Book a Private Yosemite Guided Hiking Tour Before We Sell Out
We generally agree with the sentiment that a company should never refuse business. And we believe if someone offers us their hard-earned money in exchange for our services, then our obligation is to make their experience the best we can make it.
It should always be top quality and up to or exceeding your standards no matter what.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your viewpoint, we are a small, family-owned company. Many say that gives us our soul, our true connection to our customers, and they say because of the way we operate, we won’t stay small for long. Those guests are an inspiration, and we appreciate their kindness and insight.
Even the Four Seasons Hotel, one of the finest hotels on the planet, wasn’t started in one day. Yes, even the largest company began with an idea. We had our idea but very little capital. In a large startup community such as San Francisco, we can only grow so fast, especially since we refuse to lower our quality of service. We believe we need to continue to be the best no matter what, even if that means we need to begin a waiting list of customers. Would you rather wait for the best tour possible or get a mediocre one right away? Would you rather dine on fresh fish caught out of the ocean that day or eat the fish that has been in the fridge for a few days? We don’t care if Steve Jobs comes back to life and demands a tour. He’s going to wait, just like everyone else. It’s only fair.
High Price of Luxury
We can raise our prices and lose the bottom threshold of customers, but that again would change our product. Our prices will go up in due time, though not until the industry is ready for it. For now, we are still testing the market, listening to our customers, honing our skills, and making sure every brick we lay in our company structure is as close to perfect as it can be. We’d rather go slowly and concentrate on building things correctly than need to redo the structure later at the expense of everyone.
Many business owners may feel we’re foolish for waiting to grow, and perhaps we are. We do, however, have no safety net, and if unforeseen events occur, it’s only us to take care of us. We don’t have the luxury of expanding on a whim when we are not ready with the right team and crew.
Reality of Tourism
As young entrepreneurs, we thought we’d open for business and be millionaires in a month. That was until we learned the tour business is a tricky one. Slowly we came to understand the time, cost, and effort involved in creating a quality product. We could expand but refuse to limit that quality to grow. We are patient, as we need to be in the woods when hiking 20 miles to the top of Half Dome, and we ask our customers to join us in our patience.
So we go the rare route. We open our schedule for the year in January and send the email to our friends and those who choose to ask for our time. When our schedule is filled, mostly because Yosemite has a season, especially for guided wilderness hiking, we are sorry; it’s filled. You’ll need to book next year or instead use our services for a private San Francisco city tour, California coast tour, or anything else we may have time to help you with if we are sold out.
We really do want to serve you and help you see San Francisco and Yosemite. If our schedule is full, however, you will need to wait until we have time available to give you the tour you deserve. We want to provide the best product possible. It’s as simple as that, and why our tours sell out.
Dylan Gallagher