, and it's really simple, and apparently there was nobody else doing this.

SPEAKER_02: 13:42

Yeah, no, it's amazing. That's what I say. It's such an inspiring story. And I think one of the things I just wanted to highlight to all of our listeners, when I was running Konsiki USA, we did this major focus group and we tried to figure out why people were booking with the brand and why people weren't. And one of the things that we discovered, and this was uh overwhelmingly evident as soon as the people in the focus group kind of revealed their ethnicity, is they actually highlighted the fact that they didn't see anybody that looked like them traveling on these trips. And um, and there was such wonderful multicultural diversity, which I'm used to growing up in Toronto, especially in the suburbs of Toronto. And I've got lots of uh friends that are South Asian, and and I think one of the things I've always found traveling and living in other places like Australia, the UK, and the US is often there is a big lack of understanding about multicultural marketing and truly having someone like yourself, because it's very different to recognize an opportunity and then try and figure out how you solve for it. Having someone like yourself that's from that community, passionate about travel, and shows people how to lead the way and people follow by example. So I thought this is why I'm like, I'm so excited for you with this this business that you built. The one thing I have to ask you is what did your parents think of all this?

SPEAKER_03: 14:46

Yeah, great question. It has now been three years, so they've kind of come around. I don't know whether they tell that to me like to my face or not, but they're definitely telling any South Asian person about Dorset Travel Club, which is really, really great and probably as supportive as they'll get.

SPEAKER_02: 15:03

Yeah. That's great. Well, especially if it's one of those things, like now that you've become successful, I'm sure they can ease up a little bit on their concerns because being a pharmacy, yeah, this is a great role. Um, it's a great career. And I guess you always have that to fall back on, but I don't think you need to worry about that. Uh, but uh tell everyone a little bit about the evolutions in terms of when you started offering group trips and private trips and where the business is today in terms of the product and experiences that you offer.

SPEAKER_03: 15:29

Yeah. So my first ever group trip was actually three years ago, and it was very much positioned as come with me as an influencer, but not as a tour operator. And that was like my MVP or my pilot. And that was three years ago. Oddly enough, um, it was to Bali. So it's a very full circle moment to be back here. Now running multiple trips to Bali. But I had 15 people sign up, and this was when I was like a very micro creator and didn't really have the street cred or the reputation or even a website at that point. Um, but that trip was so successful and really showed me the power of community and bringing people together and catering to a market that's not catered to. But somehow I still didn't see the potential of business in that until like a year later. And that is when Dose of Travel Club formally formed. So it's now been about two years since they've been running as a business instead of a hobby or like an influencer thing.

SPEAKER_02: 16:29

Very interesting. And one of the things, too, that I wanted to ask you, and I just want to give some context for our listeners. And some of our listeners that have been with us since the beginning of the last two years have certainly heard me talk about the adventure travel community and specifically group tours and small group when you look at the history of companies like G-Adventures and Intrepid, which are both on the cusp of becoming billion-dollar businesses. And I still remember when they were$50 million businesses growing to$100 million, and the whole idea for them in the very early stages, because they were actually had a global partnership for many years. But G-Adventures was based in Toronto and their whole focus was Central America. In fact, Peru and South America was their kind of primary destination with the Inca Trail. So getting Canadians that would be interested in adventure travel, ultimately Americans and Brits and Aussies as well. But really, there's always a core source market and then a destination that they serve that builds a business. And I always find in Intrepid, as some of our listeners may know as well, their whole focus was Southeast Asia and Thailand at a time when Thailand was in a real emerging destination, 30 years ago. And so it's changed considerably since then. So each of those brands now have become global brands. They draw from multiple markets and they pretty much serve every destination on the planet. And what's interesting though, when uh I spent nearly a decade at the Travel Corporation overseeing all of these global group tour brands, the key for us was always trying to figure out how we gain market share in new markets. And so, given that you're still relatively uh in your relative infancy, I would say, in terms of the overall success I'm sure you're going to have, tell us a little bit more about the current markets that you source travelers from and where you're growing. Clearly, you're based in New York, so I'm assuming a lot of the travelers that are choosing to travel with a dose of travel are Americans. But are you starting to expand to other regions of the world as well, given your global profile and social media influence?

SPEAKER_03: 18:18

Yeah, for sure. Um, given I've traveled so much, my audience is also very global. Majority do come from the US, followed by UK, Canada, Australia, India, given that we cater to South Asian, so a lot of the Indian subcontinent, Pakistan, um Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and then other markets like the UAE. So we do get a lot of global participants. We actually did work with Contiki once last year on a partner trip. So it was really cool to be talking to you about it. But I hosted a 50 person trip to Thailand with Kontiki, and they were really impressed to find out that we had such a global audience book that trip because they don't typically get that kind of booking. So I remember them sharing that they were really surprised that we had like it was split, like half Americans, half Indians, and a market that they don't typically market to.

SPEAKER_02: 19:11

Yeah, no, it's really interesting to make that connection because one of the things that Kentiki needed to do, and full credit to the team for this because the trade community was not really able to sell youth-branded multi-day tours. Most of that business started to dry up. Most of the business started to come from uh or the real growth opportunity was working with influencers like yourself to be able to lead a trip. And so encouraging influencers not only to travel on Kentiki trips, that's how it started, but then actually get them to coordinate their own departure that they would fill themselves. So it's really interesting you mentioned about having 50 people travel with you, and then now here you are with your own business. And um, so on this topic, uh one of the things I was also keen to ask you is as you've made this journey between operating and marketing, um, one of the keys is the operation side of it. So it's one thing to market, and you're clearly you're a very strong marketer. When it comes to the operation side, how did you embark on that in terms of like, did you bring in additional people that would help you with the trip operations? Were you all were you learning that yourself? And where have you gotten to on that front? Because obviously that in and of itself is has a fair bit of clip complexity to uh to implement and and operate.

SPEAKER_03: 20:22

Yes, you can say that again. It is so different to be on the operation side of things from a traveler who's booked those services to like a creator and to then an influencer. Um yeah, the operation side is definitely something that I wish more people talked about. It was definitely challenging, but like you mentioned, I started working with tour operators as a host. So that was really when I got to understand how tour operators work. And I kind of took a different approach when I would start then traveling exclusively only with operators myself when I was going on my solo trips to really understand how they work and how they operate to then better operate myself. But I would say it's probably one of the biggest challenges and a responsibility that like you have to fully be ready to take on when you make that pivot from come with me to like, oh, I'm actually going to run my own company. Um, I don't think I was fully prepared for that, and that has been the biggest learning curve. Um, so yeah, definitely a challenge.

SPEAKER_02: 21:24

Well, I'm keen to know how you solve for that because I again this is where one of those we've come up against one of those, you know, important uh pain points that uh sometimes prevents a company from being able to scale. And it's one of the things that the incumbents certainly have an advantage in. And when you think about various businesses, of course, you look at what is your core competency and what are the areas that you can either kind of, you know, what do you buy, what do you build, what do you outsource, and you have to make those smart strategic decisions, especially as an entrepreneur operating lean and trying to scale a business. And so a lot of these operators, that's one of the things that they do so well. They've learned how to operate trips and then they'll work with partners that can attract an audience. So um, when it comes to, I guess, the technology side, for example, uh how did you approach that? Because getting people to be able to book, pay for trips, and then be able to communicate to them. And then as the trip operates, there's so many different touch points with the consumer. So, how did you ultimately? I know you use Torsetta, for example. Obviously, Alex and the team are a great uh supporter and sponsor of our show. And um, but yeah, tell me about your journey in terms of implementing the right technology and tools to uh uh to power a dose of travel.

SPEAKER_03: 22:29

Yeah, so other than finding great tour operators to work with, like the systems in place are definitely really key and keeping organized and making sure that it appears professional and we're competitive with all these other travel companies that you have mentioned that are highly, highly successful. Tour Seta is a new platform that we've just started to use um because we weren't finding what we were, we couldn't find what we wanted. And it has been really helpful in terms of connecting it in the terms of like connecting our marketing, but also using those tools um to really understand our travel audience, to convert sales, and then also collect data from our travelers. I think that's the biggest thing when you're catering to so many people. Um, it's really hard to get all of the information in one system that's organized in a way that you can convey that to all of the different people involved. And that I think that's where the biggest room for error comes from. So Torsena has been really, really great so far. It's definitely an upgrade from what we were doing before, which was like manual spreadsheets and things like that.

SPEAKER_02: 23:32

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's amazing. And that's one of the reasons I wanted to do this emerging uh multi-day tour series, because there are so many uh opportunities still, and you're like a shining uh terrific example of that, uh, where this style of travel is so appealing. And then it's all of a sudden you have to figure out, okay, we've got an audience, we're scaling this business. How do I scale my operations, scale my technology? Which is literally why so many companies go to conferences, whether they're focused right or arrival, they're trying to meet not only technology providers, but also look at distribution opportunities, which is something else I'm keen to ask you about. And when I think about distribution, obviously the first thing that most people think about is OTAs, online travel agencies. The thing that most OTAs say on stage that I say differently is they talk about the fact they're a technology company. Expedia's always kind of highlighted the fact booking.com is the same. They're not a travel company, they're a technology company. And every travel company I've worked for since the last 20 years, from Carlson Wagonly to Lonely Planet to G Adventures and TTC, none of those companies have been technology companies. And they've all and and most travel companies struggle with technology because it's not a core competency. Their core company is operating trips. And so I've always said, you know, when how do you see yourself? I see myself as a travel company and running a travel company, and you need to find the right technology providers to work with. But one of the things you work with technology providers for is distribution. And the traditional travel industry worked through trade channels and still does. And in certain sectors, including multi-day trips, there is a huge component of offline travel agent booking activity. So the other thing I wanted to ask you in terms of distributing your trips, clearly you have a strong direct-to-consumer channel. You've got strong uh social channels and great content. Is the focus to keep driving B2C and building in uh direct business, or are you starting to look at different partnerships as well to round out your business?

SPEAKER_03: 25:21

Yeah, that's a great question. That's something that we're definitely exploring now, now that we have like this new tech stack that we have implemented and social media has been big, but obviously it's never great to rely on one source of um getting distribution. Definitely looking to evolve in a way where I can combine the perks and benefits and partnerships that are built out through being a creator. So working with tourism boards directly to create these really unique trips with people who are very much on the ground and know this. So we ran a trip to Barbados with the with Visit Barbados, and that was fantastic. Um, where people got a very unique experience because they got to travel with a bunch of media as well, and on top of that, we were able to rope in partners like Fenty Beauty. So I would love to really combine the partnerships that I've gotten with uh being a creator into that to create a very unique and you know one-of-a-kind experience, which is something that you also have to think about in this space.

SPEAKER_00: 26:21

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SPEAKER_02: 28:17

And now, back to the show. And the one thing I want to ask you about on the product side, I know I was asking about the group trips. One of the things that I also want to ask about is the private trips, because that's been a big consumer trend, both kind of during the pandemic and certainly post-pandemic, people realize that wait a second, I can actually organize 12 or 15 people and we can have our own custom trip. Now, there's a big solo travel market, which I'm assuming is part and solo female travelers in particular, which uh I presume is probably one of the key drivers for your group travel trips, um, which feel free to comment on. But I also wanted to ask about the private trips. And one of the things that stood out to me in what you mentioned, Nabila, is the fact that you highlighted that South Asian's traveling back to South Asia. And I find this really fascinating because when we look at some of those traditional tour operators that have been around for 50 years, like a Trafalgar, um uh Globus, some of those big brands, a lot of them are based in uh um English language source markets and they're focused on Europe because ever since World War II, and like this is going back now, but like the you know, so many people wanted to travel, they had lost connection with their ancestors, if you will. They no longer had someone in Italy or Ireland to go and visit, but they had someone, their grandparents were from there, and they wanted to go back and visit. And so there was this huge kind of like expat community that was keen to go re-explore their roots. And this is where like we're all humans, written on our DNA. We were like, you know, we we we spread around this planet because we are like our very our natural instinct is to move and to explore new horizons. And that's one of the things I just love about travel and cultural connection. But the thing I find so fascinating is that strong human desire to go back to what you consider to be your roots, and a lot of that business for the last 20 or 30 years has been um the US, Canada, Australia, even the UK. But what I'm super excited about, what I'm seeing, is that we now have like Europe is now traveling uh much more a lot of the some of the most exciting uh tour operator startups like WeRoad, that's based in Italy. Um you have OTAs like Civitatus out of Spain. I see so much and obviously the entire Asia market is so exciting as well. So tell us a little bit about uh when it comes to the people that are choosing to take those private trips and the people that are reaching out to you to say, I actually I'm of Indian descent or Bangladeshi descent or and I want to go back and explore that part of the world. I'd love to hear your views on that.

SPEAKER_03: 30:38

Yeah, you know, it's kind of interesting. I thought private trips would be like way bigger for us at Joseph Travel Club, but because I've cultivated such a community focus and presence, our private trips definitely don't take off as much of our group trips. People are more eager to go visit their homeland together because of a variety of different reasons. Like their family immigrated for a long time ago and have not been back or don't have a reason to go back. So now, like for myself, I went back two years ago to Pakistan, but my parents were definitely against me going back. My wordly speaking of like uh skills are definitely not that great, so it's very easy to be to stick out. I think they had a lot of fear based on the reasons why they left in the first place, and I think there's a lot of reasons why people don't go back or haven't had the chance to go back. And so I actually prefer to go back in a group with other people who might be in the same boat. Like, oh, I am Pakistani or I'm Indian, but I've never been to the homeland, and I would like to go to other people who've never been either, so we could experience it together and not feel awkward or left out or like the black sheep. So private trips definitely haven't taken off as much as group trips.

SPEAKER_02: 31:54

Well, okay, so that's actually really interesting. I appreciate you sharing that insight. That's so um because the one thing about group trips, uh, especially if you're focusing on the South Asian community, which again, I just find that so fascinating, the fact that like the same the same uh story is playing out where people want to go back and visit their homeland. So again, it's just like a human instinct and desire. The other thing though, because I've got a great friend from um Bangladesh, and I went to his wedding, and I I always wanted to go back and travel to Bangladesh with him, and he was highlighting to me, he's like, Yeah, just don't go on your own. Like, yeah, wait and come with me. And also one of my colleagues that I worked with in LA for a number of years, um, who's from Pakistan, and um uh he went back to do uh the Hajj in in uh Saudi Arabia, and um and so and I always found the culture so fascinating, it's one of the things that I was also keen to explore, and he said something similar to me, is like, yeah, don't go on your own. And so I've I've both places I'm very keen to explore. I've been to India, but I want to explore more of South Asia, and I'm sure many of our listeners feel the same way. So when it comes to someone who is not of South Asian descent, that is then keen to take uh a dose of travel trip or go and see one of those countries that they don't have a connection to aside from a desire to experience, how do you welcome them into the community?

SPEAKER_03: 33:07

We welcome everyone. Actually, I never started started off to like only cuter to South Asians. It just kind of happened, and that was like the only thing that really worked and just really created a niche. But we welcome everyone. We've had people of all ethnicities and backgrounds come with us. And actually, I think there's a little bit more of a trust factor as well with me being Pakistani, and if I'm running a Pakistani trip, they would want to come with me because I know a thing or two about Pakistan, or I would like to think I know it, even though I've never lived there. But we definitely have a safe space for everyone, and I think it works really well. Um, we've never really had any issues there, but it is nice to have primarily South Asians going back to South Asia with people who are also open-minded and willing to come with us.

SPEAKER_02: 33:55

Yeah, absolutely. Well, now, in terms of new destinations, here we go. You know, we're having this conversation as we head into 2026. And again, one of the things that stood out to me as I was preparing for our conversation, checking out your website and the destinations that you're offering. Japan, clearly, everybody is traveling to Japan. It is one of the hottest global traveling markets. Um, tell us a little bit about the trips you're building and planning for for 2026.

SPEAKER_03: 34:18

Yes, we're definitely working on some new destinations and are the ones that I'm most eager and excited about are I think Uzbekistan up. I would love to do Georgia. Um, I don't really do a lot of trips in Europe, so I I'm thinking about adding one there. Turkey has been a big, big request from my community. Um, and then I'd love to add in Iraq and South Africa again. We ran those in 2024, but we didn't run them in 2025.

SPEAKER_02: 34:47

So it's so fascinating. There's a company called Mesopotamia Tours, and I've um I've had two conversations about going to Iraq, and instantly my family, as you can imagine, their reaction is like, no, not yet, not right now. And um, but uh they've held multiple trips recently. And a good colleague of mine named Shannon Stoll, who traveled to northern Iraq, uh Kurdistan, it was the most impactful trip he's ever taken his entire life. And he and I were actually looking to try and go together to do southern Iraq. And I think that some of our audience, I'm sure, even hearing you mentioning places like Uzbekistan or even Georgia for that matter. I don't think I've got a few colleagues that work in the travel startup community that are based in Georgia. And this is where like I love so much about travel and our world and culture that um as you start to unpack a destination and learn more about its history, all of a sudden it becomes not so mysterious or not so scary. And all of a sudden, people become you it's one of the things I actually always loved traveling with kids when I worked at Lonely Planet for a number of years. Both Tony and Maureen had highlighted to me, it was really sweet. Actually, Maureen specifically had highlighted that um when we were expecting our twins, she'd said, you know, having uh kids is the best time to travel because it literally a backpack can often serve as a means to prevent you from connecting with a local, whereas kids playing at the park together, you're instantly connected to the other parents and your kids are playing together. And I've always so we traveled a lot when we have kids. So one of the things I wanted to ask you is like, you know, as your travelers, I know you have a lot of young travelers based on the pictures I see on the website, but I'm sure some of those travelers are gonna start having families and they're gonna like so um have you looked at continue how I guess uh tell us a little bit about uh the demographics of your audience, you know, how many people are you know in their 20s and 30s versus their 50s or 60s, the types of people you're appealing to and and how you're trying to expand that.

SPEAKER_03: 36:30

Yeah, so currently we only really cater to people 20 to 45, I would say, and that's probably because of my online presence and my travel style, which I think is really important, and that's where people build their trust. And uh once it comes to community, people want to be with people in like their same stage of life. Um, one thing that we are looking to do is increase our age gap and cater to potentially their parents or my parents, which is something I'm really passionate about. I see that they don't travel and they also have the same reasons for not traveling. I don't have anyone to go with. I now have the freedom because you're all grown up and I would like to go. So we are looking, we just launched a trip to Morocco that's 45-year-old plus. Um but given that I primarily market on social media, I think I would need to get a different marketing strategy for this audience and cultivate it a little bit longer because I've been cultivating the current audience for years now. So it would take some time for me to successfully execute on that. But we don't plan on going younger anytime soon. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 37:38

No, it's really interesting. I appreciate you recognizing that or just kind of sharing that because the um when you look at brands, you know, like a G Adventures that started introducing comfort trips, the whole idea with introducing comfort was to start to appeal to those people that saw adventure as being too rugged, like too adventurous, and the standard of accommodation was not going to be up to their standard. As soon as you start talking about comfort, wait a second, it's now you've got my attention. I like this style of travel, but I want to stay in nicer hotels and I want to have uh much more luxurious transportation, those kind of things. And um, they have this G Lux collection now, and Intrepid is also offering uh much higher-end trips. And Explore, which is kind of the third in the whole there's Exodus and Explore, interestingly enough for our listeners, that are kind of round out the top four of global adventure companies that have been around for many years. And Explore worldwide, just in the last year, has launched a whole series of uh more luxury product targeting to an older customer because the one big trend, and I do speak about this a bit, is this you know generational wealth transfer that's happening with you know the baby boober generation retiring and uh traveling as much as possible while they still can before their kids ends up being their inheritance. So there's all of a sudden this, you know, this I think the estimates are like$84 trillion is going to be transferred like in the next uh 15 to 20 years. But before that happens, they're traveling as much as possible. So I definitely think that is a an exciting market for you to tap into. And even just people referring other people to say, wait a second, did you hear that a dose of travel now actually offers trips for 45 plus to your exact point about people do want to travel with like-minded people, but there's also a beauty of uh all-age trips where uh with this style of travel, it's more of a psychographic than a demographic. And I can say that now from myself as I'm in my late 40s. I don't think myself much different than my late 20s. I've got a lot more experience, but I still I still find myself the same type of traveler. And so uh I still feel a kinship with people traveling of all ages. But um the one other thing, Nabil, I really wanted to ask you and um is when you're putting product together, because you mentioned maybe you're considering Europe. So when it comes to introducing not only new destinations, but uh looking at expanding your trip collection, what is it about a dose of travel when you're putting the product together? What are some of the the flourishes or some of the things that you do differently that make that experience more meaningful or impactful? Is it the destinations within the destination? Is it some of the hidden gems you're taking people to? What are some of the the nuances of your trip that when someone's comparing a dose of travel to something else that looks very similar and they're like, oh, this is an eight-day trip for this price with this company, and then they look at a dose of travel. What are they gonna get from a dose of travel? What are your I always think about USP's unique selling propositions, what are the things that a dose of travel does differently that is gonna really wow those customers and keep them coming back?

SPEAKER_03: 40:31

Yeah, it's a great question. That is something that we're always trying to stay on top of. I would say it's a couple of things. We definitely try to pack in value and get great accommodations for like the best price without um selling them for too, too high, which is like the biggest struggle. But the other thing is the cultural component because we're so culturally focused as a company and um community is another factor as well. We definitely have a lot of community-building activities in the trips, whether it's like a wellness experience, a cooking class, definitely having things where it's very interactive. Um, not only do we just run regular trips where it's women only or co-ed, we do singles trips as well. And so getting people together and having those deep conversations um is kind of a focus for us. And that's why we do these multi-day tours, because there's you can build connect you can't really build connection in one day the same way you can in like eight days in a foreign country with people you don't know. The other aspect is we always include a cultural activity, whether it's visiting a local village or trying something that's locally made or supporting locals in general, and then we always always have a local team running the trips, and that's something that we really stand by. Um, and then the other perk is having my travel recommendations. So as a creator and as someone who has traveled a lot, I always like to sprinkle like this is like my favorite place that I've been to, or like you saw this on social media, or this was featured in this publication because I'm obviously very tapped into social media and publications with my previous career.

SPEAKER_02: 42:10

Well, just on that, actually, that's um a really great point, which is the social channels that you're active on. I've had a look at your Instagram account and like so I I you know for you've posted some amazing pictures, and I think that's certainly in ever since Instagram. It's so fascinating, like the whole dot-com era, the mobile era, Instagram, like the whole social push, and now AI. I have to ask you about it about AI, because we have our big AI conference, depending on when people are listening to this. Either you should register or you should go and watch the videos after the event um for how AI is transforming travel. Um, but tell everyone a little bit about your social media marketing, like the the prowess that you've developed there. Like what channel did you start on? What channels are you most active on? Where are you seeing the most success? And how do you manage all of that content creation?

SPEAKER_03: 42:55

Yes. So Instagram is definitely our biggest platform and something that I'm really proud of. Given that I have my personal brand, then I also have the Dosa Travel Club. So that has grown to be a pretty decent audience, and that's where we were able to get most of our clients. And then we did hop on TikTok a little late. I wish we started a little bit sooner than I would have, but it was 2021. So I have grown my platform on there, and then I'm on everything LinkedIn, threads, my website, and YouTube. But those are all pretty, pretty minimal, as you can imagine, there's a lot to handle.

SPEAKER_02: 43:30

For sure. And then so here's a real direct question I wanted to ask you that I know a lot of our listeners, and I'm always trying to channel our listeners and thinking about the questions because I have the privilege to speak to you as well as many of our captains of industry, and you certainly fit that uh uh extremely well because you're kind of like a future captain of industry as far as I'm concerned, because based on where you are, it's so difficult to get to where you are. And this is the one thing I'll say to you. Obviously, you need to manage your business well. But one of the things I can say from experience, having worked across many uh multi-day tour brands, is that it's it's very difficult to get to your first million in sales, and then you've got to get to, you know, 10 million in sales. And after that, like there is a um kind of a flywheel effect, and it's almost like a snowball effect where, you know, it's much easier to grow the business once you get to a certain size and scale. So we would often look at businesses that were doing, you know, around 10,000 passengers a year was kind of like when a business could be really profitable, and then you could really scale, and then you can do more interesting things with uh businesses of that size, you know, hedging currency and foreign exchange and things that the way the whole business operates to really drive substantial profits. And this is exactly why you're seeing private equity firms buying up travel companies. Not only is this a massive growth category, and most of the private equity firms, they're looking for a 20% uh compound interest return, which means that in five years, they're gonna have more than doubled their money. And so I'm sure they're gonna come looking for you, Nabila, in very uh short, but you need to hang on as long as possible, build as much value, and maybe even just decide, you know what, this is a lifestyle business as well as a successful, profitable business. Um, but what I wanted to ask you about the social channels is many of uh people that I speak to, they're struggling to figure out their social media strategy. They may have one channel they're strong on. And some of the feedback I often give, and you may say something contrary to this, but um, is rather than spread yourself too thin and trying to do too many things, you really need to solve for each channel and be really successful at you rather than being on five channels with limited success, my recommendation is obviously pick one or two and really own it and really have great content. What would be your advice to other people, whether other travel brands or other uh entrepreneurs starting up using social media to grow their business?

SPEAKER_03: 45:43

Yeah. Well, first of all, I'm really honored that you think that Joseph Travel Club has so much potential in that even happening. But to answer that question, I tend to agree with you in terms of like building on one platform and really establishing yourself there. But with AI, which I know you briefly mentioned, I think it's really easy now to repurpose and cut up everything that you're already creating and then easily schedule that out where it wouldn't require any more time than you're using to create. So create for one platform, but then repurpose with the use of AI, and that will just help cover those bases and you'll see where it takes off. But with social media, each each platform operates so differently. The algorithm is constantly changing, so it is really hard to stay on top of them. But if you could just repurpose it, I don't think we see the harm in trying that. And I feel like that's kind of what we do. It's like it's better to put something out there than nothing. And if you can just repurpose it, cut it up without leaving time or energy, might as well.

SPEAKER_02: 46:45

Yeah, and one of the inspirations that I have certainly drawn from Mr. Beast, which uh many people are know who Mr. Beast and uh, you know, he started on YouTube, and uh you know, he's got such a big global profile now. But then I've highlighted in presentations, there's no Mr. Beast of travel. I mean, the only travel influencer that we had that was so, you know, we had Anthony Bourdain, you know, writing books and creating TV shows, and I'm still a huge fan of Anthony Bourdain from uh, you know, now another era. But um, Mr. Beast, one of the things that he certainly does is that he tries to solve for each channel. This is what I'm going to do for YouTube. And then when he goes into a new channel like TikTok, he tries to figure out the algorithm, the right formula for content creation. And this is like a lot of companies just don't have that time and energy or resources to do that. But what you mentioned is really important, which is coming up with the right content strategy and then producing content for one channel that you can repurpose. So, any hot tips for our listeners on technology they can use? Is there any specific platforms you use to manage all that social media activity?

SPEAKER_03: 47:40

I mean, I really just use Chat GBT. And one tip that I've really learned is it's pretty easy to come up with that formula and ChatGBT will know it. So if you need something to go viral, not that virality equals sales or conversions or anything like that. But if you're looking for brand awareness, you can really just pump everything into Chat GBT. Or I also really like to use successful videos and translate them or transcribe them and then copy and paste that into Chat GBT and be like, okay, this went viral. Why did it go viral? Do it for me now. And that's really it. I think yeah, it's like simple things like that. But one thing I did learn, which I think is really important, virality does not mean anything. It does take some of the slow, poor performing videos to really build trust. So it's okay if they don't perform really well, keep doing those ones for your loyal fans and then do the viral ones for brand awareness.

SPEAKER_02: 48:33

Oh, that's a great tip. I think a lot of people just wrote that down. And so um, and this is where you know it takes someone with a certain amount of, well, intellectual curiosity for sure, and that willingness. But what you just highlighted about finding emulating success and finding why did something else go viral, and then trying to unpack that and figure out what you can do. Um, we've done a few like top 50 people in AI or top 20 AI startups, and it's amazing just how much reach those get because obviously everyone has a vested interest in being then uh highlighting their inclusion in those lists. We'll be right back.

SPEAKER_00: 49:10

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SPEAKER_02: 51:26

The other thing I wanted to ask you, uh, since we've now uh stumbled back into the topic of AI, is how you're you are looking at that technology. So clearly, ChatGPT, I'm assuming you have a paid account, you must probably have created a custom GPT with your own brand voice. There's so much um like there's so many use cases of that platform. I use it extensively every day, and I keep coming up against things and I realize, wait a second, and then I use Chat GPT for it. And I'm just like, like, you know, I'll give you an exact example to our listeners is like you can download your contact list from LinkedIn, and um one of the things you can then, which LinkedIn prevents you from doing, uh, or they try to limit your access to it. Um, it takes 24 hours for them to provide it to you. Um, when it eventually sends it over in a CSV file, uh, one of the options is to be able to have all of your connections. And I wanted to email people that were so I actually I refined the list, I downloaded my connections, refined my list because I wanted to reach out to a few people and I realized that they didn't have their email address. Well, ChatGPT can do email enrichment, and I will give you three options that they think is the most likely email address for them. And I was like, oh my God, why have I not done done this before? And like, you know, building a CRM system, like so there's there's so many exciting uh hacks now to help kind of grow a business. So when you think about AI, clearly there's a great marketing benefit. Uh the two big use cases from generative AI have been customer service and marketing. But where else are you utilizing AI or looking to embrace AI in the next year to help you grow your uh successful startup?

SPEAKER_03: 52:57

Yeah, I use it for everything like yourself. I'm gonna try that chip that you just suggested. That's a good one. Um, I use it a lot for operations and admin. So being able to come up with like SOPs or, for example, email sequences. I don't love email sequences, but ChatGBT will help you come up with it and frame it for you. So I use it more so for operations and less so for I think marketing ideas, generating marketing ideas are great, but then the actual execution of it um really requires like your personal strategy and your personal story, but operations and admin in terms of setting up SOPs, training people, um, negotiation tactics, for example, with like you know, vendors and things like that, sourcing events, or thing like hotels and just tips and recommendations. Um I always give a good first pass or a sweep on chat GBT. It's like the bare bones of things, but then it does require some, you know, manipulation and your own your own skill and thought as well.

SPEAKER_02: 54:03

Yeah, for sure. Now I've got a few last questions for you, and I also want to do um some rapid fire questions as well. But I would love I I'm keen to talk about where you see the the uh the dose of travel in the next whatever three to five years. I know it's hard to look too far forward, especially with so many geopolitical events or um technology disruption. And um, but in terms of where you see the business 2026 towards 2030, what what are your ambitions for the dose of travel? How do you see the business growing and evolving?

SPEAKER_03: 54:36

Yeah, I see Dose of Travel Club as a go-to platform for South Asians um when it comes to community-led, culturally immersive travel. Um we also do a lot of events, so we really are just like a full-on club where we're promoting and focusing on belonging. So we do events all over the US and get people together outside of their comfort zone and out there being curious. So I would love for it to be a stovo house to meets tour operator, like a membership um membership, because we have so many people who are interested. And at some point, we'd like to be able to really keep that tight-knit community as we scale, which is like the one bread that I have. Galink um might have us loosened that touch. So building out a membership is kind of where I see it.

SPEAKER_02: 55:24

Well, it's interesting you mentioned Soho. So it was my next question for you is if you can collabor collaborate with other any other brand or organization in the travel space. And I asked this question because you know, working at G Adventures, we worked with Discovery Channel and then ultimately National Geographic, and that's been an incredibly successful partnership for G Adventures and National Geographic. And so so much of this travel space is about collaboration. And clearly brands were collaborating with you before you started having your own uh business and your own trip. So uh if you could collaborate with any other brand organization, what uh who who might they be?

SPEAKER_03: 55:56

Oh my god, that's a great question. Definitely so Alex would be up there. I would love to work with Emirate. Um, I am a big fan of Emirates, um, Marriott, Bonvoy, and a lot of hotels that I am just a frequent personal visitor of. Um, I would love to work with Tourism Board, Saudi Arabia specifically, and Oman are definitely up there. Um, there's so many. The list literally could go on.

SPEAKER_02: 56:23

And then the other thing, when you look at your business today and how you've operated the last few years, what would be one of the impact stories? And that this is what motivates me uh pretty much every day in what I'm doing. I was just like, I love to see the result of my work, especially in a way that I'm almost a um a passenger or an observer. Like when I when I would do a marketing campaign, if I saw someone responding or interacting to it, or something you've been involved in that you've created having an impact in the world, that for me is always like the most satisfying thing. When you get feedback from customers that have been on your trips, or um, what has been one of the biggest highlights for you that's really inspired you to keep going and keep pursuing this? Because I'm you know, there's obviously been a lot of hard days as well. I mean, it's a great success story, but you're only gotten there by virtue of overcoming a lot of challenges. So, what would be something you'd point to that an experience or a feedback someone shared with you that was like, this is validation and this is motivation for me to keep going forward?

SPEAKER_03: 57:17

Yeah, oh, there's so many of those moments, and those are really the only reason I keep going. I think I'll probably just pick the most recent one that's coming into my head. But as I mentioned, I did host that 50-person trip to Thailand, and 50 people is kind of a lot. Um, you don't really know if you'll be able to cultivate connections and really get to know a lot of people on a such a big group trip. But 25 of them just did a reunion trip last week to London and met up from all over the world to go hang out, and I think that was really beautiful. Not only did they have an amazing time on that trip where I saw them go from strangers to friends, but it turned into a friendship that is still going on, which usually you kind of forget about the group chat after the trip's over. You think it's when you stay alive and everyone's like, Yeah, let's stay in touch, Lane. Stay in touch. But most of my travelers from my trips do actually stay in touch, and I think that's really heartwarming and speaks to the emphasis on community that we we put on the trips.

SPEAKER_02: 58:17

Yeah, no, it's amazing to me how many people I still keep in touch with that I've met over years traveling. My wife and I did like a three-month European trip on our for our honeymoon, actually, and we met a couple in Rome that um it's funny. I met um, we met them each separately. We were staying at a hostel in Switzerland and we met this lady named Brooke, and then we were in Rome, and we ended up her boyfriend came over to meet her. They subsequently became married, and so we saw them, we went out for dinner with them, and then we ran into them in Chinkatera, and like, hey we happenstance, we ran into them a few times. We kept in touch, we went to go visit them in in Portland. We kept in touch all these years, but like it's amazing when you connect with, and it's very much that like-minded people. You were traveling for a reason, and you come you're you know, you're going through this transformative experience yourself, and you make those you know more deeper connections with people that you realize, hey, these are people I just actually like having conversations with or can really enjoy a meal with or a glass of wine, and like and then you keep those relationships up 20, 25 years later. It's incredible. So I think I think the magic of what you do is uh, and uh you know, there's there is huge potential. So going back to the what I shared with you, I'm very much a firm believer in everything I see from your business today, how much growth potential there is. And I'm yeah, I'm genuinely excited for you, and I will be you know a champion and very keen to see your success. And I'm sure many people will reach out after they hear this podcast to either travel with you or partner with you. And potentially, if you're interested in growing into the trade community, there's probably quite a few travel advisors that would be interested in in selling a dose of travel. So uh that's one of the questions I had for you on your expansion plans and distribution. Is that a consideration for you to be able to sell through uh third parties that would be interested in in promoting and selling a dose of travel?

SPEAKER_03: 1:00:00

Yeah, I mean, I'm going to be honest. I haven't actually thought about that. So you just raised a really interesting question. I mean, I'd love to hear from you if you have experience on that. I don't see why not. That would be pretty cool.

SPEAKER_02: 1:00:12

Yeah, I mean, it's it's well, it's just interesting. I mean, obviously, I just want you to be able to realize that opportunity. So, you know, Wii Road is a great example of a company that's grown direct-to-consumer and community, but now they're having great success expanding into the trade community. And the trade is having great success still connecting with customers. And they, you know, we look at Intrepid as a terrific example. The more uh direct-to-consumer marketing they do, the more their trade activity grows because people have heard about the brand and then they go to their travel advisor or their travel agent who they're familiar booking with. So there's this is where like I find it so fascinating when we we live in this age of AI and technology. The reality is, and that everyone is you know freaking out that um here we go again, maybe travel advisors are going to be made obsolete. And they're they're flourishing. And one of the reasons they're flourishing is because pre-pandemic it was like an average of 18 websites people would visit before booking. And now some of the research indicates it's more like 31. And people are just getting frustrated. The complexity's gone up despite the technology improving. And so it's actually driving people to seek out other people. They will literally use AI. This is another thing, and again, this is all you know, really sort of emergent, emerging research because um we work with a company called Propelic, and they just did this major research project um with um uh both Focus Right and Arrival to study how AI is impacting the entire consumer journey. But ultimately, one of the things that stands out is that, well, one thing is SEO brands that rely on that are starting to struggle because they're losing a lot of that traffic now that you have AI overviews. But the interesting thing about it is that people arrive to a brand ready to book. And this is one of the big questions. They arrive direct to a business to book as well. So there's another question about OTAs and all of this because they're the intermediary that people otherwise did a Google search. They hit, well, you know, they'd find a booking.com listing and they would book their hotel. Now all of a sudden, people are doing their research and they're going direct to that hotel or direct to that provider. So another thing that's exciting for you is that people will find a dose of travel and they will come directly to you to book, but they will also then reach out to their travel agents and say, I'm ready to book with this company called a dose of travel. Do you sell it? There's lots of um opportunities for you, and again, I'm really excited. I want to finish with a few rapid fire questions for you, Nabila. So if you were not uh I always ask people if you were not gonna do what you're gonna do, what would you be? And literally you've already done that. You're like, you were gonna be a pharmacist and now you've become you know a travel industry leader. Um if you weren't either of those two things, what would you be? What else would you do right now? Like if there was a third gener if there was a third um career in your life, what might that be?

SPEAKER_03: 1:02:45

Oh that's that's a hard question. Maybe a DJ. Super random.

SPEAKER_04: 1:02:56

I love music. That sounds pretty awesome. And I love traveling for different music, and I love music from all over the world.

SPEAKER_02: 1:03:03

So my daughter's at university, she's obsessed with like she's just discovered electronic music and she wants to go to Ibiza. And I was just like, oh my god, I can't believe this is happening. And um John John Summit is literally her like a favorite musician. She went to a John Summit festival and was like got on the screen, and um just she was sharing it on social media, but yeah, so like it's interesting you say that because like that whole um that whole market, like festivals and like um it's obviously having a major um resurgence, and uh and people are traveling for those things.

SPEAKER_04: 1:03:32

But um the other thing obviously Yeah, it brings people together, totally, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 1:03:36

And and not like travel, yeah. And nothing is more powerful to the human mind than music. That's something that I learned at the Forbes travel guide conference last year, an amazing presentation about the impact of music on the human mind. And you know, you have it's very similar because you have a shared experience, much the way you do when you're traveling, you're having a shared experience with enjoying music with other people that are clearly enjoying the same music, which is why you feel such a strong kinship. So it's it's fascinating. This is where like you know, evolutionary biology and and marketing go hand in hand and um understanding consumer behavior. So you did mention though, I want to do these rapid fire questions, but I'm so enjoying this conversation, Abel, and would love to have you back next year and uh to see how your business has grown as we go into season seven and season eight and 2026. Um, but you said you mentioned you travel extensively. So a few rapid fire questions on that topic, which is um when you do travel, what is one item that you wouldn't leave home without?

SPEAKER_04: 1:04:29

My noise canceling headphone. Yeah, they are a game changer on the special on the slight to volley. That was a rough one.

SPEAKER_02: 1:04:40

No doubt. So then presumably you have an iPhone with you. So what would be one of the either apps or tools that you take with you that you would, you know, that really helps you with your travel?

SPEAKER_03: 1:04:50

Helps me.

SPEAKER_04: 1:04:50

Oh gosh, I feel like it may or may not help me, but I guess you're talking to a content creator, so Instagram, definitely my lifeline and literally my business and my livelihood.

SPEAKER_02: 1:05:01

And then if there was one other place in the world you could live for a year, uh, where might that be?

SPEAKER_03: 1:05:07

Beirut, Lebanon, hands down. I love that city, yes, so much. I'm trying to go back. It's perfect. The food, the people, the hospitality, the Mediterranean Sea, the architecture, everything.

SPEAKER_02: 1:05:22

That's amazing. I have not been, and uh I do have some friends from Lebanon, and it's like, but yeah, that's that's fascinating you say that, especially given the state of the world and the Middle East at the moment. And um, but that highlights, you know, as things stabilize like the opportunity to be able to travel to places like that. Um so yeah, you're that's that's a first. And then um your next personal travel destination, not your next business destination. Where is where do you want to go next?

SPEAKER_03: 1:05:47

Oh, I've learned the line so much that I don't even oh, New Zealand. I want to go to New Zealand. I've been wanting to do a road trip um there. I feel like it's been a solid month there. Yeah, you've not been? You've not been to New Zealand?

SPEAKER_04: 1:06:02

No, I haven't yet.

SPEAKER_02: 1:06:04

That's where this is probably oversharing, but like that's where we conceived our twins and uh now they're off to university. So it's something in the water. New Zealand is a special place. We we did the camper van trip around New Zealand for a month, and um we did a few weeks in the South Island and like a week and a half in the North Island, which apparently is the best way to do it. So they're both islands are great, but the South Island is much more dramatic scenery. And we did the whole camper van thing, so there was something in the water, but we were uh uh we were hiking, so we were I'm gonna share this because this is um uh I've already opened the the topic up, but this is uh with all of our listeners who know that I have twins, and if they've you know, have twins will travel has been our our motto ever since they arrived. But uh when we were traveling from New Zealand, I was working at Lonely Planet at the time, we came back to Canada for visit at Christmas with the intention of living in Australia long term. And so my friends know the story, and we may as well share it with our listeners now since we've opened it up, is that um we um were when we were traveling around New Zealand, we were doing all the cool adventure stuff, bungee jumping, speed boats, and everything that we are absorbing and like um uh and every time we were signing these waivers to be like, yes, I'm like in healthy and I'm in good shape, otherwise, no art conditions. Uh my wife was always signing I'm not pregnant. And we had no idea that she actually was pregnant while we were doing all these activities. So we've always referred to them as the bungee twins because we figure the egg must have split on the bungee. And uh that's too good. Um, but but yeah, they've been adventurous, so that's my continued inspiration. But um, but Nabila, that's enough about me. I've I want to finish off with um tell everyone a little bit more about how they can find out about you, learn more about a dose of travel, and stay connected and to work with or collaborate with you in the future.

SPEAKER_03: 1:07:46

Yeah, absolutely. Um you can obviously find us on our website, www.dose of travelclub.com and then on social medias, it's the same Dose of Travel Club on both Instagram and TikTok. Or if you want to follow me, it's just Brenda Beela Ismail on Instagram.

SPEAKER_02: 1:08:02

Amazing. You are a real inspiration. I cannot thank you enough for making the time for this, especially as it's been late night for you in Bali. So despite the jet lag and everything else, you uh you've got you know lots of energy and enthusiasm, and clearly you love what you do, and people are very much attracted to everything you have uh to offer with the trips that you've created. And um, yeah, I couldn't be more excited for you. So thank you for making the time for travel trends, and I look forward to keeping in touch. And I definitely encourage all of our listeners to check out uh ados of travel.co and reach out to Nabila on uh LinkedIn or Instagram. But thank you again, Nabila. Really appreciate joining us.

SPEAKER_03: 1:08:38

Thank you for having me. I love talking to someone else who's just as enthusiastic about Pavel as I am.

SPEAKER_01: 1:08:42

Thanks so much for joining us on the latest episode of Travel Trends. I hope you enjoyed episode one of our deep dive into the world of emerging tour operators with Nabila Ismael, the founder and CEO of A Dose of Travel Club. I found her story incredibly inspiring. I'm sure many of you did as well. So be sure to check her out on social channels or their website to find out more information. And I just want to say thanks again to Alex Reagan and the team at TorSteta.com for sponsoring this series, which continues next week with Lisa Pagat from Crooked Compass. I really look forward to bringing that conversation to you. And then Will Cannes from Active England Adventures. Now, don't forget we post clips and highlights on all our social channels, so be sure to check out Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And finally, if you're listening to this just before AI Summit, make sure to join us next week at Traveltrendspodcast.com to register. And if you're listening to this afterwards, don't worry, you'll be able to find all the highlights on our YouTube channel. Thanks again for joining us. Until next week, safe travels.