Guest Bio
Cristian Levy is the Founder and CEO of Amity Tours, a boutique inbound tour operator based in Chile. With a Master’s Degree in Hotel Management and Tourism Business Administration, Cristian has a rich background in the adventure travel industry. He is an avid cycling enthusiast and passionate skier, reflecting his deep connection to outdoor activities. Under his leadership, Amity Tours specializes in five key areas: bike tours, hiking tours, skiing tours, family adventures, and conservation tours. The company is committed to providing sustainable and authentic travel experiences that showcase the diverse landscapes and cultures of Chile and Argentina.
Show Summary
In this episode, Cristian Levy shares his journey from his academic pursuits to establishing Amity Tours. He discusses the challenges and rewards of operating a boutique tour company in South America, emphasizing the importance of sustainability and authentic experiences. Cristian also highlights the role of adventure tourism in promoting conservation and community engagement, offering insights into how Amity Tours integrates these values into their offerings.
Key Takeaways
- ✓ Sustainable Tourism: Implementing eco-friendly practices is essential for preserving natural environments and supporting local communities.
- ✓ Authentic Experiences: Providing genuine interactions with local cultures enhances the travel experience.
- ✓ Diversified Offerings: Catering to various interests, such as biking, hiking, and skiing, attracts a broader clientele.
- ✓ Community Engagement: Collaborating with local communities ensures that tourism benefits residents and fosters cultural exchange.
- ✓ Leadership in Tourism: Guiding a company with clear values and vision leads to meaningful and impactful travel experiences.
What You’ll Find on Amity Tours’ Platform
- ✓ Bike Tours: Guided cycling adventures through Chile’s scenic routes.
- ✓ Hiking Tours: Trekking experiences in diverse landscapes, from mountains to forests.
- ✓ Skiing Tours: Ski packages that cater to various skill levels in the Andes Mountains.
- ✓ Family Adventures: Tailored itineraries suitable for families seeking adventure and cultural immersion.
- ✓ Conservation Tours: Trips focused on environmental education and participation in conservation efforts.
👉 Visit Amity Tours’ Official Website to explore their offerings and learn more about Cristian Levy’s contributions to adventure tourism in Chile.
Learn more about Amity Tours and connect with Cristian at:
https://www.amity-tours.com/
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Podcast Transcript
This transcript is auto-generated on recording, and has not been edited by a human. It may contain lots of mistakes, crazy words, and stuff that makes no sense. The host and the guest are not responsible for the accuracy of the transcript.
Welcome everybody to another episode of the Big World Made Small Adventure Travel Podcast. So happy to have each and every one of you back here listening to the show and participating. And super excited to have Cristian Levy from Amity Tours here with us today to share a little bit of his story. And Cristian, welcome to the show. Thank you, Jason. Hi. Well, anything as I said.
I’m so, usually so proud to talk about my company, a company that my father started. It was his idea and that I had the guts, the stomach to continue growing. And now we are in our 20th season started. So yeah. 20 years. Pretty, pretty cool. Yeah. You’d, you’d mentioned that right before I pushed the record button. I said, hold on a second. Let’s, let’s get the conversation recorded. Cause that’s, that’s a really big milestone.
And I don’t know if we have enough time to cover everything that’s happened in the last 20 years, but I want to kind of get the gist of it. You mentioned that your father was involved in starting the company. So let’s go back to the beginning. How did you get from where you were to where you are today? Yeah, well, the way I would describe this is like how life and your DNA takes you in a course that you would never imagine, but everything makes sense.
This started, we have to pinpoint a date or a year, it started in 1948. My father, yeah, my grandfather, Hector, he was my father’s, Alejandro’s father, he was a big explorer and he loved to go on bicycle rides, going from the Central Valley in Chile to the coast to stay at their beach house over there.
Jason Elkins (02:16.258)
but also explore the Andes, this amazing mountain range that we have throughout Chile. And what they did back in 1948 was like a whole journey to get to one ski down of Pist. They had to start at five in the morning on these big dirt trucks to get up to a certain point and then on mules.
continue up and then ski up to the top of the mountain, then ski down for one over. Before the ski resorts and the ski lifts. I hope people listening to this that like to ski could appreciate that. I know some backcountry skiers that do take some pretty impressive, make some pretty impressive efforts to ski down a slope. But if you wanted to ski at all, you kind of had to do that back then, huh? Yeah. And when you look at the pictures,
from like black and white pictures, they are wearing blue jeans and Woollen on woollen sweaters and stuff like that. Nothing. No technical gear anything like that, but it was their passion to explore to explore the Andes to explore our beautiful country Chile and so my father grew up in that environment and then He was an athlete. He was part of the Chilean soccer team college
college level. But he studied to be an engineer and he was an industrial engineer or his life. And lucky me, I made this crazy decision that my family supported to study tourism. I didn’t know anything about it, but it made sense to me to be in the outdoors and to try to make a career in this.
not even in my best dreams I would have imagined to run a company. I wanted to be a consultant, a professional in the tourism industry, but it was not part of my decision to start a company. And then my father, he specialized in the textile industry and making shoes in Chile or making all the canvas that you need to, I don’t know.
Jason Elkins (04:41.65)
all the textile industry that as Chile started to sign international trade commerce with Asia, that industry in Chile ended. He couldn’t find anything, any job because everything was imported, not producing Chile. We started getting all the imports from China, India, Pakistan, you name Vietnam, and then the Chilean industry. See, it seems to be a common story throughout a lot of North and South America. Yeah. I get it, yeah.
And so this opportunity came from the sky, from the stars. And I was in the situation where my boss, knowing that my family was more related in the skiing industry, we got a request from Brazil, saying, hey, we are a family. Brazil, we don’t know how to ski, but we would love to spend 21 days in Chile skiing.
And it was an important sales for us. So were you, I’m curious, Cristian, was that, did you already kind of have a business model and that was your first client or was that just kind of a surprise? Like how did they find you? How did that happen? Yeah, well, I’ve been falling from the sky. Yeah, well, when I graduated, I immediately joined this
entrepreneurial foundation called Euro Chile. And as a junior consultant, I started working with them in a project to create and develop the first ecotourism tour operator in Chile. And so I started working with them, as I said, as a junior consultant in tourism. And then my boss was like a senior executive coming from the airline industry. He was like almost ready to retire.
He was running the company, this new company, and he didn’t know anything about skiing, so he commissioned all this to me. It’s like, Cristian, I know nothing about skiing. I know about tourism and tour operators and all that, but this is your shot, and I know your father used to be a ski instructor. So man, you too, take care of this, and I’ll make sure everything happens.
Jason Elkins (07:06.126)
He empowered me to do this. And so after we finished that first trip, something clicked on my father’s mind. He kept repeating saying, I cannot believe that I can do what I love the most and get paid for it. And shortly after he said, you know what? We should start a company. And then the next month in August, that’s 13th.
2003, we signed our company integration and here we are 20 years after. That is such a cool story because at the time when the business, the textile business was drying up, I can just imagine your dad was like, holy, I’m just gonna say holy crap. Yeah. Because he’s got a family, he’s got responsibilities.
probably terrifying and then over the course of, you know, how long would you say from the moment when he’s like, okay, I’m done with the textile industry until you had that group from Brazil, how much time elapsed? About a year. He, well, the Asian economic crisis hit Chile in 2002, early 2002, and he was the first, one of the top executives of this company to be,
laid off. So yeah, and so and then he knew there’s no other company that produces what I know how best how to produce. And so I know I’m done. What do you what do you thought he knew best how to produce apparently, right? There is something else there. And that happens with a lot of I think, outside the box type of opportunities, you know, tourism, I mean, tourism is a business. I don’t I’m not going to discount that I know, sometimes people say you need to get a real job. It is it is a real job.
And it’s also a really pretty cool job. But it’s like, I think there’s a lot of people walking around there that have a skillset that would be really well suited to do what they’re passionate about. But as long as someone’s willing to pay them money to do something that they’re not passionate about, it’s hard to see that until that money dries up. And then it’s like, okay, it just kind of clears the slate. And it’s like, okay, I can’t do what I…
Jason Elkins (09:31.01)
Thought I was going to do to make the money. So now I’ve got this blank slate in front of me. And it can either be a really good opportunity. And I know it’s difficult. And I know there are people listening to this. It’s like, yeah, oh, Jason, what do you know about this? Have you ever been laid off? Yeah, I have been through some scenarios. But it’s such a great opportunity to start over. And it sounds like it worked really, really well for me. You and I wouldn’t be sitting here talking right now if that hadn’t happened. So that’s pretty cool. What’s the?
Other than it sounds like the positive takeaway from this was, wow, we can make money doing this. And I suspect there were also like your first foray into this. I can imagine there were a tremendous number of learning opportunities. Do you remember back to one thing like, wow, we never saw that come in. I mean, did you lose anybody on that trip? Any any crazy stuff happened on that trip that was just a I mean, oh boy.
We barely knew how to put chains on the tires, the snow chains. It took us two hours the first day to put up the snow chains. But fortunately, your clients apparently didn’t know anything about snow and skiing anyway. Yeah, nothing. So those clients, this family from Rio de Janeiro, they kept coming for 10 years in a row. 10 consecutive years doing a similar tour, usually spending 20-22 days with us.
for 10 years until their kids graduate from college. Wow. So apparently you guys did a tremendous job on the very first trip. It reminds me of I was a fly fishing guide in Montana for a while and worked in that part of it. And I remember my very first guide trip. I was terrified. I wasn’t expecting it. It was kind of the same thing. I showed up at the shop one day and the guide that was supposed to be there, called in sick and.
My boss looked at me and he knew I had a drift boat. I had a guide license, but I’d never taken a guide trip. And he said, you want to do it? And I’m like, okay. Yeah, I was terrified. Made a few mistakes that, you know, we won’t go into too much detail. But I remember at the end of that trip, you know, my clients, my new clients looked at me and said, we’ve never been on a guided fly fishing trip, but you really set the bar high. And to this day, I wish that I had the courage to say, you know what? I’ve never been on a guided fly fishing trip either. So, and you guys were great.
Jason Elkins (11:49.866)
Great clients. So it’s, I can relate to the excitement and the nerves and, and stuff. We were obviously nervous. But I was, well, I was 25 years old. And so I, for me it was like a risk free or worry free situation. I was having fun with my father outside. I knew all the ropes about tourism, but
what he brought to the company was like, he was the operation manager of this big, big company. So planning was part of his day-to-day job. So when we knew that these people were coming, we visited every single hotel, went to every single restaurant, visited every single ski resort and make sure, at least we knew the road to get to these places and. Yeah. I.
Jason Elkins (12:45.838)
I love that. I love that story. It’s so cool. Yeah, I remember stuff like that as well. But having the courage to just say, you know what, we’ll figure it out along the way. I mean, you obviously did some planning, but when I say figure it out along the way, I’m meaning you took the job. You said, yes, we will do it because there’s so many people out there that would be like, oh, that would be amazing. I would love to do that, but I don’t.
I don’t know where to take them. I don’t know which hotels. So they’ll turn down the opportunity and maybe it plants a seed. Maybe they decide, well, I’m gonna prepare myself so that the next opportunity that comes along, I’m ready for it. And then there’s the type of person that’s like, no, I’m gonna take this opportunity. I’m gonna use this opportunity as kind of an impetus to figure it out. For me, the podcast is the same thing. I’ve never done a podcast. I’m just like…
I still, as I’m having this conversation with you, Cristian, I’m figuring out, OK, how am I going to edit these podcasts? And so do we be listening to this? I don’t know where we’re at in the process or when you’re listening to this. But there’s something to be said for just taking advantage of the opportunity, saying yes, and figuring it out along the way. Because if you don’t have that pressure to figure it out, sometimes we don’t. So I think that’s super cool. And I’m also impressed at.
the number of tour operators that I’ve met recently and historically that come from an engineering background, which kind of blows me away a little bit because when you think of the engineering personality, I mean, I see the value, I can see how they have good organizational skills, which is very helpful. But when you think of the personality of the typical engineer, and then you think of the personality of the typical tour guide, tour operator,
Sometimes there’s a little bit of a disconnect. It’s like, wait a minute, how does that work? But I’ve had enough conversations now to see that that’s happened. And the value I’m seeing in it now is that, probably especially if you have two people, if you have partners, you’ve got one partner in the company that’s the engineer and maybe the other partner in the company that’s the real risk taker, that’s super outgoing, friendly, whatever that looks like. So you partnering with your dad,
Jason Elkins (15:08.558)
Did you see stuff like that? I mean, how does your personality compare to his? Oh yeah, he was like, like you described, very structure engineer who wouldn’t take any risks, like financial risk or anything. Every time would take the safe path, like zero risk. But this, we had no, he personally, I think he had no choice because it was either.
continue looking for a job in his industry knowing that he was already dead in Chile. And on my end, I was ready to take any risk because I didn’t have any family to support, I was single, and so no children to bring food to. Yeah, and so I was eager to take any risks. And I’m sure that-
I’m sure that was reassuring to him as well to see that in you. You know, to like, OK, if I’m going to partner with my son, if we’re going to do this together, it’s he probably saw that you and like, OK, I know that Cristian’s going to work his butt off and figure out some creative solutions that maybe me as an engineer is a little outside my comfort zone. And it sounds like it sounds like a pretty great, pretty great partnership. So.
And one of his personal skills that probably don’t apply much to engineering is that he was always has always been a people’s person, always super friendly, always super accommodating with people. So every single vendor that still work with us love my father. They will always ask for about my father, our, our team, our operation teams, our office. They all love my father because of that. But he would.
show up in the room and everyone will be like content and happy and felt supported by him. And so that was easy for him. That’s a great skill. That’s a great skill set right there too. Because that’s, you kind of hinted on it. And I be careful what I say because I don’t know who’s listening, but yeah, it’s to find the engineering mindset that’s also friendly and outgoing and, and all that. That’s
Jason Elkins (17:27.714)
That’s pretty cool. And what about other people in your family? I don’t know if your mom was around involved in this or anybody? They all gave us support in many ways, but didn’t get involved in the company, but they supported us. My mom, for her, was not a usual thing to have my father away from home for, I don’t know, a month, but she knew that he was with me and we were working, but also having fun.
Sometimes people just look at the pictures and see us skiing and like big smile. And we like, I don’t know. Wait a minute. Are you really working? Yeah, with attractive guests, good looking guests in hotels, spas, all that. But we were really working, working hard. But I think this was the first time my dad could enjoy both, like getting paid and
loving, generally loving what you do as a job. That’s pretty cool. And that’s been my experience in tourism as well, having run and owned a couple of companies where it’s like, yeah, I’ve never worked harder in my life and it’s never been more rewarding. I remember I had a hot air balloon ride business and I had a really hard time convincing other people in my world that I was actually working because I would, you know, I’d have all these pictures of
my clients getting engaged in the balloon, or I would come home so just jacked up about the day, oh, we did this, we did that, and he proposed, she said yes, and people are like, wait a minute, this isn’t, you’re supposed to be working, this doesn’t sound like work. But the flip side of it was, it was a 12 hour day, but I didn’t notice it was a 12 hour day. I get back at the end of the 12 hour day, and just super excited about it, so I can.
I can relate to that. That’s pretty cool. So over the last 20 years, give me two or three things maybe that are your biggest takeaways, things you’ve learned along the way that you’d be willing to share with maybe people that are thinking about getting into tourism or other tour operators listening to this. Cause I believe all of us are willing to share and collaborate a bit. So I’m curious, what are your biggest kind of aha moments, maybe things that you wish you’d done a little differently.
Jason Elkins (19:53.318)
Well, one of our first aha moments was because we started at Amity doing two products, two activities, which was what we loved the most, skiing and hiking, which was made sense to us because you would go to the same areas. You would switch skis for…
hiking boots. That was the only one. Trying to get you two seasons in, right? Yes. Yeah. So we would go to the same volcanoes, the same national parks, stay at the same hotels, but change the activity. But then in 2006, I visited the North Island in New Zealand and saw a potential that I didn’t see before, but that it made total sense to us because what I saw in the North Island was group of cyclists
touring, like in a tour, in an organized bicycle tour. And I remember I, I don’t remember it was Skype or some, some type of a voice over internet protocol app that I called my father and say, Hey dad, you know what? Here in New Zealand, people are bicycling the way you did it when you were younger. I remember I immediately clicked in my head, New Zealand, the North part of New Zealand is exactly like our destination, the Lake and Volcano district in Chile.
It looked the same. The only difference I can see is that people drive on the left-hand side rather than the right-hand side. And that’s an easy adjustment. You can… Yeah. And so I remember the first time I heard the concept of bicycle tourism, or in Spanish, cicloturismo, was because I knew that my father would go from Chile to Argentina, crossing the Andes from Santiago to Portillo, and then to Mendoza. This is like a big climb.
And so we said, well, we know what bicycle tourism is. We have to do it. We have to develop this product in 2006. I can imagine if you’ve never seen people pay money to go on a bicycle tour, I can imagine where you’d be like, maybe that little voice in your head would be like, why would anybody pay for that? It’s a bicycle tour.
Jason Elkins (22:11.402)
You work hard, you sweat. Your butt hurts after a long day. Why would people wanna do that? But then you see people doing it and it’s like, okay. I can, yeah, okay. And back to the DNA, what I said, my grandfather would go with his family on a bicycle on a 70 mile ride from Santiago, the capital city, to the coast to stay at their beach house because they just love bicycling. Wow.
And this, how, I don’t know, the universe connects the dots. And so that was the first aha moment. And so we develop an itinerary, knowing literally nothing about bicycle tourism. And then we learn with the first clients what they expect, what they don’t. And then learn the hard way that our destination in 2007 wasn’t prepared, wasn’t ready.
infrastructure for bicycle tourism. So we had a lot of in what way? In what way? paved roads, or paved shoulders or bike lanes, or even signs nothing, nothing. We had beautiful rolling roads and rolling landscape with smoking volcanoes in the backdrop and Glacier Lakes and stuff like that beautiful. But we thought that the conditions were perfect. But our customers
did not seem the same. So we had to develop the infrastructure and we went and knocked the door of the government or the public work ministry and said, hey, there’s a new thing that we can develop. And luckily to us, they listened. And now it’s, yeah, the conditions here to run bicycle tours are perfect. Everything’s paved.
There are viewpoints, there are picnic areas, there are bike lanes. Yeah. And plenty, no, well, 15 years ago, it was all gravel roads. Yeah, they paved everything we needed. Were there other interests as well that helped to encourage them? Or was it just like, you know, Cristian’s like, hey, I think you should pave the roads so I can sell more tours. Or there…
Jason Elkins (24:32.114)
other considerations as well that you feel that just kind of came together at the right time to help encourage them or? Yeah, the concept that we brought to the table was scenic routes. Yeah, like there are in the US, like Highway 1, or there are in Europe, or there are even in New Zealand, all these scenic routes. And so in which- So not just for biking? No, it’s like- Yeah. Because for the public work ministry,
their engineering thinking was, I have to make a road from point A to B straight. And the proposition was like, no, there are lakes and rivers and all these areas that are curvy. And the purpose to go from point A to B is to enjoy the landscape, the scenery. That’s the scenery. And it doesn’t matter that you, I mean, people that will use this,
won’t need to get as fast as possible from point A to point B, they will need to enjoy the landscape. And they like this concept because it existed. We could have a benchmark and say, hey, this is the situation. Yeah. Where did you model it? I mean, are there particular countries that… Canada, the US, Highway 1, the other one in Canada, there was one in, I think, Switzerland and New Zealand. I think New Zealand because for them…
Back in the day, Chile was looking to New Zealand as an example to follow in development for tourism and economical development as well. So when we did a little research, more than a little actually, a lot of research, we brought these concepts and it made sense to them. Yeah, no, it makes I mean, I think it’s so much better than you just showing up and saying, hey, can you help us get more bicycle tourists? Right. It’s it’s really.
because the scenic routes thing is so, I mean, there are towns, I grew up in Rocky Mountain West, United States, and you know, there’s the scenic byways, the highways, the, you know, Beartooth Pass Highway. It’s, I mean, yes, do people use it for transportation? Sure. But it’s, there’s, you know, 90% of the traffic that you see on it, are the RVs, the tourists, and the towns along those routes are the ones that benefit from that. So that’s pretty
Jason Elkins (26:57.998)
pretty good thinking. And the end. The next aha moment was like, okay, in 2007, we learned how to sell bicycle tourism. But when I went to the Chilean tour operators, the big wholesale incoming tour operators, I felt like I was Charlie Brown’s teacher when I was speaking like. Were you speaking in Spanish?
Yeah, they looked at me and they like, I knew they were not following. Uh, they, even though I was, we both spoke Spanish, they were like, completely clueless looking at me. Like you could do tours on a bicycle. So these are, these are outbound operators in other countries or that’s the aha moment. So I quickly learned that, you know what? I will waste my time.
going to big companies in Chile. So I had to jump and go overseas, go to the US, go to Australia, go to places that I know there are operators, two operators that specialize in bicycle tourism. And when I went there, I immediately also, I immediately knew that they were understanding me because they had questions. They were like, what kind of bike was that?
Yeah. What kind of bicycle racks you have, how many miles, what’s the elevation gain and stuff like that. And OK, yeah, these guys are really paying attention. So that was the big, I would say, the big aha moment that we had, yeah, and changed our company to continue growing. Yeah, I think what’s brilliant there is instead of getting the same thing,
tunnel vision and focused on this is what we do, is looking at, okay, where are the other, both where and what are the other markets, the bicycling, and then realizing that, okay, Chileans aren’t gonna spend money to go on a bike ride with us because it’s just outside their wheelhouse, but that doesn’t mean we need to give up on the bicycling, we just need to go figure out where the market is, instead of, I mean, I think there’s some tour operators
Jason Elkins (29:21.526)
managed to create a market that wasn’t there. I’ve got a gentleman I’ve interviewed here for the podcast. I’m not sure if our listeners have heard that one yet or not, but he’s doing dinosaur tours. Like I’d never heard of that. Okay, so it’s paleontology tours. That’s one, like that’s pretty cool. I don’t know if he’s created a market, had a really interesting conversation with him. Whereas you took the route of, okay, let’s find something that’s popular somewhere.
Can we do it here? And then can we go find the people, maybe find the people that we’re paying to go on the tour on the North Island and New Zealand? And now they’ve seen New Zealand, but they haven’t seen Chile. So how do we present a product that makes them wanna come here? I think that’s pretty smart to have that flexibility. And again, that’s the ability to take some risks. Cause I’m pretty sure there was an investment with bicycles and equipment. You mentioned racks.
Even the time and effort to approach the government to, you know, to collaborate with them to create the scenic byways. And I just want to ask you this because I’m curious if things have changed. Another gentleman that I interviewed here for the show is in Romania. And he was talking about, you know, only I think 60% of the roads in Romania are not paved. And he said that they’ve seen a real resurgence in people, not resurgence, but.
A lot of people are actually going there specifically because the gravel track bicycling has become actually more popular over the years. So have you, is that correct? Have you seen that shift as well? Like at first you’re like, we need the infrastructure. We need the paved roads, da da. And then I’m hearing this guy telling me that no people are going to Romania because they have so many gravel roads. So tell me more about that. Well,
We were lucky, this is nothing that we had anything to do with, but the cycling or the bicycle industry has jumped, has leaped in new products less than 10 years from now. And so as the industry grows, as the bicycling grows, it’s naturally you’re going to have more people looking for different niches. And the pandemic speed up that process twice as fast.
Jason Elkins (31:43.75)
then it would have been without the pandemic in the middle because the pandemic really made people eager to go outside and the bicycle was one of the easy ways to go. And so yeah, when we developed this road cycling, it was road cycling that we developed, you will never heard of gravel bikes or gravel. It was like either mountain biking, and it was very popular or road cycling. That was like more like
to high-end customers, the way that the market works around this specific product. So yeah, and we developed that road cycling. So, but now, well, in the pandemic, we actually had to, we applied to government grants and started, and we won these grants and started to increase or change our fleet, bike fleet.
gravel bikes knowing that everyone is buying a gravel bike and what is that? So I’m curious. So at one point you’re like, hey government, we need to pave more roads, we need to increase the infrastructure. And then what 10, 12, whatever years later, you’re back saying, hey, can we get a grant to develop more programs? Like, can we tear up some of these roads so we have more gravel course? I’m sure you.
didn’t have a problem planning gravel roads. What happened with the gravel bike is that before, even today, paved roads are a limiting factor to develop road bike tours. So with these gravel bikes, that they look like a road bike, but they have much bigger tires, there’s no limit on the map. You can go anywhere you want on this map. So
before we, rather than going through, or yeah, through the national park, we go around the national park, because the roads around the national parks were paid, but not the main road going across the national park. So now we can decide, we can actually, we can make loops, go around the national park and go across the national park with these gravel bikes. So the, we just don’t care if there’s,
Jason Elkins (34:05.046)
paved surface or gravel surface. And I would imagine that also just gives you a lot more flexibility. So I’m envisioning like Tour de la Paine. And I have not been, so I maybe, my vision may be way off. But I would imagine the larger paved roads are where the majority of the tourism tourists are taking place. So the ability to go a little bit more off of gravel.
you can probably get to some of these estancias or these interesting places to visit and stay that just don’t get as much traffic. Right. Right? Contrary to the United States or other developed countries in Chile, national parks don’t have paved roads. Okay, okay. The asphalt ends at the gates where the park rangers are, no more asphalt and here we go with the dirt or gravel. National parks, they’re…
internal roads are not paved. That makes sense, actually. I’ve been to some parks, I haven’t been to Toronto or Piney, but yeah, that makes, I can see that, yeah, okay, thanks. And so on a road bike tour, the limiting was, yeah, we can get to the gates of the National Park, but then we can continue, but with the gravel roads, yeah, we can actually get through the park and visit the heart of these national parks.
I’m happy I asked that uninformed question because I get it now. That’s important because I can imagine your clients in the past, okay, we’re going to ride right up to the gate. Yeah, then that was it. No, and then they would go with a really desperate face. Why are we jumping in the van? No, I want to continue biking. Because that was what bicycling tourists expect is that you don’t get to a van in a van.
You start from one hotel and finish the bike ride on the next hotel and continue every day of the itinerary That’s what they get in the US or in Europe right because they’ve driven through rock it written through Rocky Mountain National Park or Zion or anything and they didn’t have that limiting that limiting factor. Okay, and now Because there’s something exciting That’s another shift that I know you’re super excited about because I remember our last conversation and I can like
Jason Elkins (36:25.742)
For anybody that’s not watching Cristian’s face, I can see he’s excited to discuss. I think you know what I’m getting ready to ask you is about. What’s the next stage of bicycling? The next level is like when mankind arrive to the moon, this is like equivalent to that. So it’s kind of a big deal, is that what you’re saying? Yes, electric bikes are opening, are like, it’s a big welcome sign to everybody.
in any physical condition, at least they can move, that it’s before electric bikes or pedal assisted electric bikes to be precise. Yeah, well, there is some pain or there is a lot of pain in biking. All those climbs, you put a lot of effort in your joints, in your knees, in your back. Let’s consider that.
our tours are not cheap. This is for high end customers. So many of these people are in their, let’s say early 50s and until early 80s. Yeah. And so you have to be fit or mediumly fit to take these tours. And that will be like a pull off for a lot of people are going like, ah, well, because Chile by definition is healing. That’s one of my picks.
Chile is hilly. We are not a flat country. We are not the Netherlands or Florida, like many people train in Florida for this. Chile is hilly and we have steep climbs. It’s beautiful. And wind on occasion. Yeah, and in Cangonhas especially. Especially in the summer is where the wind blows the hardest. And so the e-bikes take all the suffering.
or weather against you out of the equation. And you have fun. One of the things that I love about bicycle in general, bicycling as a tourist, to get to know a destination, on a bicycle you can cover big distance. Like let’s say from 30 miles up to 100 miles per day. So it’s a greater distance than if you go hiking. But you can also smell
Jason Elkins (38:51.702)
the landscape, you can see, you can hear it, you can feel it on your skin, and it’s the smart way to, I would say, to discover a new place. And so, but there was this pain or painful factor in the equation that, man, in order to see these places, especially in Patagonia, man, you’re gonna suffer a little bit. And the electric bikes took all those fears away.
You’re absolutely right, Cristian, because I’ve done some biking, but I also did some motorcycling and there’s a little bit of a parallel there in the sense of even when you’re on a motorcycle or I guess you could even say sometimes in a convertible car, you just experience things a little differently and I’m sure much more differently on a bicycle, but you’ve got those smells. It’s so interesting that you can ride around the corner and all of a sudden the air temperature drops or rises.
the smells. Some of them are pleasant smells, some of them are not pleasant smells. But you really do experience it. And when you take the motorcycle and now slow it down from, you know, 100 kilometers an hour to, I don’t know, 15, 20, I’m not sure what speed you’re doing on the bike, but that just really kind of spreads it out. It’s more of that slow travel where you really get to experience it. And
If you’re not the type that’s going to get on a bicycle, because your butt is going to hurt from pedaling, sitting on a bike all day pedaling hard and breathing harder, sweating, then I can see why that would make an awful lot of sense. And I also heard what the words under what you were saying was, the people that can afford the trips on average are not necessarily.
the ones that are in the best physical or youth or whatever. So you’ve got a lot of people maybe in their twenties and thirties that are riding a lot of bikes, riding long distance, don’t think anything of it, but they’re not on average, the ones that are going to go to Patagonia for, you know, a week, 10 days a month to ride bicycles on a, on the, the level of tour that you offer. Um, so what you’re doing is you’re taking the people that, you know, maybe half the time.
Jason Elkins (41:12.502)
the resources to go do it and you’re removing the barrier that was getting in the way. Just like earlier the logistics of the roads in Colombia or in Chile were getting in the way, you remove that barrier, opens up a whole nother opportunity. And I’ve spoken with a few people that are really excited about the e-bikes, but none probably leading as much as you are. I know that you’ve… So what have you been doing to get that implemented? What does that look like for your 20th season?
with e-bikes. Yeah. Again, we apply to government grants explaining all this. Blah, blah, blah. You’re also a grant writer on the site, aren’t you? No, I’m not. It’s our taxes. So it’s our money, too. And it benefits the cut. I get it. I see the value. That’s a clever thing. There could probably be a whole other podcast episode about using grants. But go ahead. So at this point, our bicycle fleet
the most modern in Chile is 50% electric and 50% acoustic or analog or non-electric. You can call it the way you want. What do you call it, acoustic? Yeah, well, because there is an electric version. I heard some others call it acoustic, like acoustic guitar or analog or non-electric. You need to refer to the non-electric in a way, I don’t know. I think you’re onto something because I’m not against.
not a guitarist, but like you ask somebody to play guitar, do you play electric or acoustic? And there’s not much judgment there, right? It’s like, okay, there’s no judgment. It’s like, it’s just a different type of guitar as it’s benefits, downsides. So I love that you connect that with the bikes because frankly, I’m sure there’s some people that might have that, oh, an electric bike here, you’re lazy or whatever, or why would anybody do that? But I think if you use electric and acoustic, I think that’s brilliant.
Yeah, and it’s important to say many, many times that, so people don’t get the wrong idea, is that these bicycles don’t pedal for you. You pedal and there’s a little engine that helps you, like assists you while pedaling. So you still get your heartbeats to a higher level. You still sweat.
Jason Elkins (43:37.058)
but rather than climbing a hill at 20 kilometers per hour that you do on an electric bicycle, you do it suffering at seven kilometers per hour. And it would take a while and you’d probably end up walking up, but not on a bike. The bike in a sense is saying, look, we’re gonna help you. We’re not gonna do it for you, but we’re gonna help you, right? Right, right. So, okay. Exactly. I love that. All right, so 50% of your fleet is electric. The other half is acoustic. And what are you seeing so far with
I don’t know if you’ve had some clients do trips. I believe you’ve been doing some scouting trips and fam trip type stuff, but what are you seeing as far as clients booking? What are the ah-has when you see the inquiries coming in? Now that people know that we have the e-bikes available, 50 or even 60% of them pay the premium because the rental is a little more expensive because the bike is like four times more expensive than the Acoustic.
They prefer that, yeah. They take that alternative and we see that. Maybe in the future, our bicycle fleet will be 70% electric and 30% acoustic, who knows, but at present it’s 50-50. So that’s based on what they’re requesting. I’m curious about the, I don’t know, the demographics or the group makeups that you’re seeing, because I can see that would be the biggest shift, because you don’t just have like,
the same type of people coming just using a different type of bike, I would imagine you see totally new people coming or totally new group dynamics that you might not have seen. Are you seeing that yet? Or what are your thoughts? I mean, people that take a bicycle tour are not newbies to bicycling. Let’s say a bicycle tour is about cycling all day, every day. Yeah. And so
What you can see now is that groups are larger, like more people are jumping sometimes. Usually couples take this tour, like as I say, like empty nest kind of couple, like with their kids in college. So, and with more disposable money to take out these tours. And so one of them, let’s say, let’s make a picture of it. She’s a good cyclist.
Jason Elkins (46:04.066)
but he’s not. And when, when the vacation time comes, she would be very keen to take a bicycle tour, but he would go, I’m not so sure. I’m going to be at the tail of the, of the group. I don’t want to the whole, why don’t you go yourself with your friends or you, and I’ll stay at home. I will do something else or even asking if there’s a non rider option. Sometimes we get that question, but now with the electric bikes,
There’s no more like debating whether I should go or not. They both immediately jump in. And they can go at the same pace, at the same speed. And the one that is not like a cyclist, won’t feel upset about holding the group at the end of the tail or at the end of the group. And actually the gap that you see between the first person and the last person
has reduced to maybe five minutes rather than 30 minutes or more. It’s amazing how much compact the groups are now rather than without the e-bikes. I’m gonna say this just because it popped into my head. I feel like what you’re doing Cristian with this is bringing people together in a couple of ways. Cause you said the group, from the first writer to the last writer, shorter, so you’ve got people closer. You’ve got, I’m envisioning
Maybe the wife who maybe she’s been on five, six, seven rides with her friends, or maybe she joins as a solo with the group. And now all of the sudden, for the first time, her husband’s joining her on a bike trip. And anybody that’s passionate about something and is also passionate about their partner wants to share with their partner. The dinosaur tour thing comes to mind because the, you know.
Zach was telling me like there’s some, he calls them dino nerds, you know, really into dinosaurs. But the last thing that their partner would ever want to do was, you know, go on an archeological dig or a paleontological dig. So the way they’re setting these tours up is so they can, so the dino nerd can share his obsession with dinosaurs with other people in his family, without those people in the family having to just sit in a pit, you know, with a toothbrush, scraping bones for a week.
Jason Elkins (48:25.994)
So it’s kind of the same thing with the bicycling is the person that’s most passionate about the bicycling in the relationship now really can share it with their partner without putting the thumbscrews on him to, you know, begging them. It’s like, come on, look, you’ll, you know, it’s better opportunity for them to, so you’re bringing people together. So that’s all another layer to your business as well. So, and really this stuff’s all about connections. I love that. That’s really cool. Yeah. That’s really cool. What is the biggest challenge?
either for you as a tour operator or maybe a potential client or the communities that you’re working in, what challenges are coming up with the introduction of the e-bikes? To explain that, well, as I said, that this bicycle is one pedal for you and, but people are wearing…
these type of customers, they are well informed and they probably own an e-bike at home as well. So there aren’t biggest challenges right now. In the past, you would, yeah, in the past, I would say five, six years ago, you will bring all the batteries to charge at the hotel and you will like get the jumpers up because…
you will, I don’t know, create a short circuit because of a too much energy. Okay. You break a few break, break a fuse at the hotel and yeah, they’re really happy to see. Okay. So what’s left with that? The technology of the 2020, 2023 bikes. It’s comparable to a Tesla to be honest.
There’s so much technology in it to make it simple that you can customize the bike with your cell phone. It’s amazing. Yeah, it’s pretty, pretty wow. What you can do. Okay, so when you speak of the technology, guides are very, very smart and they’re good at figuring things out. And sometimes guides…
Jason Elkins (50:42.13)
are spending so much time outdoors doing stuff that they don’t necessarily spend a lot of time messing around with apps on their phone and learning technology. So I’m curious, has the technology, I mean, I guess it’s made it easier in many ways, but are there challenges to training your guides? How are you, you know, yeah. So tell me a little bit about that. Yeah, well, for example, we work with, for example, one of our clients is Trek, yeah. Trek.
bicycles, they also have a cycling specialist operator called Trek Travel. And with them, we had a tech training session that took four hours to train in specifics about this, not even e-bikes, about road bikes, high-end road bikes with electric shifters and how you can customize the bottoms, how you can
I customized the gear shifting, the troubleshooting, all that took four hours with the well-trained, well with the logistic manager of this company to really get to know what about these bikes. There’s actually one concept that they call Trek University. Crazy, no?
And it’s all about all these components, all the technology that is behind something so simple that it’s advisable. Is it mostly, is the education primarily to learn how to use the tool better or is there a lot of… Because what I’m thinking is like back in the day, okay, you need to know how to change a tire, you need to maybe know how to replace a chain.
Um, adjust the brakes. I can’t like when I was younger, fixing bicycles, you know, that was kind of a little bit intuitive. So how much like, are there maintenance issues? Is it like my guides absolutely have to go through the training because a bike is going to break down and they got to know how to reprogram it. Or is it just like, Hey, we want you to make sure you know, how to use it so that you can maximize the experience. Or is it just maintenance to repairs? What does that look?
Jason Elkins (53:03.186)
It’s both. It’s both. All the troubleshooting that all the potential scenarios that you may face with a electric bike or electric shifters with these high-end components from Shimano or SRAM. These are the two leaders in the industry. Yeah. And so that part is new as this technology develops because yeah, changing tires, flat tire or…
anything about the mechanical parts of the bikes are something that we rehearse at least once a year in our guides training. But all this technology aspect, we are, well, we were clueless because there’s so much behind that it took, as I said, four hours that we recorded that training session because, wow, the way the technology has been brought to the…
cycling or bicycle industry is amazing. Just as I said, I felt like a Tesla trainee because of all the technology behind, yeah. So I’m curious when you guys are hiring new guides for the season and I’m sure you’ve got you’ve got a tremendous reputation. I’m sure you’ve got a lot of your guides come back every year but when you are hiring new guides or maybe even other positions within the company
and a resume comes through from somebody that, you know, has some technical something on the resume there at Google certified something it might not even have anything to do with bikes. Obviously, if there may be a track university graduate, or something like that, are you actually selecting for that stuff? Now? Do you feel like for the first time you’re hiring guides, partially based on their comfort with technology? Or are the other things still more important? Or how do you balance it out?
The most important skill that we look in any guide is that there are team players. Yes. And there are people’s person and they… No, but the number one thing is team player because we are successful because we are a team. And so that’s something that my father always told me and taught me about. Like we…
Jason Elkins (55:23.882)
we will get faster, no, not faster, but further if we go as a team. And so, yeah, of course we will look at the resumes and see all their, usually these are like semi-pro athletes that want to start guiding, especially for bicycle tours. And so-
biking athletes or do you get other athletes as well that? Other athletes as well, but the majority that’s applied to this are adventurer guides, graduate adventurer guides or semi-pro athletes who want to see how they continue in this biking world. No, that makes sense. I didn’t even, never even thought of that. That makes sense, yeah. And so, but one thing that is hard to teach is to be a team player.
And so what we do usually just about 60 to 70 people apply to be a guide every two years. We have this process and maybe two or three make it and graduate to be part of our team because there’s one big part of the evaluation that when they go to work shadowing.
and then we see their true colors and if they are a good team player or not. And that’s the trigger, whether they stay or not with us. Yeah.
I feel like I could have a whole conversation about that. Cause I thought like, oh, it sounds like green beret training, right? They, you know, a hundred men will fight someday, but only three win the green beret. So that’s, yeah. Everything else you can learn, but the, the team player, it means you are, you are sure of yourself. There’s a lot of soft skills that at least I don’t know how to train people on those, but.
Jason Elkins (57:33.514)
you can see the natural. If they have, yeah. Yeah, you can, but you can, in a shadowing or like in a true situation with guests under pressure, but you have to be happy and enthusiastic even if it’s raining outside, like today, for example, here in Pucon, that spirit of team player, being enthusiastic and that this is a job, you’re not on vacation as well. Sometimes we have…
Guides I think they are also on vacation and they behave like that and they well, no, we are working We work hard, but we will we get well compensated as well So and customers would immediately compensate you with big tips the end of the trip if you do it. Well, so That’s the number one aspect that we look at. That’s for cool Well, our sense we’re on that topic or all of your guides and employees Chilean or do you?
occasionally have other folks come in? What does that look like? We have an international team in all levels in the company because we work in a international world. The vast majority of our clients are from other countries. And so to have like a balance in the cultural aspects of the organization, we have a lot of people from Europe, from the United States and Chileans. It’s a mix of the…
of both worlds that are part of the organization. Yeah. Do you, do you, one more question about that and we’ll move on, but do you have a position that’s, I mean, a lot of companies have a chief technology officer which usually has something to do with the website and the market and all that type of stuff. But I’m like, does this shift into the e-biking warrant like all position or is there someone on your team that’s just really, I’m gonna say nerdy when it comes to that stuff. That’s just my word.
But is there somebody on your team that’s kind of the bike nerd, the computer nerd that, that does that, or is that a whole position? We were so lucky to get to find this, this guy named Nicholas Nico. Don’t tell Nico that I used the word nerd. Cause that, no, I mean it in a good way. He was a pro cyclist, uh, actually, uh, in love cycling, but
Jason Elkins (59:57.082)
he applied to be a guide, but didn’t have the experience, the guiding experience that we needed. But he lived in the US and he worked as a bike mechanic. So he knows all that. He can speak English, which is key in our organization. And yeah, he’s taking care of all the bicycle fleet. And we actually had to get him a new computer so he can download the these software to update the bicycles.
Crazy. And so, yeah, it’s not a mechanic only with the range and everything. No, it’s a mechanic that has to know about the software and all that. Yeah. And he loves to learn. He’s eager to learn. And so, yeah, I can be more happy to have him on board. Yeah. Very cool. Just from our conversation, sounds like you have a pretty cool team. I look forward to… I’m just up the road in Columbia at the moment, so I’ll have to come down and visit. It’s…
Sounds like you guys are doing something pretty cool. And I’m definitely, I have to admit, I’m probably going to be one of the guys. I’m not embarrassed to admit, I’m going to be one of the guys on the e-bike because. Yeah. I’m the one too. I think I would just enjoy it a lot. I enjoy it. Now, like Cristian, do you hire guides that only ride the e-bikes or do the guides have to ride a traditional bike, an acoustic bike? They have the option because now, as I said, because it’s a 50-50. Okay. So I might actually.
I might actually qualify to guide on your team then, is what I’m hearing. So, all right. We’ll have to have that conversation on the side because that definitely is something that would have kept me out of being a bicycling guide in the past. So, opens up a lot of possibilities for everybody, doesn’t it? It’s cool. All right. We’ve had, we’ve discussed quite a bit. I think there were a lot of things I want to discuss with you that we probably didn’t touch on. I definitely want to continue the conversation. We’d probably do a couple more episodes or more.
And I wanna make sure that we cover what’s important to you. What do you feel like I should have asked you? Any questions that I missed that I should have asked or just anything that you wanna share with our listeners before we wrap it up? It’s one thing that it would probably need to take another podcast for this, but it’s the last or the latest aha moment that it just happened recently is that we finished.
Jason Elkins (01:02:21.634)
our carbon footprint emissions report and how we compensate those carbon emissions. And we did it following the Chilean government or institutions protocols that are very engineering and to get to know what’s our footprint. And we discovered that
one of our customers or any customer taking a bicycle tour, that is a seven day high-end bicycle tour, emits almost four tons of CO2, and it requires 14 trees to offset those emissions. And so- Does that, I’m curious, does that include flights to get there? Yes. Okay, so from the time they jump on the average airport in Milwaukee or whatever.
Yeah. Until they get home. Yeah. We were at the beginning in our conversation in the leadership team, we were like, should we consider the planes or not? And we say, you know what? We are incoming without the airlines, we couldn’t get any business. And you already told me that you couldn’t get Dutch-A-Lands to pay for a trip. So you pretty much…
Yes, and we learned that during the pandemic, we tried to offer them our tours and didn’t work. So, yeah, we can be hypocrites and say, yeah, we’re going to compensate what we, the emissions that are done in Chile when you are having people coming from the northern hemisphere. So we included the airline, all the air travel, and it turned out that 88%
of our total emissions are from air travel. 88%. Yeah, I would- Crazy, crazy high, crazy high. And so only 12%, it’s the emissions are from Chile, from our operations. It’s crazy that this gap. Did you look at the difference between the e-bike and the acoustic? I would guess they balance each other out because-
Jason Elkins (01:04:41.954)
I’m thinking if I’m on an acoustic bike, I’m gonna be emitting a lot of carbon dioxide directly from my mouth. But then the bikes, you’ve got the electricity. So I guess that probably interesting. Oh, and then locally what the, because we are using high-end hotels, we knew that was probably going to be the biggest portion of the whole emissions, but it turned out to be the air, air transportation. And then second is the hotels because
these high end hotels, they have a spa and the spa has to be open and ready whenever the customer wants to use it, whether they use it or not. So there’s a lot of, oh man, it took us almost a year with a specialist consultant to do this and to follow the process and get through the Chilean protocol to get our certificate that we, the carbon footprint was
done in a professional and legal way. Well, congratulations. I’m happy you said that because I was trying to get my head around this. It seems like that would be quite a process for anybody to do. You guys are one of the most established and bigger tour companies in Chile. And I’m trying to imagine the smaller
operation trying to figure all this out and the expenses. So I guess my question was, when you say Chilean protocol, is there, what sort of pressure or requirements are in place for companies to do this? Is this completely optional? Is to, does everybody have to do it at some point? Or what does the Chilean government expect from operators? Yeah, there’s a specific law that rules this from the environmental ministry.
And certain industries, it’s mandatory like mining, fish farming, logging, all these extraction, extracting industries for them is mandatory. For a tool company, it’s not mandatory at all. But we…
Jason Elkins (01:06:59.454)
Sustainability is not an option anymore for the tourism industry and for adventure travels even more. So this was something that we kept on a whole for a long time. And in 2018, we made the decision to like look at this face-to-face and move forward and learn throughout this process. We learned so much.
so much and these results are like mind blowing for us. So what I hear you saying is you chose your organization, your leadership team chose to do this without any duress from the government. Nobody was making you do this. You just decided it was the right thing to do. Obviously it’s an opportunity to learn more about the business, but I’m gonna ask you, if you don’t mind sharing, you can share in any way you want, but.
I’m sure it was a lot of time invested, but when you’re hiring consultants and energy experts and all this stuff, are you comfortable sharing with us? What did that cost Amity Tours to go through that process? However you want to describe the costs, because I know it’s a lot of different ways to look at it. I mean, the cost is not super high for like a…
a company the size of our company, we were able to afford it at this time, before that 2018 it was impossible to afford. And so that’s why we started with a much smaller project at the beginning that we call Zero Waste Operations, but much easier to start. And then we continue with the next step, which was carbon offsetting. And we are…
We’re doing it because in the industry that we are and considering ourselves as leaders in the Chilean environment for this, we are part as an organization, we are part of the Adventure Travel Trade Association. And this is one of the main goals that ATTA is asking all the companies that are part of this worldwide organization to lead, to lead within the organization, but also to lead in your country.
Jason Elkins (01:09:21.762)
And we took the baton and say, yep, we will lead in this. Yeah. That’s very cool. And now that you’ve determined, you said it was 18 trees on average? No, now that, for example, in simple words, the way I explain this to our drivers and our guides that every single guest that you see on a bicycle
14 trees that we will have to plant to offset 3.94 tons that the emissions per person. Yeah. Okay. I don’t want to get too far. I was going to say too far into the weeds, which is, or maybe I should say too far into the forest. 14 that you plant 14 trees and there’s organizations out there that that’s what they do. You can basically say, Hey, look, we know that.
these, this is what we need to do to offset our carbon footprint. You can donate. I don’t know what that looks like, but you partner with them and then do something for the environment, which is maybe planting trees. I don’t know if there’s other ways that they offset. If it’s just planting trees is what they do every time or there are fascinated. There are more ways. But the way that, you know,
the way that made more sense to us. It’s easy to get your head around it, right? If you say trees. Yeah, because nowadays there are platforms that you log in and put your credit card into it. And then, yeah, you’re paying to compensate your emissions. But it’s something that our customers won’t see. And then I won’t see, but the trees that we are planting, I planted, my team planted these trees. OK. We’re the indigenous people. Thank you.
We partner with indigenous communities to do this. That’s cool. That’s really cool. Do your clients, are you able to do that in conjunction with any of your tours? Or do you like ride by and say, look over there? That’s what I thought. No, they can see the trees. But in nature, trees are planted in the winter. So in our tours happen in the summer. So we can’t.
Jason Elkins (01:11:43.362)
have our guests engage in planting trees, unfortunately. But they can see them later. They can see them later, yeah. They can see the trees that we plant and see how they grow. And we will measure it. I’m picturing like a lunch stop or something, a grove of trees. You nail it. That’s what we’re doing. And maybe they can put a little placard on their tree. That’s cool.
Cristian, this is a great conversation. I learned a lot about a lot of different things and you got me pretty stoked up. So thank you for bringing all your energy and passion for what you do and super excited to continue to work with you on projects in the future too. I love that you mentioned ATTA, actually kind of indirectly connected with you through ATTA and I’m having conversation with folks over there as well, great organization. So that…
Connected us, so that’s a good start. So Cristian, thank you so much. Really appreciate you taking time out of your day to join us and share some stuff. And just certainly appreciate you and look forward to meet you in the future in person. Thank you so much. Of course, thank you. Bye. Bye-bye.
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