Felix Brambilla of Overseas Leisure Group On How To Create A Travel Experience That Keeps People Coming Back For More

Thank you so much for joining us Felix. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

I’m an advertiser. I worked for American companies in Paris. I was with Y&R as an executive. I was also often invited to participate in travel incentives by the media. There was constant frustration. I am originally French, so like every French person, I like to complain about things. Once I was invited to go to Prague on a private jet to see an opera, and as soon as the opera was finished, I would jump back on the plane and come back and I felt I had not been to Prague. My belief is that every destination has a story to tell and to tell that story, you need characters. You can’t hear the story when you don’t meet the character.

So I had that frustration, and I was talking so much about it that one day, one of my friends said, “Why don’t we create a travel agency on the side?” So we got an attic in the Chinese area of Paris. The concept that we had worked pretty well because a year later, we owned the entire building. We had 50 employees, and we just couldn’t service enough people to travel with a purpose. Then I dropped everything else I was doing and moved to the United States because I wanted a good place to live in a good hub. Miami is the most international city there is. So, it all lined up like this.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?

Probably the most interesting one happened just before COVID. So, 26 years into my career, I was on a trip invited to get onto a boat on the Amazon River with 30 other people. We got to experience something that wowed me. Sometimes it’s hard to be wowed after you’ve spent so much time traveling. Of course, you still enjoy everything that you do, but the real wow factor is at a higher level for somebody from our business. I got wowed because all the ingredients of everything I believed in were there.

I was on this boat in an incredible setting. The boat itself was fantastic. Fifteen cabins, 15 mini boats behind to go fishing, and 15 guides. Each cabin had its own guide. The activities were incredible — nature, dolphins, and all that. We would stop at incredible sand bars where we had a Michelin chef cook for us, and two bartenders and mixologists from Italy, Mario and Lou G.

But the one thing that was differentiating is that one of the cabins was occupied by a dentist and an ophthalmologist, and we stopped in a bunch of communities along the river banks of the Amazon and got them first aid, helped them with eye exams, dental care, where they were coming on the boat.

I realized there is an opportunity to travel with a heart even more than I believed before. And so it was just the most completely satisfying experience I’ve ever had where there was selfish enjoyment, but also sharing. The dentists would treat them with more significant care during the night. They installed a full operating room on the boat. To think that this happened on March 3rd to the 9th, and that we were to lock down three days later because of COVID, my batteries were so charged from what I had experienced.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Well, we’ve learned so much from our mistakes. I’d say one of my greatest mistakes was there are sometimes clients that are extremely well traveled, at least in quantity, and these people believe that they know everything about travel. So when you’re new in the business, you can have a complex, and you tend to let them drive the journey, and you have little contribution.

For example, I ended up organizing a trip to California for a month for a wealthy Saudi family. The person working for them created a dictatorial ambiance that I had to produce. I saw halfway through the trip that everybody was not in their place, the family wasn’t connecting, and the employed vendors were miserable. So my big mistake there, and what I learned now is that if I don’t have an added value, if I’m not able to contribute, then I’m useless in an era where everybody can go and shop for trips online. If all you do is execute other people’s ideas and give up, what can you add? Then you’re not meant to be the in the business.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are?

Her name is Maureen. She started with us as an intern 12 years ago and came in from Corsica to Miami. Corsicans have a very strong temper, and she dedicated herself so much to the company that she was the one that enabled me to step back from the day-to-day and invest time in growing the company. She’s the one that allowed us to reach a certain size.

The person without whom, I couldn’t have done any of this, is my wife. Before we were married, she came on-board to work with us. It was after September 11th when we picked up the phone to see if it was still working. That’s how little business we were getting. I wanted to give up. I wanted to save what I had left and fly to South Africa to Cape town. But she’s the one who convinced me to stick with the concept and the idea. She said people would travel again. People will understand that traveling with somebody well-informed about the destination is safer, and people will look for safe things. It took another year after that, but then it was the American Dream.

Thank you for that. Let’s jump to the core of our discussion. Can you share with our readers about the innovations that you are bringing to the travel and hospitality industries?

Some are technology based. I think people see technology as contrary to experiential travel, but I don’t think that’s true. I think technology helps to leverage our know-how to greater numbers. What we’ve brought to the travel industry is that we’ve created alliances. For example, this year, we’re partnering with MATCH Hospitality and Qatar Airways for the FIFA World Cup. We’re partnering with the Circuit Of The Americas for Formula 1. We’re bringing components of journeys and travel experiences that they can offer to their clientele. So while they’re leveraging more revenue, they’re also bringing additional services. We’ve done that through technology because we have plugin tools that allow us to white label ourselves, work with these brands, and reinforce the brand’s perception.

But I think what we’re also bringing to the travel industry more than anything else is the fact that every destination has a story to tell. This goes beyond a commitment. A lot of people travel for selfies. They travel to bring back the same exact thing as everybody else. It’s normal because these people are guided. They buy the same products from the same type of distributors online. Very often when they go somewhere, they all go to the same places.

But we believe that there are three essential ingredients in a story. There is the destination itself. That’s the decor. Then there are those local heroes, those characters that we find along our exploration of places, those true locals that have a sense of sharing the destination. And then there is the traveler themselves, the story’s main character.

When you put these three things together with the experience we have, and with the fact that we have a network of more than 40 offices, we’re able to have this situation where if you and I were taken to the same place, we would each have a different story.

So I think that if we fight for the fact that every traveler should be entitled to their own story, we’ll stop sharing selfies, we’ll stop sharing the same thing. Nothing is worse than coming back from a trip and saying the same thing as everybody else.

Which “pain point” are you trying to address by introducing this innovation and how do you envision that this might disrupt the status quo?

Today, everybody fights within the same courtyard for the same customers. I think customers have trust-relationships with brands in their day to day. For example, if you’re a fan of the Miami Heat, you have a relationship with that team. You’re part of a season ticket holder community. Well, there is already a relationship of trust between the Miami Heat and their fan bases. So people from the travel industry are able to white-label us for an event and bring that sports team more services. So you, a Miami Heat fan traveling to New York can find all of the ingredients of your journey. It’s not fighting anymore for the same customers in the same circumstances. It’s bringing added value to branding. It becomes a destination brand.

As you know, COVID-19 changed the world as we know it. Can you share a few examples of how travel and hospitality companies will be adjusting over the next five years to the new ways that consumers will prefer to travel?

When COVID started, I was in the Florida Keys which had been cut from access if you were not a resident. So in the first three to four months, we had I think only 80 cases in 127 miles of island. But the day they opened them up, within a week we were up to hundreds of cases per day. And who was getting infected? The hospitality workers. So our company created something before anybody else. We created the “responsible travel challenge,” where we offered $250 of travel credit to anybody who was open to getting a test. This was before testing was a requirement. So with this, we were trying to make everybody understand that when we travel, it’s good to have the responsibility of reducing your carbon footprint and all these things for sure. But you have a direct impact on where you go when it comes to COVID. COVID and other viruses in the future will only be resolved by people’s commitment to be responsible for themselves and the action they have toward others.

So I think we need to continue preaching, especially in our business, and tell people to remember that you can become the problem. We always think about protecting our customers, but we don’t think enough about the impact our customers have on things and the people around them.

You are a “travel insider”. How would you describe your “perfect vacation experience”?

Well, it’s the result that counts. So if you bring back emotions and names of people and stories you connected with, I think you’ve had a great time.

But for me, the perfect vacation it’s difficult. If you travel by yourself, it’s easy to have the perfect vacation, but when I travel with my wife, my wife loves culture, museums, and things like that. I love adventure. I love adrenaline. We’ve learned how to like what the other one does.

But the ideal thing when you travel is to have a few doorways that are open. Because if I tell you that the key for me is to meet other people, but you have very reserved people, and if I tell you, hey, I suggest you go to South Africa to Cape town and meet people there. You’re going to be like, “Whoa, hold on. I’m shy.” So what we have to do is to create circumstances. So we open a small doorway, and we make sure that on your experience that day, you just don’t go to an experience. We’re going to introduce you to the guide beforehand. We’re going to tell you this person will be your guide. This is what this person is about. So when you get there, you will have things to exchange about so you’re not as shy. The person will come to you because they’ll have information about you. We want to create these introductions. So for me, that’s the perfect vacation experience. I think where you live is not as important as what you live.

I mean, right now, I’m in a citizenM hotel. It’s like a dorm at the airport in Paris. My kids are very happy in the room next to me because they feel they’re already in college. But that’s not important. What’s important is what we will bring back. How many people come back and say, “Oh my God, I stayed in this Hilton, it was fantastic?” No, they’re going to talk about where I was a couple of days ago. I was diving on the coast and things like that. Sometimes the lodging could be an adventure in itself. But the most important thing is to create opportunities for people to connect. That’s the key for me and the reason why I have more than 40 offices worldwide today.

Travel is not always about escaping, but about connecting. How have you made efforts to cultivate a more wellness-driven experience?

I’m not a great expert on physical wellness. I mean, let’s leave that for the specialists, and I always offer that opportunity. But to me, it’s the soul. When I send people somewhere, I babysit them. I will never forget what time of the year it is. That this vacation is the key for them to recharge their batteries and feel good. So I babysit to make sure that when people run into an issue, we are very active and there to help.

So after that, what helps one person’s soul versus another? There is no perfect recipe, but it takes understanding the expectations of the person. It takes understanding the pet peeves of a person before they travel. So for me, wellness depends on my knowledge of the customer and making sure that when they come back, they’ve owned something about the trip.

I do groups as well. I recently took 65 UK dealers from Mazda. They wanted to go to national parks. We could have put them in buses, but no, we got a bunch of convertible cars, 4x4, and everything, and we had them drive. We organized meals in the middle of Monument Valley. They never felt like they were a visitor, like at a tourist point. They always felt that they were part of the local environment. They felt that they were guests more than tourists. I don’t like the word tourism. I know I belong to that industry, but I despise it. It has so many connotations of strangers.

Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things one should know in order to create a travel experience that keeps bringing people back for more?

1. You have to know your client. Really, you have to know your client.
2. You have to know the people of the destination.
3. You always have to have an offer where there is a core to something that your customer can afford, and then you offer them options to tailor their journey after that. But don’t come and tease somebody with something extraordinary that they probably can’t afford because then you make people decide on something with regret. Tell them this is the core, and then you embellish it.
4. Taking responsibility. When you’re a travel professional, don’t ever blame your vendors. Don’t ever blame a hotel, otherwise, you have no reason to be in there. You have no reason to be involved. When something goes wrong on the trip, I’m responsible for the vendor I chose, and I recommended it, so I will fix that immediately. My job at that moment is to completely de-escalate the problem, reassure and put my client back into a satisfying journey.
5. Follow-up. By following-up, I’m not talking about commercial activity to let your customer know that you want to continue working with them. No, the follow-up for me is to learn from my customer. I want to know what they’ve discovered. I want to get some hints from them, like, “Oh yeah. When we were there, we stopped in that little place and this guy was…” I love that. I encourage it. It’s as beneficial as having purpose because your customer is so happy to share and to see that you have an interest in what he brought back. You established a connection with him. That’s going to be durable, and it’s going to get them to come back.

Can you share with our readers how you have used your success to bring goodness to the world?

I have some very high-end customers. They want their upcoming generations to value what they’re being given. I always offer those high-end families the opportunity to take an interactive role in something good. I recently sent a family to Kenya. We rented this incredible private reserve for them. It had helicopters and everything. On the way back, they had eight hours to kill in Nairobi. I sent them with One Horizon, the association. They went to an orphanage and a daycare center, and they could play with the young kids, and read stories to the children at the orphanage.

I think the good that I bring is to the destination. It’s by bringing people that have a big heart and allowing them to show some support. But the greatest thing that I do is that when I get into the office in the morning, I feel that I’m fulfilling an important mission because I’m helping people to travel the world and take back something very important with them rather than just going somewhere, spending money, and doing the same thing as everybody else.

Also, I’m involved in the FIFA World Cup. When I first went to Qatar a year and a half ago, I didn’t know the destination. I went there to do my job and find a site inspection of hotels. When I traveled with colleagues of mine, we all had stereotypes of how people live in the Gulf. But we were so surprised by what we experienced. We saw the values we shared in common with the Qatari families and how they are with their children, by their humility and hospitality. We had such a good time together that we said, “My God, this World Cup is coming to this region of the world for the first time, the Arab world. It’s not about Qatar.” The entire Arab world has the opportunity to exchange with the entire planet. And it’s not about football either. Football is what links it all. What’s amazing is that you’re going to have American people that have been given certain clichés and expect to be looked at bizarrely by locals, Muslims and Arabs, and in the same way, the reciprocity is true. But I can’t wait for these people to be together and have the same revelation my colleagues and I had when we went there a year and a half ago and see how much we have in common. I think this World Cup can seriously contribute to peace in this world.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?

It would be to give a voice to children. I think children are fundamental. I think children have something that adults lose very quickly, which is the most simple and pure outlook on things. I see it when I travel with children. It’s amazing to see them shine.

On a larger scale, I want to give a voice to children about how they think. If you go to Russia and you do not speak the language, you’re going to tell yourself, okay, I can’t exchange, right?

But if you take a young kid, eight years old, American, whatever you want and you bring him to Russia, and he sees kids his age playing soccer, and you let him go and play with the kids, you will not believe it, but these kids are going to find a way to communicate. They’re going to laugh together because all those barriers do not exist.

Sometimes, when I look at kids doing this, I feel like doing the same thing. I forget the fact that I’m not supposed to be there, and I just let myself enjoy the moment. So if I could, I would create a movement where we would let children be destination ambassadors.

How can our readers follow your company online?

You can visit us at www.overseasnetwork.com

This was very inspiring, Felix. Thank you so much. We wish you only continued success.