With a 10-year tenure at Intrepid (and five years before that at Peregrine) and the company’s 2030 strategy in his back pocket, Leigh Barnes, is about to set up home and office in Seattle to head the ever-expanding Aussie company’s US operations.
With a shift post-pandemic and 60 per cent of its business now coming out of the northern hemisphere, Intrepid is aiming to grow its domestic offerings there. But someone has to run the show and that is the amendable Barnes.
“I’ve lived in Edinburgh for a while and Toronto and done a few other bits and bobs over the journey. It’s just a whole bunch of moving stuff,” says the new dad as he prepares to pack up home and family.
Meanwhile, his long tenure has also given Barnes great insight into the Intrepid philosophy that is now spreading its substantial wings north of the equator. But how do you leverage yourself into a space that has a lot more competition and a potentially huge market, compared to APAC.
“The world needs more Intrepid people,” he says. “So, we think if more people travel this way, that they’re going to be more conscious, more curious and have a greater sense of community.
“We see that opportunity in the market for people travelling that want experiences, and that of some level of sustainability or to consciously travel.”
As happened with many travel businesses, Covid also shifted the goal posts, thus the move. Since the pandemic, specifically since 2021 the business was around 60 per cent Australian, and then split up between the US and the UK. Today, it’s more like 60 per cent from the northern hemisphere and 40 per cent out of Australia.
“With that shift, we’ve largely gone from pre pandemic 65-70 per cent industry, 30 per cent direct – we’re now 65 per cent direct, 35 per cent industry.” he says. “That’s part of the reason why I’m moving to the USA, that and a little bit of the attitude, you know, if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere. There’s a lot of benefits for us as a brand.”
Validation and a kick
While they have picked up awards from international organisations such as Time and Fast Company’s World’s Most Innovative Companies, it doesn’t mean Intrepid can rest on its laurels, he says.
“It’s a validation and also like a kick up the bum to do more and better,” Barnes says. “I think it does both things, because we still need to evolve to benefit an American customer.
“I think it is a validation now coming out of the pandemic that we’ve had pretty much three record years of growth and profitability, and we’ve seen that growth out of the USA and UK faster than the most other markets. So definitely a validation, but also probably also like a check that we need to do more and need to keep changing and evolving.”
Those changes could be now around key pillars such as protecting national parks in the US, a renewed stance on climate change or what to do from a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) perspective, existing policies which the Trump Administration seems to want to dismantle in the US.
“We’re butting up against it,” he says. “I’m really working with my team around how we show up and how we support these things, being quite vocal. I’ve written a couple of articles and spoken to some journalists recently around our commitment to DEI and continuing to do more work around how we create a diverse, inclusive customer base and workforce.”
There is also concern around cutbacks of National Parks staff under Elon Musk’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
“(The parks) are integral to our business in the USA, and we need them to be operating and thriving,” Barnes says. “We are looking at how those great assets are then used by the people who want to go see them. There is probably some concern at the moment around how that’s happening. We do need to speak up and talk about these topics. It’s just how we show up and what we do and don’t do.”
The US customer
While there are plans to expand the internation offering, initially, his main focus will continue to be on the US domestic customer.
“We’re doubling down on our domestic offering in the USA,” he says. “We purchased back country operator Wildland Trekking to help us expand into that space and expand our remit. We just opened a new operational hub in Denver. So that is happening at pace.”
Then international will follow, he says.
“Probably shorter product and higher premium product for Americans to go to places like Europe, Morocco, Costa Rica, Central and South America,” he says adding that ease of transport in and out of airports is key to making that work with the shorter US annual vacation periods.
“(A trip) somewhere between seven to 10 days is probably ideal,” says Barnes, “depending on where you’ve got to get in and out of and also to probably being a little bit more sensitive and understanding on where the flight routes are.
Unlike Australia, getting around the US to an international departure destination is not always easy, he says.
“That may not always be the case in the USA, depending on where you are, just making sure, from an east and west coast point of view, that we’re developing a product that meets those needs, and they can start their trip as soon as possible.”
Romance not lost
Is the romance of rustic style of travel, from his own backpacking days, long gone? And will ‘foreign’ travel appeal to US citizens.
“Obviously, I don’t think it’s going to be as free-wheeling as the 80s or even when I first started traveling in the early nineties,” he says. “It’s completely different from that. But, yeah, the main core business still is, you know, that two- to three-week trip, Vietnam, Peru, Morocco, where it is getting a lot more off the beaten path.
“But we need to be catering for the client who has less time and is time poor who wants to know where they’re going,” he says. “There is that free time, and it has a bit more of that, you know, real life experience, spirit of adventure, going out, doing some more stuff yourself. But I think what we’ve seen is, as we grow and we want to have more Intrepid people, is that that holiday is probably only once every two years.
“So even if you’re an incredibly loyal Intrepid customer, given family travel, given work travel, sports travel, whatever else you’ve got going on, you’re probably only taking that big a trip with us to go to Everest, or go see the gorillas.
“But how do we create more products to ensure that those people that do it want to be with Intrepid?”
Giving back
And travel is not a one-way street either, he says.
“Travel is one of the most powerful ways to get money into communities that need it, and it’s a really great tool to make that happen,” he says. “You need to have a social license to operate. You can’t just come in like a buzzsaw and completely change the community. You need to be very deliberate and conscious about how you bring tourists in, what’s safe, where they go, and how they do that, and it’s something that we’re very mindful and do a lot of work on through our foundation in different ways.
“But also to the commercial component of getting money into those local economies is incredibly powerful to give them self-determination and options to, you know, have their lives and run their communities. But it is a delicate balance.”
To spread the net wider, the business has also gone somewhat retro by going into publishing, with up to eight guidebooks coming out over the next few years. The first, coming out next month, is about Australia and its people.
“We’ve got a range of books coming out, so people can engage with us through that as well,” he says. “It’s really just us trying to find more ways for those customers that aspire to our values and they’re interested in what we do.
“It’s not a traditional destination guide, but a collection of stories about place and really, again, the driver of that is to create more opportunities for customers to engage with Intrepid more often and also provide a little bit of an alternative to what’s currently on the bookshelves.”
Emerging younger market
Intrepid’s fastest growing market, meanwhile, are those in the under-35 product range.
“That’s been our fastest growing product for the last year, which is contrary to what was happening the previous five years,” Barnes says. “It was a pretty tough slog for us with a younger demo. So I do think that they are looking to travel a little bit more real. And I think almost like it’s that retro thing that, like how their parents travelled were probably more backpacking in a sense, and the retro about, like, ‘I want to go off to Southeast Asia or South America’. So, yeah, I think there may be a what-comes-around-goes-around generation.
Gen next also seems to be shunning tech and meeting apps.
“I think you’ll see people wanting to go and have a sense of community, not wanting to be on the apps, connecting and travel is a vehicle for that,” he says. “So I do think there’s going to be a bit of a swing. They’ll still use social media to brag and holler out and show and tell stories.
“But I think there’s almost like and we’re seeing it with the dating apps dropping off of people joining run clubs for this sense of community. And I think this style of travel, where you are with a small group, engaging with local communities, is a way to do that.”
As for generations after that, he has his own to worry about, having become a father 18 months ago.
“I look at stuff completely different,” he says. “I hope my daughter gets to see this. I hope the world’s still in a position where these things are still possible. I want to be able to go for a swim in the ocean with my daughter and have these experiences as well with her. I’ll get her the opportunity to see them.
“That’s probably kicked my ‘wonder’ over a little bit more now, being a dad, I certainly look at things through my daughter’s eyes a little bit more.”
