What was GNTours?
If you have landed on this page it may well be because you were looking for GNTours, one of my first travel ventures and indeed quite a successful one. Alas various factors forced me to close this company, although I have not ruled out doing some kind of phenix from the flames.
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What was GNTours?
GNTours, or GNT initially came from joke from a friend that we should start a company called Gross Negligence Tours. As is usually the case with me I purchased a domain and we played around with it. Initially this was for friends trips, but we then had the idea for doing stag and bachelor parties in South-East Asia.
Our initial market was the Philippines, but this was later expanded to Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and even Hong Kong and Macao.
The business model of GNT
Rather than being a travel agency we were for all intents event organizers. This meant sourcing people in the various locales and then offering services, people and for all intents party planning. From there we then added on our markup.
As opposed to my main company YPT we did not focus on being the best budget option, but rather being the best (and most expensive). This made it much easier to manage from a customer facing point of view and removed a lot of the bullshit. Essentially we were not chasing every last sale. As my second business as well we could afford to be picky.
Branding, success and eventual closure
It ran for approximately 5 years and by the end we were the number one Google search for stag and bachelor parties in the Philippines. This meant hosting 3-5 events a month. Again this was quality rather than quantity and if we had cheap people we would simply not book them.
I do not want to talk about what we earned here, but while it was less successful than YPT it it earned steady enough money to be way worth our while and to a degree was well placed for expansion. Alas the end came due to negative publicity garnered for events not related to the company itself. Sadly this meant that I had to close.
Phoenix GNT?
GNT worked fabulously from a Paid To Travel point of view with the model of bachelor party services far from being saturated in many locations. For all intents it needs fairly minimal outlay other than a website. In this respecters you can collect money before having to spend. All you really need is website, SEO and Social Media experience.
Why have I not relaunched it? Quite simple time, as in a lack thereof. It is though something I plan to do again, although under the Asia Stag, rather than GNT moniker.