Let it Snow!

Emma is brand new to the Xplore team but certainly not new to adventure and the outdoors! She joins us in the UK office to manage our Local Coordinators, the people who recruit host families to look after our international students studying in England. She joins us at a busy time and we are super happy to have her!  You may be interested to know that Emma loves green tea, snow (more on this later) and a good woolly jumper.  She will fit right in!

Emma lived and worked in Australia for 7 months as they prepared to host the Olympics in 2000.  She worked in the Olympic ticket sales department living in Manly in a house with her own private beach! The journey to the office by ferry in the morning took in the sights of the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge. (Now that's a commute you can't complain about!)  She also travelled throughout New Zealand spending time snowboarding and living in the beautiful town of Wanaka in the South Island. Her favourite place was Auckland, a city with a fast pace, a great environment and reminiscent of old time England. 

Snowboarding really is Emma's passion.  She had her first lesson at the age of 14 while on a family ski holiday because the snowboarding instructor looked like Patrick Swayze!  Having skied in race teams since the age of 5 on snow and dry slopes she finally put her skis aside and took up snowboarding at the age of 20. (We hope to share some photos with you of Emma in her luminous racing pants and one pieces…)

For 2 years she worked as a chalet host in Europe for a company catering for students, and has fond memories of lots of fun with people from all over the world and of course, plenty of time on the slopes! After 2 years of back to back seasons she began to compete.

Emma's competition life started out at the British Championships in Austria competing in slope style and half pipe, she came 5th in pipe; a great start to her competition career.  She describes this first experience as 'terrifying but good'.  She went on to be sponsored by big names such as Helly Hanson and K2 as well as Dragon Googles and Vans.  She travelled round the whole of Europe to all the competitions, World Cups and Playstation Series with sponsors and magazines. 

Once the European season ended each year she would go to Mammoth in California which is a great place to train for 6 weeks and has become one of her favourite places to be! This would then be followed on by glacier riding in France, Switzerland and Austria until it was time to return to France for the winter. 

Then 7 years ago she set up the first European girls only coaching company for the next generation of snowboarders who wanted to progress their freestyle. The goal was to pass on knowledge and experience to those who will go on to do well in the sport.  Her highlights were seeing the students progress and gain confidence. But that didn't come without a lot of hard work on Emma's behalf while still being present on the competition circuit. Of course the boys felt missed out so a mixed camp was also started! There are still 2 camps run each year from Morzine in France, a place that is naturally a home from home for Emma. 

Having seen and done so much Emma knows it's the places you go and the people you are with that make life changing experiences.  In the future she would love to go to Japan to snowboard where there are few ski lifts (a great excuse to jump on a skidoo) and lots of untouched snow. 

With great passion Emma says that everyone should try skiing or snowboarding at least once in their life, and the team here at Xplore couldn't agree more as we look forward to our European trips this year! (Once we have got our flasks of green tea ready and best woolly jumpers packed..!)

Behind the Scenes in the UK Head Office

The sun is shining after a long spell of cloud and the UK head office is buzzing!  In the Sales and Marketing department there is always something new happening and I’m super excited about my latest task of putting together next years Group Travel brochures!  As our business grows it is time to separate out the information we give to our UK and international groups; so double the fun for me!

When I start thinking about a brochure I have to first think about what the purpose of the brochure is, who will be reading it and how much information they will need.  I then think about the page layout and what order my reader will find the information most useful.  In my head I start to think about the photos we could use from our library of images as well as getting an idea for the overall look of the brochure.  My aim is to capture the reader’s attention using photos and graphics whilst providing them with all the information they need to make a booking or enquiry.

Once I have a good idea of content I then brief our Marketing Design Manager in the USA who has the super talent of putting ideas onto paper using his creative skills!  He will always suggest ways of presenting information that I won’t have thought of so his input is invaluable.  We work together via email and Skype (what did we do before Skype?) until we have a brochure that we are happy to show to our Directors.  With fingers crossed we take them through the design and listen to their feedback.  With all final amends made it is time for proofreading.  There have been times that I have been glued to a brochure until 3am seeking out any obscure grammatical errors that I don’t want to miss!  The joy of writing for a website is that you can go back and correct any errors but printed material is of course a different matter!  During the design process I will have also been thinking about how many brochures we need and start to get quotes from printers.  We made the decision some time ago to print on environmentally friendly paper; I actually prefer the look and feel of it to normal paper and knowing that it could have had up to 6 other lives before becoming our brochure gives it a bit of character!  If I’m at all worried about how a particular colour will print on recycled paper I know I can visit the printing company to see it come off the press and make any colour corrections there and then.  We also take into account the cost to the environment of shipping and we are trying to use other means such as QR codes to direct people to our websites for further information, thus hopefully cutting down on how much paper we use.

The whole process of creating a brochure can take a few months and a lot of thought and effort goes into it but it is always worth it in the end!  Here in the UK head office we have brochures dating back to our humble beginnings in 1987 (pictured above) and it is always fun to flick through and see our journey not just in terms of branding and design but also products and destinations!  The only question is ‘are you coming with us’…?

KG Adventure and Xplore: New newsletter out!

We're glad to announce that the first newsletter of KG Adventure and Xplore got send out this morning. Every participant of our indie camps should already received it! If you want to sign up for the newsletter you can do so by entering your name and email adress here: 

http://www.xplore.de/newsletter