Travel boss says Covid was ‘best thing’ to ever happen

Revenues at Macs – which offers self-guided walking and cycling tours in the UK, Europe, North America, South America, Asia, Australia and Africa – plunged by 85 per cent to £3.9 million in 2020 when lockdown restrictions shut down the global travel industry.

“It was pretty brutal and humbling, though we did have the advantage that there was a lot of demand for domestic trips,” Mr Lapping said.

That paved the way for a partial recovery in 2021, when sales reached £11.3m, while 2022 has been “completely full-on” with revenues more than 10% up on the £27.2m clocked up in the year before Covid, when Macs was expanding at rapid pace.

Macs Adventures started offering walking tours along the West Highland Way

“In retrospect I think [the pandemic] will probably be the best thing that ever happened to us as a business because when you grow organically and you grow really fast, you make some mistakes, and you don’t often have the time to re-set your business,” Mr Lapping said.

“We had the opportunity to go back to the drawing board and say how do we want to run things, how do we want to structure it, how do we want to build it, did we have all the right people in the right places.”

That has included hiring roughly 100 people during the past 18 months to replenish the ranks that were pared back during the days of travel restrictions. Macs currently employs 150 people in the UK, the US and Germany, and is looking to fill a further 10 posts in the immediate future.

Mr Lapping has been supported in this by a new management team spearheaded by Simon Galbraith, who took a significant minority stake in the business in May 2021. Based in Cambridge, Mr Galbraith is a technology entrepreneur and first met Mr Lapping while on a walking trip in the Highlands.

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Mr Lapping said Macs would likely have survived without the investment from the company’s first external shareholder, but the recapitalisation has provided a layer of security following the perilous period of the pandemic.

“I didn’t want to be in a situation where if suddenly there was a downturn or there was a bit of risk, we would have had to say we couldn’t do something, or we would have to stop hiring, or we would have to let people go,” he explained. “With the doom and gloom at the moment around recessionary pressures, we can just continue to deliver our plan because we’ve got that buffer, so yeah, it came along at a great time.

“Also, prior to that I had been a sole founder and shareholder, and it’s quite a lonely place to be. Having another entrepreneur that really understands what it’s like to lead a fast-growing business has been enormously helpful, and I would really recommend it to other entrepreneurs.”

The company offers trips to 650 destinations around the world, and expects to accommodate 40,000 customers next year. Its customer base is predominantly in the more financially secure 50-plus category, which provides some shelter against the economic headwinds.

Mr Lapping said Covid has accelerated other trends that also work in Macs’ favour, such as the shift towards outdoor activities, short-haul holidays and sustainable travel.

“I would rather have a headwind with the economy going gangbusters, but we are fairly well-placed, and in among the doom and gloom it’s important to realise that different businesses in the same sector can be differently placed,” he said.

He also credits Macs’ customer service during the pandemic with its renewed vigour.

“People who needed refunds, we refunded them,” he said. “People who needed to defer and delay, that’s what we did, and I think we got the payback because a lot of travel companies didn’t look after their customers very well, whereas we did, and that came back in bucketloads when people were looking to travel again.”

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Though the company’s costs and those of its suppliers are increasing, this has not yet had any discernible impact on demand. Mr Lapping is currently projecting year-on-year growth of between 30% and 35% in 2023.

Compared to the outlook a couple of years ago, this will be a welcome backdrop to the company’s 20th anniversary celebrations.

“I don’t feel old enough to be having a 20th anniversary, but it’s quite exciting,” Mr Lapping said. “It’s quite crazy to think that our first trip on the West Highland Way was 20 years ago and 20 years later the West Highland’s still our number one selling trip.”

He added: “Despite the pandemic being dreadful for many businesses in the travel and hospitality space, it is definitely a great industry to be in and it’s great to see the whole industry coming back so strongly.”

Q&A

Where do you find yourself most at ease?

Being active outdoors with my family, friends or customers. It doesn’t matter if it’s in the mountains or on the coast – or if it’s hiking, snowboarding or kitesurfing – those are my happy places, especially if I’m sharing them with interesting people.

If you weren’t in your current role, what job would you most fancy?

I would love to be an architect or interior designer. I love design, building things and creating spaces that change the way people feel, collaborate and work.

What phrase or quotation has inspired you the most?

Desmond Tutu: “There is only one way to eat an elephant: a bite at a time.”

What is the best book you have read and why?

I read constantly and am constantly learning, but it would probably be Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia. His story clearly shows you will succeed if you follow your passion and are your own customer, and that business can be a force for good in the world.

What has been your most challenging moment in life or business?

Leading Macs Adventure, an international travel business, with customers and trips in 50 countries through the Covid-19 pandemic. We could not connect our customers with incredible moments, give our team the opportunities to grow and develop, or send business to our thousands of supplier partners, which was a very difficult period.

What do you now know that you wish you had known when starting in your career?

That successful business people love to help people just starting out, and are more than happy to share advice, learnings, time and contacts.