{"id":4363,"date":"2026-11-08T23:10:52","date_gmt":"2026-11-08T23:10:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kabarsula.com\/index.php\/2026\/11\/08\/kabarsula-qa-intrepid-travel-global-chief-marketing-officer-hazel-mcguire-bandar-slot-indonesia\/"},"modified":"2026-11-08T23:10:52","modified_gmt":"2026-11-08T23:10:52","slug":"kabarsula-qa-intrepid-travel-global-chief-marketing-officer-hazel-mcguire-bandar-slot-indonesia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kabarsula.com\/index.php\/2026\/11\/08\/kabarsula-qa-intrepid-travel-global-chief-marketing-officer-hazel-mcguire-bandar-slot-indonesia\/","title":{"rendered":"kabarsula Q&A: Intrepid Travel global chief marketing officer Hazel McGuire bandar SLOT INDONESIA"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Appointed CMO in 2025, Hazel McGuire leads Intrepid Travel\u2019s global brand, communications, digital marketing, customer, sales and service, insights, and experiences teams, helping drive the company\u2019s growth and ambition to become one of the world\u2019s most iconic purpose-led travel brands.<\/strong><\/p>\n

With more than 20 years\u2019 experience across travel, transport and tourism, McGuire has held senior marketing, commercial and general management roles. Since joining Intrepid in 2022, she has helped accelerate growth, leading the UK business through record sales performance and strengthening the connection between customer insight, marketing and product strategy globally.<\/p>\n

A passionate advocate for responsible tourism and ethical marketing, Hazel serves on the Board of Travel by B Corp and believes businesses have a responsibility to create positive outcomes for travellers, communities and destinations. Travel Weekly caught up with McGuire who was in Sydney recently.<\/p>\n

How do you keep a coherent brand strategy amid multiple acquisitions?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

We\u2019re about to rebrand our French acquisition, Altai Travel and Atalante<\/a>, which we acquired at the start of this year. That\u2019s a segue, actually. Pre-COVID we had some 17 different brands: Peregrine for premium, Geckos for youth. During COVID we decided to move to one house under Intrepid, which has let us do a lot more with our brand strategy. Trying to be cohesive across 17 brands with the budgets we have was almost impossible.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve since acquired a number of companies around the world. During COVID we acquired Haka and a couple of others, and it took us quite a long time to bring them into the Intrepid brand. We still have acquisitions where we\u2019ve decided not to do that. In January 2025, for example, we acquired Sawadee<\/a>, a Netherlands tour operator. It will be Sawadee by Intrepid rather than becoming Intrepid, largely because it has very good brand awareness in the Dutch market, similar to what we have in the UK. It seems silly to rip that up. Altai and Atalante has brand awareness in the French market, but not quite as high, and we saw a real opportunity to move it under Intrepid quickly. We\u2019re doing that today. It\u2019s probably the fastest rebrand we\u2019ve done in our portfolio.<\/p>\n

But we only do it where it makes sense. Our brand strategy is centred around Intrepid, but if something doesn\u2019t fit for whatever reason, or there\u2019s a good commercial reason for it not to come under Intrepid immediately, we\u2019re okay with that. We\u2019ll maintain a couple of other brands. We still have Wildland in the US<\/a>, for example. It\u2019s a specific hiking and trekking operator, a bit more hardcore \u2013 more extreme backcountry hiking than we do within Intrepid \u2013 so it has stayed as Wildland for the moment. I suspect we\u2019ll move it under our portfolio in time.<\/p>\n

Do the acquired brands come into the same marketing approach?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Very much so. With our acquisitions we look for value-aligned companies. Altai and Atalante is a B Corp company, as Intrepid is. They do very active-style product really well, and there\u2019s an opportunity for the immersive adventure that we do well, so it\u2019s been a nice integration. Now that they\u2019re coming in under Intrepid, we\u2019ll start rolling out the brand strategy we use in other regions, including how spend splits between brand and performance.<\/p>\n

How do you choose which companies to acquire?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

I\u2019ll leave that question to my CFO. No, look, we look for values alignment and for commercials that stack up. There are two ways, really. One is acquiring into a market where we don\u2019t have a voice, where it would take us longer to build a presence ourselves than to buy one. The other is opportunity. Sawadee, for example, used a network of third-party operators, or DMCs. We saw the opportunity not only to gain a position in the Dutch market, but also to move their product into the DMC network we own. That\u2019s a double benefit commercially.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s always based on the commercials, but there has to be values alignment and product alignment in some way. That means either expanding our DMC network and getting better economies of scale, or getting in front of a customer we\u2019d struggle to reach at the same pace ourselves.<\/p>\n

Have the conflicts in the Middle East forced you to change your marketing strategy?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Of course it has an impact. In January and February we were flying \u2013 we thought this was going to be the best year ever. Then we got to March and, as is usual in world travel, something happened that made us change our plans. It doesn\u2019t change our strategy. We still believe in building brand value behind Intrepid rather than being seen as a commodity touring product. But do we need to change our channel split, our focus or our timing? Yes, absolutely.<\/p>\n

In the second quarter we went slightly more into performance spend versus brand as a short-term measure to protect this year\u2019s results. Globally we\u2019re probably at 50\u201350 brand and performance. In that quarter we went closer to 70% performance and 30% brand. We still thought turning brand off entirely wasn\u2019t the right thing to do, so we kept our partnerships, PR and media efforts. The strategy doesn\u2019t change. The shape changes slightly on a tactical level to protect the business results we need this year.<\/p>\n

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Strategy bends; it doesn\u2019t break, in times of turbulence, whether that\u2019s geopolitics or the economy<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It also changes by region. Australia and New Zealand were disproportionately affected because of the number of people flying through the Middle East hubs. For at least the first month there were rerouted flights and comparatively fewer flights, and then there was customer nervousness \u2013 do I want to fly through an area of conflict? So we might see Australia and New Zealand slow down and shift some spend to the northern hemisphere, where travel is a bit more resilient because people didn\u2019t have to travel through Middle East hubs for quite a lot of destinations.<\/p>\n

Strategy bends; it doesn\u2019t break, in times of turbulence, whether that\u2019s geopolitics or the economy. (Last week\u2019s) interest rates increased in Australia, which really squeezes people in the middle who have mortgages, and who are already seeing everyday spend chipped away. So we have to think about what makes sense in each market and how we talk to a customer who is more value-driven than ever.<\/p>\n

What we tend to see is that, rather than giving up on a holiday entirely, people ring-fence that money. When I led the UK that was always very true, and since moving into the global role I\u2019ve seen it\u2019s the same in every other market we sell in. People are much more willing to forgo dinner out or a trip to the cinema than their holiday. What we might see is shorter trips, or people choosing destinations closer to home so airfares aren\u2019t as high, or destinations where the exchange rate is more favourable or costs on the ground are lower. Having such a diverse range of products helps us because we can tap into those different choices.<\/p>\n

AI-powered search platforms, ChatGPT in particular, are now advertising. Are you adapting your marketing strategy to show up in LLMs and AI platforms?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

From a discoverability perspective we\u2019re in a pretty good spot. We tend to rank quite highly for paid placement in LLMs, and we\u2019re trialling in ChatGPT. To be honest, it surprises me that the LLMs haven\u2019t monetised faster, given the money that sits within Google search and the valuations being pitched around for the likes of Anthropic \u2013 billions and billions of US dollars. Do I think it will become a bigger part of the future? Potentially.<\/p>\n

At the moment the customer journey is still LLMs for condensing the choice set. I was with Google a month ago and they were saying the same thing: people then go back to Google to double-check that the hotels or experiences actually exist, then land on the brand page and complete the booking. That will change by the end of next year. I suspect we\u2019ll be a lot closer to agentic bookings \u2013 \u201chere\u2019s my itinerary, go book it\u201d \u2013 as new developments come along. So that\u2019s the world we need to think about.<\/p>\n

For me, earned media plays a large part in citations and discoverability, alongside what we do on our own site: the technical pieces so we can be crawled properly and the information is readable. And the more I hear about it, people may add a brand like Intrepid into their search, and the models will learn from that too, so that\u2019s inclusion in the choice set. It\u2019s a brave new world. As for ChatGPT as a platform right now, I\u2019m rather underwhelmed with the results we\u2019ve seen so far. If you look at the output, the ads look like Google Ads circa 1997 \u2013 maybe not quite, but really basic in look and feel.<\/p>\n

Is it going to get bigger? Yes, because let\u2019s face it, you can\u2019t have a valuation of US$3 billion [confirm figure] unless you actually make some money. They\u2019ll have to make it somewhere. Google ad spend is coming down globally, and I suspect that is LLM-driven, but that money isn\u2019t yet flowing into paid channels on LLMs because we\u2019re not seeing the results.<\/p>\n

What about showing up organically? Many people use Reddit, which has scaled heavily into ChatGPT. How do you make sure you show up?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

We kicked off a project called OneSearch about 16 or 17 months ago, when I came in. Rather than SEO being handled by the SEO team, we saw discoverability as much broader. We linked the social team, SEO team, website and PR efforts together under one project, asking how we show up in enough places that, when LLMs pull on trusted sources, we\u2019re actually there. That means reviews, earned media, being cited in great publications so we have that trust, and a readable website. It\u2019s a mix of art and science.<\/p>\n

I think we\u2019re doing reasonably well. The tools we use suggest our discoverability is pretty decent compared with others in the sector. It\u2019s quite an opaque world, but I think we\u2019re doing the right things.<\/p>\n

For me it\u2019s better not to define my strategy by \u201cthis week all the LLMs are reading this\u201d. It\u2019s better to look at the holistic picture: as long as my site is in good health and discoverable, and we keep getting citations in a variety of places from trusted sources, we should be set up as well as anybody can be in a world changing at breakneck speed.<\/p>\n

And what about (the Contiki) micro dramas?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Contiki?<\/a> I have to say, what they\u2019ve done looks fantastic, and for their audience it\u2019s perfect and should land well. I\u2019d seen YouTube as quite a young channel, then I dug into the numbers and it\u2019s insane how many over-50s and over-60s are spending time on YouTube watching longer-form travel content. So maybe something for us to consider. It\u2019s certainly something we\u2019re talking about for next year, and we already do a little with some of our social content, but that\u2019s by nature quite a lot shorter at this point in time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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