HAGGiS Adventures and Highland Explorer Tours – Radically different coach touring
HAGGiS Adventures
HAGGiS Adventures was started in Glasgow in 1993 by a dynamic team of three Scottish brothers following a visit to New Zealand. They established a backpacker travel company that broke the mould. Their aim was to offer fully guided trips that allowed intrepid young adventurers to really discover Scotland, with the best, most knowledgeable and they claim – ‘the sexiest’ guides leading the way. HAGGiS Adventures was born. An early decision was to switch the operational base from Glasgow to Edinburgh in order to tap into the more lucrative tour market. Edinburgh tends to be the centre where most incoming tourists set their base and as a result there is far more opportunity to sell tours in that city. They soon found that it was a wise move and not only did they see a big upsurge in day trip bookings but also in their longer tours as well.
They have always stuck stubbornly to that mission, aiming to make every trip they run the best yet. They believe that a country’s culture, history, myths and legends can only truly come to life through local knowledge. They also believe that it is possible to provide their customers with an incredible time travelling around Scotland, but achieve it on a budget. Choice is at the heart of what they do. Their trip format is not rigid. It has a basic framework but the guide/tour manager will modify the programme to suit the requirements of the group.
Unusually, they also have a book and go guarantee which means just that. In the 20 years they have been operating, they have never cancelled a single trip. As far as they are concerned if a customer has made the effort to come and explore Scotland, the least they can do is guarantee to show them around!
HAGGiS has built its enviable reputation through word of mouth recommendation. It started with one tour back in 1993 but they now operate a whole range of award-winning adventures throughout Scotland and have extended to run tours in Cornwall and Wales. They have also won countless awards, the latest being the big one in Scotland, the Visit Scotland Thistle Awards for being the best Tour Operator Programme in 2013. They also achieved a Certificate of Excellence from TripAdvisor in 2013 adding to the vast array of top awards they already hold.
The company runs a range of one, three, five, seven and even ten day tours which cover every area of Scotland. They particularly specialise in tours of the more remote areas of Skye, Orkneys, Hebrides and Shetlands Islands, really seeking to get beneath the skin of these destinations. For example they run a day trip to Loch Ness every single day of the year. The beauty of their system is flexibility. Customers can mix and match their way through the tour programme. If they want to start on one tour and then switch to another, part way through, that can be organised easily. ‘We want our customers to design their own tour, go where they want to go and see what they want to see,’ says Pete Smith.
They put a great deal of effort into research finding the very best locations for accommodation, meals and entertainment. ‘Yes we are looking for low cost accommodation, predominantly hostels,’ says Dougie,’ but it has to be good, we demand high standards of even the most basic of accommodation and we monitor them very, very closely. Fortunately we have set the standard, people who want our business know what we expect now – for many of them we are now their principle income source and that is a powerful motivator to get it right.’
For the really adventurous there are also activity tours and these are really tough. One, the West Highland Way, involves customers covering 95 miles of Western Scotland’s iconic Western Way on foot, bike, canoe and sea kayak. Another, the Great Glen, involves customers covering 75 miles by similar means. These are two of the most popular tours operated by HAGGiS Adventures.
Special event trips are run over Christmas and of course Hogmanay, the Edinburgh Festival, Easter and the Up Helly Aa Viking Festival on the Shetlands. These are so popular that they get booked up way in advance. The Up Helly Aa trip for this year, which doesn’t even happen until the end of January, was sold out months ago. So if it is so successful why not run more? Pete again, ‘We don’t want to dilute our product, we know we’ve got a good product, we know what we can handle, if we run more we may not be able to maintain the standard and that is just not acceptable to us’.
Under pressure from their customers they have moved beyond Scotland to run similar tours in Wales and Cornwall. These are handled by the company’s London Office. They employ exactly the same philosophies as the Scottish programme, especially the importance of highly knowledgeable guides/tour managers. For these tours HAGGiS don’t use their own vehicles but sub contract to other companies. They do insist that the tour is taken by their own Guides though and they place stringent standards on sub-contractors regarding the quality of the vehicles used and the drivers. Both experiments have proved very successful and the company is looking at perhaps expanding into other areas of the UK – the Lake District being a possible target.
Radical Travel
The owners created the brand name The Radical Travel Group in 1999, after setting up Shamrocker Adventures in Ireland. In 2000 The Radical Travel Group was bought by The Travel Corporation. However, the operation of HAGGiS Adventures (and Shamrocker Adventures) is still very much left in the hands of those who have been running it for many years and who built the brand into the success that it is today.
Highland Explorer Tours
One addition to the Radical Travel Group move was the establishment of Highland Explorer Tours in 2006. Pete Smith explains. ‘We had realised that there was an opportunity to run another level of tour. We’d become aware that there were a lot of people who liked the philosophy behind the tours we run with HAGGiS but were looking for a better standard of accommodation and a steadier pace. They weren’t prepared to stay in hostels and wanted to take things a bit slower, but they liked the fact that we go to a lot of unusual places and they liked the quality of our guide/tour managers. Many of them were our older HAGGiS customers who had just grown up.’
They set about devising a similar range of tours but taking into account the differing requirements of this new group, keeping the essentials of going to unusual places as well as the more popular places and using their own vehicles and highly skilled guides/tour managers.
They operate one, three, five and seven day tours and again clients can mix and match to develop their own individual tour programme. Additionally, they run a range of specials that tie into key events like the Edinburgh Festival and Tattoo, Highland Games and Up Helly Aa. They also offer the same guarantees that if you book a tour, it will go even if you are the only people on it. As Pete says, ‘Like HAGGiS, we’ve never missed a trip yet.’
Highland Explorer Tours has proved to be an outstanding success and is now a key part of the operation.
Both HAGGiS Adventures and Highland Explorer Tours also operate group tours and have a separate department that works with clients to devise a special tour programme which meets their requirement.
Shamrocker Adventures
Shamrocker Adventures started running the same style of trips throughout Ireland in 1999 using the same philosophies, particularly with regard to the use of high quality local guides. It is operated as a separate company although the two companies work very closely together and book each other’s tours. Shamrocker is managed by Karen Murphy from the company’s office in Dublin. Unlike HAGGiS/Highland, Shamrocker does not use its own vehicles but uses sub-contractors but with the same stringent standards employed as the Scottish companies.
Busabout
Busabout was set up in 1998 to provide a similar concept of adventure travel for young people right across Europe and was bought by TTC in 2001. It operates on the same principles as HAGGiS Adventure of good quality but inexpensive accommodation, tours which have high degree of individual choice, expert guides and good quality vehicles apply throughout. It is run almost like a club hence the choice of the name Mates Rates for their discounted offers particularly for students. The whole ethos of Busabout, as it is with HAGGiS and Shamrocker, which now form part of Busabout, is summed up in one of their slogans about their idea of free-style travel; ‘Know where you’re going but not where it will take you’.