Wales Outdoors Has Increased Availability Across All Tours And Hikes
Wales Outdoors has been looking at ways to offer quality mountain days and guided tours of historic locations that not only reflect what we want to deliver but are reactive to the desires of the customer.
It’s taken a lot of thought and, during mid season, a fraught schedule update, but we have changed our availability, to coincide with our desired outcomes, to be able to offer a ‘bus’ service from Cardiff, Swansea and Newport (other towns likely to follow with an initial focus on North Wales) for our tours and hikes held in Southern Wales.
We now offer all day hikes and tours that are available for individuals and small groups to book onto, Monday to Friday, apart from three weeks from mid-December to the first week of January and national holidays, and also most Saturdays and Sundays from October to March.
Why no peak weekends or holiday mondays?
Wales Outdoors, a long time ago, independently committed to avoiding honey pot locations at weekends from Easter to the end of September, when the tourism hotspots are most busy, due to the adverse impact of group use at these locations. Yes, we could generate great income at peak weekends, but that is not all that we are about. We believe that client experience, disruption to local residents and other users’ experiences are considerations that all providers ought to be mulling over and acting upon.
What about multiple events being booked on the same day?
Our ticketing system, delivered by Bokun - get yours here https://new.bokun.io/referral/MTAyNjkx - is sophisticated and allows for instant blocking out of experiences based on resource allocation, in our case, Andy and a handful of great professionals. This enables us to list multiple events on the same day, with the first booked experience blocking out the other listed experiences that would conflict with the assigned resource. In this way client choice will drive activity delivery.
What about private bookings?
Private bookings for most activities will remain a constant, with these being available to book almost every day of the year.
Our commitment to small group, sustainable events.
Wales Outdoors commitment to delivering the very best of Wales to our clients, in as sustainable a manner as is possible, continues:
In general, our hikes and tours have a maximum client capacity of 7 people. This can rise for hikes, but if it does, we’ll always bring along a second leader.
Our vehicle is an 8 seater, 7 passengers and 1 guide, fully electric luxury minivan. Client comfort and security is first and foremost, with the benefits of an electric vehicle with regard to air pollution clearly a plus. Indeed, we are the ONLY guiding and activity business in Wales that operates our tours using only electric vehicles.
We are sensitive to local communities and wherever we visit, we encourage our clients to spend with local businesses, even if only a cuppa at a refreshment stop. For us, these small independent businesses are our partners.
We discuss the devastation of the wonderful Welsh countryside by pine plantations, grazing animals, solar farms and wind farms on most tours and hikes, and we offer solutions to these sticky issues. This often engages clients in a lively debate that clearly has implications for their home environments.
The Wales Outdoors commitment to midweek availability, in part, is driven by a desire to encourage longer stays at weekends, so, extra bed nights for our accommodation partners. Likewise, offering the same throughout the year goes some way to assisting with extending the tourist season into those darker months…
Our next social group hike is 'Margam Abbey and Kenfig Sands' on the 5th July - to register visit https://www.facebook.com/events/3819340721614978/ or https://chat.whatsapp.com/BQzqRMhzjDOBUatO7ZMmiq - all are welcome (£5 to register) Walks can be as cheap as £2.91 - Subscribe to our blog to receive our once every three or four days posts, delivered to your inbox, and then you can attend as many hikes within a year as you choose. There are other benefits too :)
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You can book our walks and tours through the Wales Outdoors Website.
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