Laurent Kuenzle fills the big shoes of Luzi Matzig as the new CEO of Asian Trails Group. But apart from the new title, nothing has changed at the regional DMC – or will change
How did you feel when you stepped into the office as the CEO on January 1?
I felt no difference. I’ve been with the company and grew with the people for 25 years. Luzi employed me to work with Diethelm Cambodia in 1995. We co-founded Asian Trails in 1999 (with Roger Haumueller, MD, Asian Trails Thailand).
So we think as entrepreneurs would. We don’t always agree, but we discuss it with one another, make a decision and find the best way forward for the company.
If I were coming from the outside, I might feel a difference. But we’ve worked together for years and the succession had been in the planning for a while. Many of our people had thought that it would be natural for me to take over one day, and now that has happened.
Are you driving the company or is Luzi still driving it?
Luzi is now chairman of Asian Trails. As CEO, I drive and run the company, with goals set by the chairman and the board. Obviously as chairman, he is still my boss. But I run the day to day. As chair, he is not always in the company and he plays an advisor role, which is important for me. As much as I like to listen to young people who bring in new ideas and inspirations, I also like to listen to people with a wealth of experience.
So what’s changed?
Not a lot. Before, I was running our offices outside Thailand – Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, China, Malaysia and Indonesia – as group MD reporting to Luzi. Now, Thailand is under my wings as well, along with corporate responsibilities such as finance, which Luzi used to do.
It’s interesting to have the whole company under my wings.
But as CEO, surely you want to make your own mark? At 45, surely you have your own ideas?
What I want is continued success of what we have achieved so far. I don’t want to revolutionise the company but I do want us to adapt to changes that are happening everywhere, whether it is our source markets that are changing, or tour operators and travel agencies.
So I have to anticipate change and lead the organisation towards a future goal. Today everything is moving faster. More than ever, I have to ask myself, am I still doing the right things? Am I asking myself the right questions for the organisation?
So your dream is only continuity – how boring!
(Laughs) You look disappointed! You thought I was going to tell you how I would revolutionise the company, that I would be changing everything, close this, open that. No.
We are a top quality, well-managed DMC with offices throughout South-east Asia and China. We’ve gone with the times and with new source markets, some more successfully than others. We’ve always had a pioneering spirit and a spirit of risk-taking in business. So there is no need to reinvent.
I also do not have plans to expand. I don’t believe we need to open an office in, for example, Singapore, because that’s commodity travel. What does it take to give two airport transfers and a half-day city tour in Singapore?
It would be different if it were MICE or events (i.e. more value add) but we don’t want to open in Singapore just for the MICE business. Same for Hong Kong, which I can handle out of my office in Beijing with suppliers in Hong Kong.
Have you seen the best days of the business, considering how competitive everyone says it is?
If we were a travel agency I will tell you, probably. But we’re not. We are a real DMC which provides a service at a destination and sells it either as FIT, package or tailormade tours. There is no money to be made if we’re simply handling point-to-point or repeat business.
What would you do if you were a travel agency?
It depends on the source market. In source markets such as Switzerland or France, where the client goes into the agency armed with information he’s got from the Internet, the travel agency should know his client like the back of his hand, take apart the information he has – often too much information – and be able to recommend what is perfect for him.
The agency has to build up the trust factor and the value of the relationship with the client. If you’re a travel agency that does that, you may be smaller than before with fewer clients, but you have a distinct client base.
And as a DMC, I have to anticipate how the tour operators and the travel agencies are changing so I am able to give them the new services they need.
What about the tour operating business? Are the best days over?
I don’t think so. Again, it depends on the source market. If you are a tour operator in a fast-moving source market, such as India or Brazil, and you don’t adapt to the trends of that source market – how it books, what service it demands, what niches have appeared, such as weddings and honeymoons in India – then I doubt if you would be able to survive in the long term.
How do you compete with the likes of Exotissimo, Diethelm, etc?
Exotissimo is strong in France, while we are strong in Brazil, Germany or Switzerland. Destination Asia is stronger in the UK.
Aside from different source markets, you try to compete based on product differentiation, although admittedly that is becoming difficult. There are new possibilities, such as border openings between Myanmar and Thailand, and when one DMC picks up on it, another follows suit, so where do you stand?
You compete on getting the trust of the client. A tour operator who trusts me will know that if I say, ‘This product is the right one for your source market’, it is indeed the right one. If he does not have that trust, he’ll be asking a lot of questions.
You went on a one-year sabbatical before assuming the CEO role. How did that help?
It’s one of the best things I’ve done in my life, on both the personal and business level.
I took the time to meet so many friends and family members, and it’s marvellous that they also took the time for me. I travelled to so many countries and made so many observations. I enjoyed starting conversations with people again. When you’re in business, the last thing you want to do when you get into a plane is to socialise with other people. But when you have time on your hands, you start to be more proactive and have conversations with people about everything under the sun, including travel – what they think about travel today, what are their dreams in travel, and so on.
10 NEED TO KNOWS ABOUT LAURENT KUENZLE
• Who is in your family? My partner Noom and my dog Flory
• What do you do for fun? Travel
• Your ideal vacation? My boat
• How do you book your own leisure trips? With or through friends
• What are you reading right now? The hundred-year-old man who climbed out the window and disappeared by Jonas Jonasson
• How do you stay healthy? Gym
• Favourite food? Thai
• A bad habit you cannot kick? Chocolate
• Your pet peeve, something that never fails to annoy you? People who are always right
• Most people don’t know that you can… cook
