How Altai and Mhikes are transforming the landscape of free travel
With Margaux Birken, Altaï’s Digital Project Manager
With Margaux Birken, Altai’s Digital Project Manager
“Altai is a group of 5 travel agencies, specialized for over 40 years in organizing active trips to the four corners of the globe. Altai’s added value lies in its know-how, its expertise in the field and the presence of local French-speaking teams in over 30 destinations. This presence enables us to organize our own trips, without intermediaries, in over 30 countries, with our own local agencies, and on which we have complete control over our travelers’ experience, guaranteeing them the highest quality.”
What problems did Altai wanted to solve with Mhikes?
“Until now, most of our roadbooks have taken the form of a huge PDF, which we often had to print out and take with us on our travels. A PDF can also be read on a phone, but… it wasn’t ideal. That’s why, with a view to improving the customer experience, we now use the digital roadbook solution developed by Mhikes. No more 300-page PDFs or out-of-pocket expenses, we now offer our customers a real little digital guide, easy to use, interactive and available offline!”
Were there any unexpected impacts?
“We never thought it would be so convenient to have all our customers’ travel documents in one place, their travel app! Whether it’s vouchers for their bookings, plane tickets or a handy fact sheet on vocabulary and information on the local culture, our customers are delighted to no longer need to search for their documents in several places: they now have everything in their pocket and in one and the same app.”
Why did you think Mhikes was the solution you needed?
“Groupe Altai brands are all specialists in active travel and nature. Whether by foot, bike or kayak, we want our travelers to discover nature off the beaten track. So having a travel app like Mhikes comes in very handy for trips that sometimes take our customers hiking in unspoilt and therefore… remote corners! In the end, it’s (almost) as if they had a guidebook with them.”
Has Mhikes changed your day-to-day work?
“First of all, thanks to the Protracer solution, almost all our travelers who choose our freedom packages now go on their trips with our customized digital roadbook solution. This means we can offer a consistent level of quality across all our destinations and on all the tours we send our freedom travelers on. The Mhikes Editor solution also provides important logistical support, enabling our local experts to scout out and enrich our databases with hikes traced directly in the field.
Then, once the entire database has been built up and the trip templates prepared, it takes our travel consultants much less time to produce a tailor-made roadbook. They can then optimize this time to unearth the rare pearls for their customers and build with them the trip of their dreams. Coordination between our sales teams and our local experts is also facilitated by the collaborative platform that is Protracer, with everyone able to contribute to enriching our databases on their destinations and according to their expertise.
Finally, time is money! But beyond simply saving time in terms of human resources, the solution proposed by Mhikes also enables us to improve the quality perceived by our travelers. The quality feedback we receive on our travel application is generally very positive, and increases our customers’ intentions to recommend it to their friends and family. All this adds up to a very interesting financial gain for us.”
What’s your favorite part of Mhikes?
“Without a doubt, tour guiding is the real advantage of this solution! We can send our travelers around the world with complete autonomy and peace of mind. Although it doesn’t replace a real guide, Mhikes nevertheless offers important support to travelers who don’t want to, or can’t, travel in a group with a guide.”
Does customer support help you make progress on a daily basis?
“Customer support is very responsive, and after a while you get the impression that the Mhikes staff are your own colleagues! Whether for technical questions or to help us improve our tool, we know we can count on them. It’s reassuring to know that we have a back-up team in case of problems or questions.”
A little bonus we’re proud to share: “What we also like about Mhikes is the teams’ accessibility and openness to suggestions regarding future developments of the digital solution offered by Mhikes. We can see that everyone is being listened to and that we’re moving forward together in building this tool!”