What it’s actually like to work at Patch Adventures
Ever wondered what it’s actually like to take your booking and manage your trip?
Well, buckle up! Because behind the scenes, life at Patch as a Booking Manager is spent hurtling along an information super-highway! It’s truly incredible just how much planning and preparing goes into our adventures with an enormous amount of information flowing between our fully remote team – crisscrossing Australian, European and North American time zones…not to mention driving around in no less than seven different software programs and apps at any one time.
Usually I start my engine (after fuelling it with a double shot of coffee first!) by catching up on overnight happenings in our Slack channels. This is the on-ramp to the multi-lane, fast-flowing information superhighway I mentioned – it’s where I go for the coordinates I need to navigate my day. There are usually updates to absorb in the news feed for starters, which could be anything from a world event that might impact one of our trips, a change in a policy to note or an update from our Trip Design team that I need to let our guests know about. Once I’ve read the road signs and plugged in those coordinates it’s time to shift it up a gear and get chatting with our guests! Never mind the ‘hands-free’ – here at Patch we like to be ‘hands-on’ and that means jumping on the phone with you…
This literally takes me from suburb to suburb around Australia and across the Tasman Sea with calls to our guests, which can be an unexpected adventure in itself! It’s fascinating learning why you want to visit certain destinations, and why you want to experience a Patch adventure.
These kinds of calls aren’t the only conversations I have, though. Whilst the streets in this neck of the city are relatively well lit and smooth, sometimes I find myself driving on slightly bumpier terrain during the course of my day with more difficult conversations to be had. Like gently deflating a guests’ tyres by letting them know that the last spot on an adventure they had their eye on is no longer available, or more robust discussions with guests that are strongly opposed to tipping their guides, and… even needing to turn on the interior light for guests with strong political or religious beliefs as to why these aren’t things they should pack in their luggage on one of our adventures.
Helping you realise your travel dreams as a BM is pretty rewarding as far as jobs go. I know I speak for our other BM’s when I say that we all have spent months communicating with our Patchies on the phone or by email preparing you for your adventure.
It’s crushing then, when a guest calls us to share the unfortunate news that life has taken an unexpected turn, and they must cancel off the trip. We truly feel your heartache and disappointment on those calls, we’re with you and it’s something that always gets shared in our Team Huddles.
On the upside to this are the conversations we have with our guests that are just getting back into travel after coming out the other side of experiencing life-altering events. Like losing a partner either to divorce or illness, or perhaps a child or close friend, and sometimes even surviving a serious health-scare themselves.
Besides the calls on my daily commute, there are many other exits along the super-highway I need to veer onto that will take me out of the fast-lane and into the backstreets of Patch and are otherwise signposted as ‘Trip Coordination’. These are all the left- and right-hand turns (and sometimes one-way streets!) I take through our software programs and apps so the team and I can get your booking all zipped up ready for take-off. There’s trip notes and printable itineraries to send out, checking of payments, not to mention sharing your documentation with our phenomenal Trip Ops Team so they can book your extra nights and internal flights.
I’ll set up and kick off guest Whatsapp chats and check in on unwell guests currently on trips in their care chats. I’ll pull onto the Trip Design boulevard to post guest questions I don’t know the answer to, and share insights from guest feedback calls from returned trips. Sometimes I need to slow my roll and pause at the pedestrian crossing whilst I carefully consider who I’m going to match up as roomies. Oh yes, the matching of roomies. Yikes! This one has been known to keep me awake at night – there I am lying in darkness, staring at the ceiling in the wee hours as Day 1 of an adventure is kicking off in another far-flung part of the world, my fingers crossed hoping I got the rooming arrangements right! Switching off from the info-flow is a hazard to beware…
Through all this zig-zagging and lane changing though are the welcome rest stops I get to make with the team in various Google Meets across the week. We’re a pretty fun bunch and as remote workers it can be quite lonesome at times, so I always look forward to seeing their grinning faces and catching up with everyone.
The Bookings team meets three mornings a week in our Team Huddle to chat all things bookings. Mat (our cofounder) presents his Team Update every Tuesday for the whole team across all brands (twice actually because of time zones!), every second Wednesday I get to meet with the European Marketing team and on Thursday’s it’s a tune up from my co-piloting Trip Coordinator who helps keep me on track with reeling in guest documentation. And Friday’s? Well, you’ll love this…
The whole team spends 2-hours online together in a Google Meet doing ‘gardening’. This is my favourite meeting of the week. It’s where every team member stops what we’re doing to work on a different part of the business – weeding, watering and pollinating it with ideas to help it flourish. I love having the chance to work on improving something the whole team and our guest community can benefit from.
Let’s slow to a stop whilst I hit the high beams on being a BM for just a moment longer…
There are three Booking Managers’ at Patch and we each have approximately 16 trips across the year that we manage. Look under the hood and you’ll see that if there’s 12 guests on all of our trips – that’s close to 200 guests EACH that we’re helping to make their travel dreams come true. Pretty impressive huh! Don’t worry, it’s an easy mistake to make to think that we’re only looking after your booking, but the truth of the matter is…a BM’s day is B-I-Z-Z-A-Y-Y-Y!
So, here’s a couple of road rules to follow that will make your BM’s heart happy! You’ll be cruising along with us on the Patch superhighway with the wind in our hair to get you where you want to go….
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- Jump on a call with us! Having a chat with you person to person helps us get to know each other right from the start! We love having a chat – it’s the quickest way for us to share need-to-know info without the untimely back and forth of an email.
- Add our phone number to your mobile contact list so you’ll know it’s us when we call! Sometimes our days are packed with scheduled calls to other guests, and there’s just no time for a car chase down deserted streets! If we miss you, it might be a day or two before we get a chance to try you again – even if you call us straight back. Catching you the first time we dial is like hitting the green light at every intersection in our day.
- Help us help you! Send us your documentation (flights, insurance, passport, emergency contact etc) well before their due by date. Behind the scenes we have deadlines to meet so our team can book time sensitive extras for you like pre/post tour accommodation, airport transfers and internal flights or train tickets.
- Let us know about any changes to your fitness or medical history as soon as they happen. This is so important! A guests’ health and fitness can really impact a trip – whether it be our on-ground team knowing how to assist you in an emergency and more often than not, it can really affect the group dynamic. Being honest with your BM (and yourself) about your health and fitness prior to your trip helps prevent a 12-car pile-up!
Psst, I’ll let you in on a secret…there’s no hiding it, we’ll find out anyway…
Well Adventurers…we’ve pretty much arrived at our destination for what it’s like to be a Patch BM so I’ll park us here for now. Thanks so much for hitching along for the ride. As you now know…every day at Patch is an adventure!