Managing Client Expectations and Safety in Adventure Travel

As an adventure travel company, Yellow Dog experiences many unforeseen roadblocks or issues with many of their more remote lodges. For example, in Alaska this past week one of the lodges Yellow Do works with burned down while Yellow Dog clients were staying there. This left 6 clients stranded in the middle of the Alaskan bush without any place to stay. Luckily, a Yellow Do representative was actually in Alaska at the time and was able to help coordinate new travel and fishing plans for the clients in order for their vacation not to be totally ruined. While ultimately Yellow Dog lost money on this trip, the clients safety and wellbeing was of utmost importance. This provided me good insight on how to balance the financial goals of the company with the safety and satisfaction of the clients. Yellow Dog would not be in business very long if they gained a reputation of not being able to get clients out of bad situations.

Yellow Dog also operates extensively in Belize. The week before last, an American doctor was on a fly fishing trip in Belize (not booked through Yellow Dog or any of the lodges with which Yellow Dog operates). He along with his guide were both shot and killed on the boat. Essentially what happened was the guide was mixed up with Belizean drug cartels and was specifically targeted, the American was not the intended target. In spite of these events, Belize is still a safe country for American travel and was an isolated event with a specific target. Regardless of the intent and the fact that this had nothing to do with Yellow Dog or any of its lodges, many American travelers have been canceling their trips to Belize, costing Yellow Dog a lot. While Yellow Dog has tried to convince people that it is still a safe place to travel, they can only do so much and have to understand that their clients have to look out for their own safety. Luckily, Yellow Dog offers many different similar saltwater fishing vacations so they are able to steer clients to another destination.