• Agile & Scrum Basics

“Never waste a good crisis” – Fenny Koppen of Ricksja Travel

Say you love travel and you work at a cool travel company with a unique proposition. All your colleagues have a passion for travel and together with your team you are working hard to increase sustainability in the travel industry. You are also working hard to improve social quality by setting up local projects on a global scale. The wind in your sails! And then suddenly it’s March 16, 2020, Prime Minister Rutte’s press conference. The world changes in an instant. Shaky? Or knocked out? What to do? Fenny Koppen of Riksja Travel, market leader in faraway travel, talks about her experiences. Step in for a time travel experience.

Destination unknown

Fenny Koppen is a partner and member of Ricksja Travel’s lead team. As of mid-March, the world is upside down here as well. COVID-19 is sweeping around the world and for the travel industry that means; repatriate, rebook and cancel. “There was a lot of work to do immediately. Travelers who were still on site had to be repatriated and, in the meantime, all trips that were still to take place also had to be canceled. That meant fast switching, calling, informing and rebooking. At the same time, team members had to start working from home and that too required quick switching.”

All at once, Ricksja Travel’s daily business comes to a halt and an unknown destination looms on the horizon. Riksja Travel decides to immediately transform the organization to the new and rapidly changing reality. The still unknown short and long term future naturally brings many question marks. Question marks that are difficult to answer due to continuously changing information from the governments. “For that reason, we put together a crisis team. This allowed us to switch quickly, make decisions and constantly optimize all processes. The new way of organizing gives us even more focus and service to customers. By now we are out of the hectic first months and looking to the future. With pain in our hearts we said goodbye to some of our staff. We also immediately adjusted our structure and started working on the basis of the learnings from the first months. In this way we believe we can make Rickshaw stronger in the future, without it becoming a weak copy of what it was before. In terms of offering, we have also looked to the future and transformed our earnings model.”

Such a big step forward is, of course, always exciting. How did Ricksja Travel handle it during the hectic time? “We created teams that focused purely on projects that contribute to the next phase of Rickshaw. In 2-week sprints, they went to work on renewing the proposition. This allowed us to add a lot of value very quickly”

Collaboration and working from home

The culture of Ricksja Travel can be labeled as: family-oriented. People have an eye for each other. But what if you don’t have each other physically in sight? Can you maintain that personal feeling? “Every team has a daily check-in, which includes attention to non-work-related matters. With us people work extremely hard under high pressure, then having an eye for each other is extra important.” In addition to interpersonal issues during those check-ins, there is also room to provide team members with the most up-to-date information. Ultimately, it all contributes to providing the best service and information to the end user. From lead team, to team members to customers. “For example, we have weekly central online communications from the lead team: videos, livestreams, FAQs, updates on destinations.” Actually, in times of crisis, Ricksja Travel’s lead team has become even more visible throughout the organization than before. With learning experience as baggage.

Ticket to the future

This whole period has cost, but also given Rickshaw a lot of energy. Because it was such a unique situation, let’s call it a crisis once again, the team was more than 100% on every day. “Incredible teamwork and new ideas created confidence that we would come out strong. Also the financial safety net from the government gives some peace of mind as far as I’m concerned. That makes us see perspective.” Fenny Koppen is an energetic and positive person. Of course, sometimes all the current challenges feel like a leaden mountain climb that may cause the courage to sink into the proverbial mountain shoes. Still, Fenny keeps looking to the top, where the sun shines. What steps is Ricksja Travel taking to get closer to that sunny top of the mountain? “Our organizational structure is now future-proof and we are full steam ahead with the further development of our Europe proposition where we bring far, closer. We now know how agile and entrepreneurial we are. It feels like a great journey together, in which we have put everything in place to come out stronger after this crisis. Never waste a good crisis we say,” said Fenny.