Blogging from the skies!

Ian Lewis is our Managing Director.  He is the driving force behind the amazing programmes that we offer to young people, he is a keen sportsman and often cycles hundreds of miles for charity…he even makes the team a great cup of tea! In this blog article Ian 'Lewi' Lewis gives us a snapshot of his life in the fast lane! 

'As part of my job for Xplore I get to travel to each of our offices and this is one of my favourite parts of the job.

I am currently sat on the plane on the way back from my recent visit to our Xplore office in Shenzhen in South China. As the man next to me is snoring I thought I would write an article for our blog! The travel to our offices in the US and China is not straight forward and makes a trip to our Hamburg office seem very easy. I flew out 7 days ago via Beijing, the flight time from London to the Chinese capital is about 10 hours and then it is a further 3½ hours to Hong Kong and then from the airport to Sheouk (my hotel area) it is a short 30 minute ferry ride.

I am lucky that on my trips our local teams look after me and help with my arrangements and meetings. As the time is pretty tight my schedule tends to be full. I set off from the UK on Monday and arrived late Tuesday night and on Wednesday morning at 8am it was straight to the office. 

David Clarkson is our Asia Director has been based out in the Far East for 23 years, he is fluent in both the language and the culture. He has been working tirelessly to grow our business out in the region and has made many key contacts for Xplore. He is supported by Merak and Vivi in the office who look after the account management of our current customer base. Merak has been accompanying groups to the UK for the last 5 years and therefore has a great understanding of how our summer operation works. Vivi has been working for 4 months now and is local Shenzhen, she is fluent in English and has a background in business and marketing. They have all done a fantastic job setting up our office and bringing a bit of Xplore to South China!

Food is a big part of business out in China and you find many meetings are held over lunch or dinner. This approach has allowed me to eat some weird and wonderful food, I think it is fair to say that you if you are fussy about your food then perhaps this is not the place for you. I have eaten some chickens feet (boiled and deep fried), cow intestines, grubs, chicken cartilage and crab where half of it was poisonous.

Communication is a key part of our success and so at 9 am we had a conference call with Jens in our US office to bring us up to speed with the developments of our 'MyChoice' high school programme over there. We then jumped into a cab to meet a Shenzhen intercultural company who are planning to send 3 groups to our summer camps.

We grabbed lunch on the run as we had to be in Foshen for a meeting with a new partner. The train network is fantastic and while I appreciate many countries have a good rail network, coming from the UK this was a treat. We had dinner with an agent who is hoping to bring a group from an international school to visit our US summer camps.

The next morning David had to leave for Shanghai and so Merak accompanied me to Macau and our meeting with our friends from AES who run Volunteer International. We had to get a high speed ferry across to the Las Vegas of China, it is an amazing place and although under main land rule still has a lot of Portuguese influence. As ever our meetings were very productive and finished with dinner with Robbie, the Group Director of AES and his team.  Sadly due to a 5 am start Merak and I didn’t venture out afterwards!

Hotel view in Shanghai

The next morning was another morning of travelling as I was due in Shanghai. I said goodbye to Merak at the ferry terminal and purchased some green tea for the girls in the office! First a ferry to the airport, followed by a short flight then an hour taxi ride into central Shanghai. My flight was delayed and so I was late for my first meeting. Although as this is not uncommon in travel, our agent Mr Wang and Keeping were very understanding. David had been with the team from Only all day training them in our year long high school programmes. Our second meeting of the day was over dinner. We met a student wanting more information about studying in the US, and we also caught up with Amber and our new agent Sophie. Sophie came to us last summer as a parent  and is now an agent for us.  Amber taught English last summer at our Finborough Hall centre and when Sophie asked if we could help with someone to teach English to her and her daughter Alice it was an easy decision to ask Amber if she wanted to go. Amber has been out there for a month and is loving her time, and will be featured on this blog soon.  The dinner was great and as with many of our customers it is like sharing food with friends.

Another queue at another airport,
you really have to learn to stand in line
when you are travelling! 

Saturday morning and time for another meeting with an organisation called People Impact, both Michael and Nick have been in the student education market for years. They have some really interesting programmes that we might consider adding to our summer camp courses in 2015. They also have three groups for the UK this summer and asked for more information on our college programmes. Before David had to depart for home in Shenzhen we had a bit of time for planning and reviewing our meetings over the last week and future operations. After he left I found a quiet corner to plough through my emails and wait to watch England V Italy in the final round of games of the six nations. As I had to be up at 4:30am it was straight back to the hotel after the game.

Homeward bound after 5 flights,
4 train journeys, 3 ferry rides and lots of taxis.

So today Sunday 16^th of March is another travel day I had a flight back from Shanghai to Beijing then a BA flight back to Heathrow. I will then jump on the Heathrow Express, the Underground and a train to Cambridge. Where I will meet my wife Jose, and children Ema and Oscar for dinner at Pizza Express before continuing home to Stowmarket. While it is pretty tiring I have to say that I enjoy meeting our various teams and customers, it great for us to see that our planned expansion is going well.'