Tropic Journeys Ecuador Update

We’ve had lots of recent news from Tropic Journeys that we want to share.

Staff changes: We are constantly looking for the ideal people to work on each key position and during the last quarter we decided that we needed to bring new people to our operations team. Jose Luis did an incredible job as our sustainability manager, paving the road for the new system implementation, a re-engineering of our processes and renewing our Quality Certifications.

Now that these internal important bases have been established, we felt it was the right moment to bring an operations champion to be our new Operations Manager. Silvia Fiallos (silvia.fiallos at tropiceco dot com) comes with almost two decades in the industry. Silvia will be managing our operations team leaders on the DMC front, our Galapagos team, and our lodge managers at Huaorani, Chilcabamba and Floreana Lava Lodge (and has already traveled to explore each area and to meet with all of them!).

Another 2015 experiment that proved to be an incredible success was the On Tour Management position and with trial and error evaluations we decided to consolidate the role into a national position, covering both the Ecuador mainland and Galapagos. Andres Andrade steps into the role – (andres.andrade at tropiceco do com) he is another experienced operations person with many years managing the complex operations at one of the emblematic Amazon lodges in Ecuador.

Tropic has now 10 people dedicated exclusively to our operations while supported by our sales team you know as well as our (also new) admin department with four more people.

New Quoting/Operations system: Tropic acquired licenses to use Togoo, a web based system designed for receptive operators/DMCs. We have been developing it for the past 6 months. Our sales team are now training using it and soon you will receive quotes like this. As soon as it’s officially launched we will let you know. We expect the system not only to streamline our processes but also to free up time for our staff to develop more interesting thoughtful experiences rather than investing time on manual formats.

Liability Insurance: I am proud to say that even with very few (if any) insurance products available for Ecuadorian operators, thanks to Tropic’s accomplishments and international recognition, we are one of the few boutique DMC operators in Ecuador that now holds one million dollars in liability insurance. This investment shows our long-term commitment to our partners around the world.

We will be contacting you about the details on this and some requirements such as a mandatory medical insurance for all clients that we will need copies of to validate the protection to each client. We will be happy to provide in case you need a certification of this insurance.

Marketing and sales support: Jascivan will be leading the Tropic marketing efforts. And as you may know, we also have a North American Marketing Representative, Tad Bradley from the Kusini Collection, based in Seattle. Tad is available as marketing resource and sales support for Tropic and Ecuador. He can be reached at tad at kusinicollection dot com.

Tad and Jasci are busy planning a Tropic marketing road trip in April. This will be followed by our presence at targeted Trade Shows like ELA in the UK in June, Pure and TMLA in September and ATWS in October. I hope we can meet more than once next year and our homes are always open for FAMs for you and your team and support to any marketing initiative you may have.