Stephen Ekstrom: Learning, Storytelling and Better Tourism Experiences

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

This week on Tourism Matters, I sit down with Stephen Ekstrom, CEO, co-founder and self-described nerd whisperer at Learn Tourism.

Learn Tourism is a non-profit academy creating smart, immersive learning and promotional experiences for tourism professionals, destination marketers, trade associations and communities around the world.

This conversation takes a slightly different path from the usual Tourism Matters format. It is open, thoughtful and wide-ranging, touching on sustainable tourism, economic viability, storytelling, workforce development, career pathways, AI, frontline teams and the role of human connection in great visitor experiences.

Stephen and I explore what sustainability really means in tourism, not just environmentally, but socially, culturally and economically. We also talk about why tourism businesses need to be commercially sound, why learning should sit at the heart of strong tourism teams, and why storytelling can completely change the way visitors experience a place.

We also get into one of my favourite topics: tourism careers. Why do so many people fall into this industry rather than intentionally choose it? Why do we lose talented people? And how can we help people see the skills, pathways and possibilities available in tourism?

WHAT YOU’LL TAKE AWAY FROM THIS EPISODE

• Why sustainable tourism must include people, place and profitability
• Why economic viability matters for tourism operators
• How learning and professional development can strengthen tourism teams
• Why tourism careers often have a visibility and perception problem
• How transferable skills shape tourism career pathways
• What AI can and cannot replace in tourism
• Why human connection is still central to great visitor experiences
• How storytelling helps visitors feel more connected to a place
• Why frontline teams need appreciation, empowerment and licence to create memorable moments
• Stephen’s career journey and the creation of Learn Tourism

ABOUT STEPHEN

Stephen Ekstrom is the CEO and co-founder of Learn Tourism, a non-profit academy supporting tourism professionals, destination marketers, trade associations and communities through immersive learning experiences.

Stephen has worked across sales, product development, consulting, attractions, experiences and destination development. His work has taken him into communities and destinations across North America and beyond, helping tourism organisations think differently about learning, visitor experience, economic development and sustainable tourism.

CONNECTING WITH STEPHEN

Learn Tourism: https://learntourism.org
Stephen Ekstrom on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenekstrom/

CONNECT WITH CARMEN

Website: https://www.carmenbold.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carmenbold/

EPISODE CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction and setting the scene
01:37 Sustainable tourism and community engagement
02:15 Economic viability in tourism
05:10 Learning and growth in the tourism industry
08:03 Personal journeys in tourism
13:47 The importance of authenticity and connection
19:19 Career pathways in tourism
22:42 The role of AI in tourism
25:19 Storytelling in tourism
28:16 Engaging frontline staff in storytelling
32:22 Appreciation, empowerment and guest experience
36:58 Personal stories of kindness and hospitality
38:48 Career highlights and the birth of Learn Tourism

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:05

Welcome friends to the Tourism Matters Podcast, where I, Carmen Bold, explore the people, careers, and businesses shaping the tourism industry today. This week, I take a little deviation from my regular formatting and I sat down for a very open, candid conversation, with no real structure actually, with Mr. Stephen Ekstrom, the CEO, co-founder, and nerd whisperer at Learn Tourism. Learn Tourism is a non-profit academy which powers smart, immersive learning and promotional experiences for tourism professionals, destination marketers, and trade associations worldwide. I think from memory he said 75,000 students have been through his program, so that is amazing. Stephen's based in the US and uh interestingly, he travels full-time in his very luxurious-looking bus, which is very close to my heart and wildly exciting to me because some of you may know that I too once upon a time spent a couple of years living in a bus in New Zealand with my young family. So in this conversation, we kind of roof a little bit on what the industry looks like in both of our very unique destinations. So obviously, I have the Australia, New Zealand, South Pacific lens on things, and then um Stephen's very much um grounded in North America. It was a wildly interesting conversation for me, and I'm so glad that uh Stephen reached out to me. So please enjoy the conversation, and I'll see you at the end to give my two bobs and my key takeaways.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Good morning. Good evening. It's uh it's 6 a.m. here in the New Mexico Desert.

SPEAKER_03 1:43

New Mexico. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

It's beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 1:47

I'm waiting for the sun to come up. There's a 270-degree view of the horizon.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

Wow. Oh, wow. Um great, good to see you.

SPEAKER_02 1:58

Good to see you as well, and thank you for having me on the podcast.

SPEAKER_03 2:01

No worries. Thank you for having me on yours. This is gonna be such a wacky conversation. I can feel it.

SPEAKER_02 2:10

It's we're already off to a good start. So I'll introduce myself. Please do. I'm Steve Extram, CEO and co-founder of the nonprofit LearnTourism, LearnTourism.org, where we now have over 75,000 students all around the world learning how to build their communities through tourism.

SPEAKER_01 2:33

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 2:35

Can you I probably should introduce myself, but I have a question. So when 75,000 students, who are your students?

SPEAKER_02 2:44

Our students are generally community members, business partners, frontline workers, uh who have a vested interest in building sustainable tourism economies in their communities. So it could be somebody who wants to be a tourism ambassador in Washington State, or it could be uh the residents of a small village in Nepal that's working on an economic development plan. Yes, there are people who are executives at destinations who are also students, but really we work with them to educate and enlighten their communities.

SPEAKER_03 3:19

Community, okay. And when you say sustainable tourism, do you mean sustainable in the in the way that we sort of think as in green tourism or sustainable as in multifaceted, sustainable economically, sustainable for the community, et cetera?

SPEAKER_02 3:34

Yeah, so sustainability really does cover all three things, right? People, are we preserving culture? Place, are we preserving community and are preserved the physical attributes of the area to which we're bringing the visitors environmentally and profitability? Are we are we giving them tools to make a long-term economic benefit for their community, or is this just gonna be a quick turn and burn? So we do focus on all three areas.

SPEAKER_03 4:11

I want to come back. Sorry, I'm just hijacking all the questions here, but um well now actually I'm just gonna riff on this. Economically, now I have a um what might be a controversial standpoint on this for the Australian and New Zealand tourism industry, in that I don't think the economics of running a business in the tourism industry is taught, I suppose, for lack of a better word, to our industry operators anywhere near or taken as seriously as it should be, or that we we spend a lot of time, you know, running training sessions on, you know, yeah, how to be a sustainable business, how to be an inclusive and accessible business, you know, that which are all really important things. But I can't remember the last time I saw, you know, like a an RTO run a training workshop on how to be an economically viable business or how to increase your ROI or how to tweak your visitor experience or use your team to not leave money on the table when you have um guests in-house. Um, so how is that approached on your side of the world, Stephen? Is this a conversation that's had for operators in particular?

SPEAKER_02 5:25

It's very similar. So I'm actually speaking next week uh to the American Indigenous Tourism Association about welcoming global markets, and we are talking about those things. We are talking about, you know, what are the soft skills that are related to running a business, any type of business? You know, are you managing your revenue? Are you managing your expenses? Are you capitalizing on all of your opportunities? Are you getting repeat visitors? Are you managing your marketing spend so that it's a lower per cap?

SPEAKER_01 5:58

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_02 6:00

Uh so those are soft skills that go into any sort of business. And yes, you're right. A lot of RTOs or DMOs, as we might say here in the States, uh overlook those in favor of whatever the flashy thing is today. You know, are you using AI? Are you, you know, uh are you capitalizing on trade show participation or whatever that thing might be?

SPEAKER_01 6:26

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:28

If you aren't running a sound business, then it's just a hobby.

SPEAKER_03 6:34

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I've I've yeah, had this discussion many times over the years um with colleagues of mine. Um, you know, I think it's like 95% or something of tourism businesses in Australia are like micro businesses with less than 20 employees. And um, you know, for a lot of them, they're one bad season away from no longer being in existence. A lot of those businesses.

SPEAKER_02 7:02

You know, there was a a weeding or a calling of the herd in many ways um in the tourist space. And two things really rose to the top during COVID.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

Number one were those organizations that could be responsive to the to their economic and community need and those who were innovative.

SPEAKER_02 7:33

And what we have is a lot of the what we had, I should say, were a lot of businesses that were running hand to mouth. You know, a cash business. And that's not sustainable in uncertain times.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:50

And those were the companies that really struggled. Those are the companies that had business models that were 20 or 30 years old and and had never learned to evolve. And it's one of the things that I like about where we work, you know, learn tourism, we are a learning organization, first and foremost. Everybody on our staff walks into a team meeting ready to talk about what they learned last week and how they can apply it. We learn from each other, we learn independently, we learn from third-party sources. Uh and the the goal is to be better today than we were yesterday.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

How's that going? Pretty good. Killing it. Pretty good so far.

SPEAKER_04 8:36

That's a fantastic goal.

SPEAKER_02 8:39

It is, you know, and I I I tell my team, regardless of what your job function is, if you're in operations, if you're in instructional design, if you're in the technology space, if you're in the sales or business development space, there are two metrics that your job is measured on. You know, one is the quantifiable did you produce what it was that you were supposed to produce? Whatever the numbers are, whatever the feedback is, whatever whatever that thing is, right? That's one of the core components. The second piece is is are you learning? And I tell my team, you can miss one or the other.

SPEAKER_01 9:19

But if you're missing both, yeah, it's not gonna work out. Yeah. I love that.

SPEAKER_03 9:27

I love the the learning component, and I think um it's an undervalued. I'm picturing in my mind, which I think is outdated now, the um hierarchy of needs. Um, Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I feel like it might that might not be up to date anymore. But um, you know, like when it comes to, you know, m motivating your staff and keeping them engaged and um keeping them, you know, wanting to come back to work the next day, um that that learning and I guess for for a more professional term, the professional development side of things, you know, and and keeping keeping you engaged. And I think um our tourism operators, um, many of them could do a better job of that with their own workforces as well, keeping them learning, keeping them engaged, reminding them, you know, that they're part of a bigger mission.

SPEAKER_04 10:18

Yeah. How did you get your start in tourism? Um, I wanted to be a flight attendant.

SPEAKER_03 10:26

And um, well, actually, I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I decided over the summer when I finished high school that I wanted to be a flight attendant. And um, I actually picked up the phone. So back in the day, this was in 1999, you could do what at the time was a very expensive flight attendant course, which was maybe three or five thousand dollars or something, and it went for six weeks, but it sounded like an awful lot of money to me then. And um, you know, you come out with some sort of you know, flight attendant qualification. And so I picked up a phone and I called Qantas, the Australian Airline, um, because you could do that. And I called their HR department, and um, I spoke to somebody there about should I do this course or not? It's a lot of money for me. I I'll have to save it up. Should I do it? And um, the lovely lady was very frank with me and said, do not spend your money and your time doing this flight attendant course. Um, we will train you. We have a dedicated flight attendant academy. Um, so if you are lucky enough to land a job with us, we don't care that you've already had training. You are better placed to go and work in retail or in customer service or in hospitality. And if you want to do some study while you're doing that, then maybe go study tourism or hospitality or something. So, and then wait for a recruitment round to come up. So that's what I did. And I went and I did an advanced diploma in tourism. And by the time I'd finished, I was madly in love and I didn't want to be a flight attendant anymore. I used my network that I had um, you know, created during my studying years, two years, and um I went and got myself a job in um reservations for uh a ferry company that runs the ferry to Kangaroo Island off the coast of South Australia here. So yeah, I started in reservations and then that job ended up taking me to New Zealand and I worked in product development and opened an office for them over there, and then I was in New Zealand and I worked at Aja Hackett Bungie because that's an iconic, you know, New Zealand um yeah, probably the most iconic New Zealand export, tourism export. Um so yeah, I spent seven years managing bungee sites in Australia and New Zealand and um Japan. And um yeah, just dotted around the place really and worked in product development over the years and tour operations and I've been a tour guide. And yeah, as so many people in the tourism and hospitality and events industries have done, flitted around from one, which way is the wind blowing today? This looks like an interesting opportunity. I say yes.

SPEAKER_02 12:57

What was it about tourism that really caught your interest? What holds your interest now?

SPEAKER_03 13:03

Okay, so um, well, I want to say something romantic about why I did it, but I just didn't know what I wanted to do. And I just um I I grew up in Adelaide in South Australia, and I always just knew I wanted to get out of Adelaide. And I guess being a flight attendant, as I thought I wanted to be, or studying tourism seemed like a way that I could do that. Um and what holds a minute now. So when I had my son, um, I'll try and get this brief. Um I took four or five years off, four years off, I think, and raised my son. And um we were relocated to Tasmania here in Australia, and I was looking for some work back in the tourism industry when I decided to return to the workforce, and I couldn't find anything that sort of fit around mum life. So I ended up moving into an events role and running professional development events for the Law Society of Tasmania, and because it fit around mum life, and I'd had some experience in events previously. So I did that for three years and then I returned to the tourism industry. I found a job. Um my son was a bit older and at school, and I found a job with um Destination Southern Tasmania, which is a regional tourism organization in Tasmania. And um, I remember I walked into my first day of work and everyone got up. And I mean, everyone, there was five of us. Everyone got up and gave me a hug. And um, it happened to be my first day of work was what um sort of monthly operated networking event. And I went along and I was just so, I mean, it would have been a few years since I've been in the tourism industry. I've been used to being in the legal profession. And I was just so reminded how amazing my colleagues in the tourism industry are and how down to earth they are, and how this is really random, but I think about this often. They eat if you cater for an event in the tourism industry, you have to cater for like double the amount of people that are going to be there. Everyone's there for free food in the legal profession running professional development events, you would cater for half. No one's eating anything.

SPEAKER_02 15:03

Yes, this is true.

SPEAKER_04 15:04

I was like, you're a night show eating in front of no, no, jamming it in our pockets, taking it home.

SPEAKER_03 15:11

Um so anyway, that was kind of a long way of I just A, I love to travel. It's very important to me and my family to expose my son to the world. So there's that side of it, but I love we in the tourist industry have the opportunity to make those memories for um travelers and tourists and and visitors to our our place. And I love hospitality, like I just not hospitality as in a waitressing because I haven't done much of that in my life, but um feeling like a tourist is a a guest in your place and treating them as such. Um, I just yeah, I love everything about it.

SPEAKER_02 15:52

You know, people in the tourism space to do it well, you have to create a sense of welcome for everybody. Yeah, and you have to approach that with authenticity. Authenticity can't be it can't be fate. So when you walk into a room full of people who are kind and generous and who are interested in sharing a part of who they are with other people so that those other people have great experiences, but it's a totally different you know, vibe is this. Um I I have to say, you know, similarly, I I'm a professional tourist. So I am in my bus touring North America all the time. And I get to stop and visit some of the cities and destinations that we work with uh more closely than others, and I'm always impressed when there is a local networking event or a local, you know, business meeting of some sort. I'm like, hey, do you mind just you know, come on over? Just come on over, stop in. And it's like walking into a room full of friends.

SPEAKER_01 17:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:05

It's I've had some really wild experiences. I was in Brazil and I reached out to some tourism contacts. It happened to be the US Thanksgiving holiday weekend. And before I knew it, I was invited to the ambassador's house for Thanksgiving dinner.

SPEAKER_01 17:20

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 17:21

Or I was in Mexico for something, and uh you know, next thing you know, I was invited to uh a five-star luncheon with all of the tourism who's who in southern southern Aha. So, you know, those sort of things happen in this industry. And they I I don't see it happening so much in others.

SPEAKER_04 17:49

Yeah, yeah, sincerity is yeah, that's that's real.

SPEAKER_03 17:54

Because I mean, what is the landscape like like in the US, Stephen? Is it also predominantly like small or micro operators?

SPEAKER_02 18:02

You have some of those, but for the most part, when you're at a a destination function, uh you're gonna have probably a quarter of the small operators, probably a quarter of the medium-sized businesses, maybe the hotel companies or you know the the bus company that has several different locations or uh you know some of these attractions get millions of million visitors a year. So you know, I wouldn't call them small operations.

SPEAKER_01 18:37

Yeah.

unknown 18:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:39

And then you have the destination folks and you have the ancillary, you know, um support industry, support businesses. So it it's it's roughly a quarter of each.

SPEAKER_03 18:52

Oh, I just asked that question because for me, I mean, when I walk into a room and it's full of operators, which, as I've said, in Australia is largely owners um or members of very small teams, like those people are running the businesses that they run or working in the businesses that they work in because they're like interesting people and really down to earth and like really care about what they're doing. Um sometimes weird.

SPEAKER_04 19:21

And often weird, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:27

Often weird, but you know, that's something really special about somebody who wants to lead a turtle tour. Like there's just something about them that just makes them a little different.

SPEAKER_04 19:39

And that's great, we need that. Otherwise, there are no turtle tours. Um exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 19:46

I'm not aware of build sandcastles for a living. Wow. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 19:53

All right.

SPEAKER_01 19:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 19:55

The world needs sandcastles.

SPEAKER_02 19:58

And they're beautiful sandcastles, but uh it's just one of those things I never would have thought of it.

SPEAKER_03 20:03

Yeah. Um, yeah, no, the tourism industry is a special place, but tourism careers, in my opinion, have a real uh PR problem. And I don't think, no, no, not even I don't think. We know that young people don't look at the tourism more like a real and a viable and a long-term career path. And um, I think that is a real shame. And even once we do all this work, and I know that there's you know a lot of work happening globally um around workforce you know development and getting new people into the workforce, but then we lose them. Well, we do in Australia anyway, and it might be different um in your neck of the woods, but we lose them because there's no real identified career pathway. Um, there's no sort of this is what I'm gonna do next. I can see not that everyone's driven to climb the ladder, but at least I can see that there's other opportunities for me, and and we lose them. Um, and it makes me very, very sad as someone that's had a very long and exciting and delightful career in the industry, and I'm doing everything I can to try and change this.

SPEAKER_02 21:22

I think that happens for for a couple of reasons. Number one, you know, you have at the lower end of the the entry-level end of the tourism scale, you have some really not so glamorous jobs. You know, you have housekeeping and front desk at the hotel and hostessing at a restaurant or working a ticket counter at a museum or attraction or activity. You know, but those aren't very glamorous jobs, and it's hard to see your way out of something like that where it's just so repetitious and it's so you know updated, you know, for lack of a better term. But I've interviewed over three hundred CEOs in the tourism space. From small organizations to huge organizations. With two exceptions.

SPEAKER_01 22:14

None of them knew that they wanted to work for a destination organization.

SPEAKER_02 22:20

Every single one of them had a rather serpentine career path. What we did is we sat and we looked at and we we evaluated all of these interviews. It's skills that you build at each level of your personal growth that allow you to grow to that next level. And they're transferable skills. And that's that's where people sometimes get caught up. Because if you're you know, if you're in accounting, for example, you're gonna look for an accounting job.

SPEAKER_04 22:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:53

You may not be looking for a job where you can apply all of the skills that you have in a different way, because that might seem harder, that might seem different, and and that's change. And there are some people who thrive and change and some people who don't. And one of the things that I think people in the tourism space have to do is they have to thrive and change. Because you never know if the weather is gonna change, if somebody doesn't show up, if somebody's late, if you know there's there's a million things that could go wrong when delivering a tourism product. And you have to be flexible. And for those people who are flexible, they can see how those skills translate.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

Yeah. That's an interesting point. Just a thought. No, well, I like it.

SPEAKER_03 23:45

But it and I also think there's an element of, you know, obviously not every role in tourism is, you know, AI proof, but a lot of them are for the foreseeable future anyway. Um, and I used to argue with my boss about this, and he would say, you know, we'll have AI um tour guides, and you know, we already see people walking around with headsets on, you know, around the waterfront and in Hobart and Tasmania and listening to whatever Chat GPT tell them what they're looking at, um, or downloaded a virtual tour guide. But um we know that travelers are looking for connection. We're lonelier than we've ever been. You know, when we travel, we want to meet a place through the people, through the food, through the music, through local events. And I know that everyone's different, but I just think that that is such um a real um should be part of the real thought process for young people when they're um evaluating what their career options are this day and age. And I think we've got a way to go before AI takes over the tourism industry. And um, I know that you work sort of in the you uh heavily with tech. So have you got anything to say about that? Do you agree, disagree?

SPEAKER_02 25:06

I I agree that a lot of the tourism jobs can't be replaced by AI. They can't be replaced by technology. Uh, and I also agree that people are looking for authenticity, they're looking for genuine human connection. They may not realize it though. That's the other thing. Yeah, they may not realize it, particularly younger people who have spent so much of their time on a screen and not interacting with others that they don't they don't know what they're missing. You and I grew up in a time when you know go outside and play. Yeah, you had to get along with people, you had to make friends, you had to do that. Um and a a kid today can do their work online, play online, but never have to deal with building those sort of relationships and understanding, you know, that human the human element. And I think that that's a real opportunity for us in the tourism space.

SPEAKER_01 26:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:09

Is to remind people what humanity is, what yeah, you know, what that human connection can be. And and that's a layer of authenticity that can't be replaced by AI. It can't be replaced by you know a a virtual tour guide. Somebody says when I'm on a trip as a solo traveler, and somebody says to me at 10 o'clock at night in some restaurant, meaning it's at 8 o'clock in the morning, we're going to the beach. And I say, okay. It might be the stupidest decision I ever made, but it was the most beautiful beach I've ever been to. And I spent two and a half hours in a car with complete strangers. Like, okay, I didn't get jumped. It was good. Well done. I'm glad it was a beautiful page. It was a beautiful beach. It was a great day. It was a it was a really great day. But but that's the kind of thing where in tourism people invite you in.

SPEAKER_01 27:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:12

You know, they're not talking at you, they're not sharing for the sake of sharing, they're inviting you into their their their home, their community, their their passion, their hobby, whatever it is. That's the human element that can't be replaced.

SPEAKER_03 27:27

Yeah. I love that you um highlighted the fact that you know, perhaps travelers don't realize that they're they're looking or wanting or will benefit from real human connection whilst they're traveling.

SPEAKER_01 27:40

That's um an interesting embryo.

SPEAKER_02 27:48

Again, particularly young people, you know. Uh I don't want to sound like that old that old sage, that old person that says young kids are so this, so that. But when you are compelled to talk to other people and you are compelled to share, it feels more natural.

SPEAKER_01 28:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:09

So I hope that the people who are working on the front lines of tourism have that same sense of wanting to invite others in that we've seen over the centuries of tourism development. And that they do that often. They do it with grace.

SPEAKER_01 28:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:32

Yeah, I think it's important for our particularly frontline, but I mean for everyone. It doesn't matter what cog you are in the wheel, whether you are marketing, whether you are finance, you know, in a tourism business, the mission is the same to provide memorable experiences for our guests. But I guess particularly for the the frontline stuff, you know, that um that sense of hospitality. I'm reading, I'm sure you've read it or have heard of it, I don't have it with me. Um, unreasonable hospitality for like the third time.

SPEAKER_02 29:03

I was gonna say, one of the things I think that makes a difference is teaching people to be storytellers. You know, and storytelling is a really sort of passive way to let people into who you are, where you're from, what you do. An example that I cite quite frequently is somebody asks for a restaurant recommendation at a hotel front desk. The front desk agent can say, go to Jimmy's restaurant down the street. Great. It's a recommendation. Fantastic. They can also say, I see that you're here with your two kids. When my family wants to go out for something special, we go to Jimmy's down the street. Try this, it's going to be delicious. One of those is a story. One of those gives the visitor the opportunity to feel like a local as opposed to still being a visitor in a foreign place at just some random restaurant. And and I think that that art of storytelling is something that we try to teach in every class that we produce.

SPEAKER_01 30:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:17

It has to be.

SPEAKER_03 30:19

Yeah. And that example you've given there, you know, to get the buy-in from the frontline staff to even want to tell stories when they're eight hours into a 12-hour shift. You know, I think that Yeah, it's just it's a challenge and it's ongoing, you know, what motivates your staff? What's going to get your frontline staff to want to tell a story? And I just I'm sorry, I'm antagonistic sometimes because I look at everything from through the frontline operators lens, because it's where I've spent so much of my career. You know, what's what's going to get you, your not quite minimum wage, but probably pretty close minimum wage frontline staff to, you know, be inspired enough to want to tell a story?

SPEAKER_02 31:08

I think I think it comes down to a couple factors.

SPEAKER_01 31:13

One of them being appreciation. They have to understand and they have to know what sort of impact they can make in a in a visitor's day or trip or you know, life in some cases.

SPEAKER_02 31:32

They have to understand that impact. They also have to understand and feel empowered.

SPEAKER_01 31:38

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 31:40

And and thirdly, they have to have license. They have to have the the the freedom to do things. You know, I I think of the Ritz Carlton example. Ritz-carleton has a rule that any employee can spend up to a certain amount of dollars to wow a guest. Yeah, I think it's a it's a $2,500. Any employee can spend up to $2,500 to wow a guest. Um the employees understand the the value of that, the impact that that has on the business, and the impact that has on the visitor experience. They understand that as a responsibility, not just a uh a carte launch, you know, freedom that they have. And they use it very well.

SPEAKER_01 32:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:31

They use it very well. Uh and it makes a difference. You know, people have to have license to do the nice thing.

SPEAKER_03 32:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:38

Yeah. And they have to know that they're going to be appreciated for doing the nice thing. And it comes down to me.

SPEAKER_01 32:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:44

Yeah, it does. We're lucky to work with good managers at the start of our career.

SPEAKER_01 32:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:50

You know, we're in different places than those who've worked with the troublesome managers.

SPEAKER_03 32:56

That's a very diplomatic term, Stephen. Troublesome managers. Yeah, we've all had them. We've all had them. But um, yeah, well, that's so true. When you see see it done right, or when you are the receiver of a manager or a leader that can get that right and um know how that feels. And I can think of a couple of standout examples throughout my career um where where I've I've truly felt like I was part of a machine. And uh and I say that uh that's probably not the right wording because I say that in a fabulous way. Like we were on the same mission every day. Um to, and I'm referring to AJ Hackabungee here. And I mean, that's an easy example because we literally are changing people's lives every day. We are ticking things off bucket lists 100, 200, 300 times every single day. Um God, we had a good time doing it, and we just all were steering the ship in the same direction. There we go. That's a good metaphor.

SPEAKER_02 34:01

And people have to understand their the value that they have. You know, people have to understand and recognize that they're an important piece of that machine. And I think for our industry disposable that they feel like it.

SPEAKER_04 34:17

Yeah. Well, that's so true.

SPEAKER_03 34:19

And I mean, it doesn't then that doesn't work for, you know, workforce retention. And then it doesn't work well for the visitor experience, which then doesn't work well for the business, it doesn't work well for the destination. Like everything comes back to, and that's the nature of our people-led industry, comes back to our people. Like I um I won't say what the activity was that I did last time when I was in New Zealand, but I went and did a fun activity with my son, and it should have been a bucket list experience. It was um the experience itself. I mean, uh the tourism experience does a lot of the heavy lifting if it's well crafted. The experience itself was great, but so unfortunately, the people delivering the experience were, I think, quite hungover and um not interested. Not interested in being on a boat with a 40-something-year-old and a 10-year-old at seven o'clock in the morning. And um it really was ignored us the whole way, and it was such a lackluster overall experience, and it could have been it costs nothing for your staff to um say hello and how you going, and you know, those magical little uh touch points, and and so that's a long-winded way of just saying that our people in our industry are everything, and um, I don't think as an industry as a whole, we do enough to engage them, retain them, attract them, support them, develop them, um, and take a sort of a more holistic view of the industry as a whole. And we just and maybe that is by nature of in Australia anyway, um, you know, again, I come back to that 95% of operators being so small, we don't have the luxury of being able to send them off for professional development events. Yeah, I don't know that we have to send people off for professional development.

SPEAKER_02 36:27

Yeah, a a big part of a big part of training is leading by example and peer-to-peer learning. You know, and and you know I have shown up hungover to work and how to power. Oh yeah, don't even see. I mean probably just once though. I mean, really.

SPEAKER_03 36:47

Yeah, just that one time and never did it again.

SPEAKER_02 36:50

If the audience could hear me roll my eyes. Um but you know, I also I worked with managers and I'm like, that one's having a rough morning. And then you see how they power through it.

SPEAKER_03 37:02

You know, look, don't get me wrong, I'm not poking fingers at people that roll up to work hung over.

SPEAKER_02 37:09

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 37:10

But but uh you do have to own it. You might be hungover, but you still gotta have that smile on your face, and you have to show your guests a damn good time.

SPEAKER_02 37:19

That's your luckily I was never hung over having to deal with that on a rocket boat. So I I grant a certain license to your tour guide. Well, um, I'm gonna ask you to introduce yourself and we'll just edit this and I'll move it back around to the front.

SPEAKER_03 37:37

I don't mind introducing myself at the end of the conversation. Sure, why not? I'm Carmen Bold, and uh yeah, I've had you know 25 years experience in the tourism and events industry, and now my focus is on in case you hadn't got that from the conversation, so now you can't put it at the beginning, Stephen, but my focus is now on you know workforce and industry capability. So that means uh well, everything I've been talking about, attracting, retaining, and engaging people into the tourism industry, trying to keep them here, but then also critically working with the operators um to make sure that our tourism operators have the skills needed to be able to do that for their workforce. And um also funnel that through to the visitor experience. That is also part of what I do in that um really using your human beings to develop your visitor experience and give your visitors the best experience they can have, which that's fine if you're gonna do it hungover, but just don't let them know that you're hungry.

SPEAKER_02 38:45

Amen.

SPEAKER_04 38:46

That's what I do now, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:48

Yeah, and then sober up.

SPEAKER_04 38:51

Sober up, or don't, don't whatever. It doesn't I'm not bothered, just don't let anyone know.

SPEAKER_02 38:59

Just do your thing, just live live the dream, right?

SPEAKER_03 39:02

Yeah, that's it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:04

So I will yeah, I will ask you one one last question because I know I have both around tight schedules, but um what is the most kind thing you've ever experienced?

SPEAKER_01 39:19

Find.

SPEAKER_02 39:21

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 39:22

The most kind thing, right? I met a um wee little Japanese boy. I shouldn't say he was a boy, he was probably 18 years old when I was at working at AJ Hackett. And my um colleague and I were about to take our first trip to Japan, and he came in and did a bungee jump, and we said, Kenji, we are coming to Japan in a couple of weeks. We should hang out with you while we're there. And he said, sure, no worries. Here's my email address. This was in like early 2000s, and and we emailed him and we arrived at Osaka Airport, and there was Kenji, and there was Kenji's dad, and there was Kenji's mum, and there was Kenji's sister, and they took us out to the car and we stayed with them for a week. We didn't spend a single yen. They took us everywhere, the hospitality was unreal. Um, took us up to their holiday home up in the hills, and uh just we it was just the most amazing experience. But you can feel it, you can feel the kindness when someone's heart opens and says, welcome. So that was a kind gesture for me. It was obviously very hospitable, but Japanese people are typically. But the the the level of kindness underneath that was like you are here in our country and we are gonna hold nothing back. We got you, um, was unbelievable. So that is the kindest thing.

SPEAKER_02 40:51

That story.

SPEAKER_03 40:53

Yeah, it was a good one, actually. Should look up Kendi's email address. Yeah. Now, can I ask you a quest one question before we sign off? And I just would love to, for the sake of um my listeners, can you give me the highlight reel of your career before you started Learn Tourism and why you started it?

SPEAKER_02 41:14

So I worked in sales and product development mostly for experiences and attractions for the first 10 years or so of my career. Museums, restaurants, theater, activities, you name. So I I would come in and identify where product could be developed, amplified, build secondary spend, and get that out to market. Uh after about 10 or 12 years of that, I went into consulting. And I did a very similar function for destinations. So a destination might give me a call and say, listen, we have a really soft period in our calendar during the fall, let's say. So my job would be to come into the destination, look at everything that they have to offer, identify what experience can be exploited during that fall period, identify what uh what activities might uh appeal to visitors who traditionally travel during the fall, and then how they market to those specific audiences. So an example would be I'd fly out to California, you know, you mentioned the Japanese market. Well, the Japanese love classic Americana. Route 66, the vintage signage, you know, that it's just it's something that they love. You know, I'd I identify 20 things in the market that would appeal to that audience that this is how you speak to the Japanese, this is how you get that out to the Japanese market. Or uh in that same destination, fly fishing. You know, every time we crossed a bridge, I noticed people fly fishing, but they've never marketed themselves as a fly fishing destination.

SPEAKER_04 42:54

Oh wow, okay.

SPEAKER_02 42:56

Well, you know, three weeks later there was an article at Forbes about you know fly fishing. So uh I did that for about 10 years. Uh somewhere along the way, I had this sort of aha moment that my passion was not in travel, it was not just the food or the architecture, the the history or the music or the culture or the people. It was the fact that I got to learn. You know, my passion is learning. And along with that aha was a recognization that a recognition that most of the training and education in the tourism space just wasn't cutting. It was terrible.

SPEAKER_03 43:39

I'm in, I'm in, I'm in.

SPEAKER_02 43:40

Um and I thought about, well, you know, there's gotta be a better way to do this. And if nobody else is doing it, then heck I can figure this out. Right. So five years of research and study and testing and Analysis and I mean, gosh, I learned so much and then COVID struck. So, what had been a background or project through my consulting is I finally had this choice. I'm like, do I want to rebuild a consultant business that I've had for 10 years from scratch? Or do I want to do something different? Do I want to do something that's going to allow me to continue learning? Do I want to do something that could possibly make a big a greater difference, a bigger impact? And that's how Learn Tourism got started. We are a nonprofit or an NGO, as as you might say. We operate now in 20 or 30 countries.

SPEAKER_01 44:39

Yeah, well.

SPEAKER_02 44:41

So we we're we're a bunch of nerds. We're people who love to learn and share what we learn. You know, in the same way that I think we should treat our visitors. Yeah. We love to learn about them. They they learn from us. So it's a two-way street.

SPEAKER_03 44:59

Well, congratulations to you because you know it's no main fate to have a uh have a business, you know, for still going after ten years, so well done to you.

SPEAKER_02 45:08

Oh well well trust me, it took a few years of not getting paid.

SPEAKER_04 45:13

Yeah. I mean I mean all the good ones do.

SPEAKER_02 45:16

Yeah, it it it it's it's making up for it now in ways that I never would have foreseen. You know, not not not necessarily financially, but I am happier, I am smarter, I'm surrounded by better people. And you know, the work that we do is is much more appreciated than anything I've ever done before.

SPEAKER_01 45:39

So it it works. Well done. Thanks.

SPEAKER_03 45:48

Can I ask one more question?

SPEAKER_01 45:49

Sure.

SPEAKER_03 45:50

I was going to ask, did you intend on working in the tourism industry? Or the travel industry? What no?

SPEAKER_01 45:57

Did you know what you wanted to do when you finished school? Did you study when you finished school? So I studied marketing. Marketing.

SPEAKER_02 46:10

You know, that seemed like a good fit. Like, oh, I can talk to people and I can, you know, make things sound interesting. I held the record for most candy bars sold during our school fundraiser.

SPEAKER_03 46:20

I'm like, I could do my God, wow. How many was that? Six.

SPEAKER_01 46:25

Six.

SPEAKER_00 46:28

How many did I eat? That's probably a better question.

SPEAKER_04 46:31

You sold them to yourself.

SPEAKER_00 46:33

I did, I did.

SPEAKER_02 46:34

But no, so um I got a job working at a at a restaurant, and it was a theme restaurant, a very Disney-esque theme restaurant.

SPEAKER_01 46:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:46

Um, they needed a sales manager, so I said, I'll I'll do it. I don't want to wait tables for the rest of my life.

SPEAKER_04 46:51

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_02 46:52

So I decided to be a sales manager for the restaurant, and I ended up creating an educational programming that would get school kids in before the restaurant even opened in the public and all this sort of stuff, secondary science and whatever. Um, and along the way, I also worked for a staffing company that did temporary and permanent placement in a wide variety of industries in a wide variety of job functions. And I did that for about a year leading up to 9-11. Uh what was really fascinating about that job and was an opportunity I wish more people had was that I got to learn about almost every type of industry that existed. I got to learn about almost every type of job function that was possible. I got to learn about different work environments. I got to learn about, you know, the financials and and incentives and pay packages and and everything else. And after doing that for a year, I realized those jobs suck. I like what I'm doing in the restaurant.

SPEAKER_01 48:01

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:02

And then I got a job in New York City. So just one thing left to another, they all built upon each other.

SPEAKER_03 48:09

Yeah. As they do. Okay, I won't ask any more questions. That's said enough.

SPEAKER_02 48:15

Well, if folks want to get in touch with you, Carmen, how would they do so?

SPEAKER_03 48:18

Um, you can do so on LinkedIn. Look me up, Carmen Bold, or my website, carmanbold.com.

SPEAKER_04 48:25

That'll that'll get me, either one of those. Fantastic. And yourself?

SPEAKER_02 48:30

Learntourism.org or Steven with a pH. LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_03 48:39

We'll certainly have links in show notes, so all good.

SPEAKER_02 48:42

You are a delight.

SPEAKER_03 48:45

I do what I can. Yeah, you know, you're all right. You two are a delight, Stephen. This was a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_02 48:51

Oh, thank you. I appreciate it. And I think we get to work together a lot more in the future.

SPEAKER_03 48:56

Humongous thank you to Stephen Extrom for sitting down and chatting with me. That was uh such a fantastic conversation for me. Um I think the one thing, well, there was a lot of key takeaways for me really in that, but the one thing that I will continue to ponder is um just the very little thing that he mentioned that um perhaps people uh don't actually even recognize before they travel that uh that human connection, so you know, experiencing a destination through its people, through its food, music, events, local culture. Uh perhaps people don't actually even realize that that's what they want before they travel or when they're booking. So uh I found that really interesting nuance. So that was very interesting to me, and I'll continue to ponder that. Um, I'd love to hear any of your thoughts. So thank you for listening. Uh as always, sharing is caring. So click all of those buttons, download, subscribe, share, like, all of the above, leave a comment, leave a review. That would be awesome. Um, do all of those things, share it with your friends and colleagues. So until next time, let's all remember that tourism matters. I'll see you next week. Thank you for listening.