Skift Take
Intrepid Travel has hinged its return to profitability on continuous investment into product innovation and its people. Now, a record-breaking start to 2023 sees it turn the dial from revival to thrive mode.
Australian-based tour operator Intrepid Travel returned to positive operating cashflow, after closing off 2022 with record bookings for its 33-year history.
The company managed to pare its loss in 2022 to $14.6 million (AU$22 million), down from $41 million (AU$ 61 million) in 2021 while notching positive operating cash flow of $23 million (AU$34 million) for the year. While a privately held enterprise, Intrepid offers transparency by making its financials public each year. The most recent numbers were disclosed in its sixth integrated annual report released this week.
Intrepid Travel CEO James Thornton told Skift in an exclusive interview that the company had gone from survival mode where global operations were stopped, with its staff cut in half at the height of the pandemic, to a story of revival, largely in the second half of last year.
"It was the year we got back up and running as a global tour operator again, which was fantastic. It was a year of two halves for us because the first half of the year was still very much impacted by the omicron variant and the pandemic," said Thornton.