Industries
Why hospitality employees leave and how to understand why
Hotel, restaurant and banquet staff leave for reasons that vary by department and season. How to ask what sits behind the first answer and act on it.
8 min readRead article
Hospitality · Adventure tour companies
HR for Adventure Tour Companies: Group Leaders, Gear Stores and Guest Waivers
An adventure tour company sells group trips for treks, cycling, paragliding and similar activities. This page looks at group leaders, gear care, booking desks and the way a small team carries risk for paying guests.
Not sure what you need? Tell us about your business in six short steps and we will come to the first meeting prepared.
Share your requirementsAn adventure tour company sells scheduled departures and private trips: weekend treks, cycling tours, paragliding, camping, rock climbing, desert drives and snow trips for friends, families and corporate groups. Most guests book online or by phone, pay in advance and arrive with little experience. A small office takes bookings, answers questions, collects forms and arranges transport, and a gear store holds tents, ropes, helmets and bags. On the trip, a group leader and a helper guide the group, count heads, cook or arrange food and decide when conditions are too risky. Departures run mainly on weekends and holidays, and the leaders are often young, freelance and tempted by other operators. Related reading: hospitality HR. The company sells fun but carries safety, so the care taken over a leader's training, a gear check and a guest briefing is the real product.
- Plan
- Hire
- Onboard
- Manage
- Develop
- Perform
- Engage
- Retain
- Exit
- Improve
When HR is weak in adventure tour companies, you may see
- Leaders are freelancers with other offers
- Leader skill is uneven
- Gear is checked in a hurry
- Guest briefings and forms are rushed
- Weekends overwhelm the small office
- Trainees take on responsibility early
- Social media promises exceed the plan
- Incident learning is lost
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
Who does the work in adventure tour companies
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
- Founders and operations heads
- Booking and customer care staff
- Trek and tour leaders
- Assistant leaders and trainees
- Gear store keepers
- Drivers and local partners
- Marketing and social media staff
Roles we help you hire in adventure tour companies
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in adventure tour companies. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
Job descriptions for this sector
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
We set up the interview and hiring process for adventure tour companies
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
1. Role brief and scorecard
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
2. Stages and sequence
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
3. Question bank and scoring
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
4. Interviewer readiness
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
5. Offer and follow-up
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
Where HR strains in adventure tour companies
Leaders are freelancers with other offers
A trained leader gets a better rate from another operator for the same weekend, and your batch is left without one.
Leader skill is uneven
Navigation, first aid, group handling and decision making differ widely, and guests feel it from the first hour.
Gear is checked in a hurry
Tents, ropes, helmets and bags come back from a trip and go out again with little inspection.
Guest briefings and forms are rushed
Health details and consent forms are collected at the last minute, and a guest's condition is learnt on the trail.
Weekends overwhelm the small office
Bookings, questions and last-minute changes peak on Thursday and Friday, and the team is exhausted by Monday.
Trainees take on responsibility early
Junior helpers lead sections of a group before they have been tested, because the roster is short.
Social media promises exceed the plan
A marketing post offers a sunrise, a stay or a view that the leader cannot guarantee, and guests complain.
Incident learning is lost
Near misses are talked about on the bus home, and nothing is written or shared with the next batch.
HR topics for adventure tour companies
Start with the topics that matter most here: Learning and Development; Retention and Attrition Management; Health, Safety and Wellbeing. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for hospitality, not in general.
Learning and Development
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Retention and Attrition Management
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Health, Safety and Wellbeing
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
HR Strategy and Workforce Planning
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Organisation Design
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Recruitment and Talent Acquisition
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
Onboarding and Probation
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Employee Administration
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Compensation, Payroll and Benefits
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Performance Management
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Career and Succession Management
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Employee Engagement and Experience
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Employee Relations
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies, Compliance and Governance
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Exit and Alumni Management
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
HR Technology and Automation
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
HR Analytics and Management Reporting
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
HR Operations and Governance
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
What a working HR set-up looks like
The pieces a adventure tour companies business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Create a leader grading and training path
Levels from assistant to senior leader with first aid, navigation and group handling skills at each stage, signed off.
What this coversHide
Create a leader grading and training path
Levels from assistant to senior leader with first aid, navigation and group handling skills at each stage, signed off.
What this coversHide
Levels from assistant to senior leader with first aid, navigation and group handling skills at each stage, signed off. The learning plan carries it.
Write terms for freelance leaders
Rates, cancellation, conduct, equipment use and who bears what, in a short agreement.
What this coversHide
Write terms for freelance leaders
Rates, cancellation, conduct, equipment use and who bears what, in a short agreement.
What this coversHide
Rates, cancellation, conduct, equipment use and who bears what, in a short agreement. The documentation process holds it.
Sign off gear after each trip
A checklist and tag for each item with the date it was checked and the person who checked it, kept by the store keeper.
What this coversHide
Sign off gear after each trip
A checklist and tag for each item with the date it was checked and the person who checked it, kept by the store keeper.
What this coversHide
A checklist and tag for each item with the date it was checked and the person who checked it, kept by the store keeper.
Standardise guest forms and briefings
Health details and consent collected early, with a short briefing before departure and a note of any special case.
What this coversHide
Standardise guest forms and briefings
Health details and consent collected early, with a short briefing before departure and a note of any special case.
What this coversHide
Health details and consent collected early, with a short briefing before departure and a note of any special case. Confirm the form wording with a qualified professional.
Spread the weekend workload
Early cut-offs, a duty rota for the office and clear handover on Friday.
What this coversHide
Spread the weekend workload
Early cut-offs, a duty rota for the office and clear handover on Friday.
What this coversHide
Early cut-offs, a duty rota for the office and clear handover on Friday. The shift rules hold the detail.
Run a post-trip review
A short written note on weather, group, near misses and gear, shared with all leaders.
What this coversHide
Run a post-trip review
A short written note on weather, group, near misses and gear, shared with all leaders.
What this coversHide
A short written note on weather, group, near misses and gear, shared with all leaders.
Start by checking where you stand
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirements- List leaders used in the last quarter and what training each has had.
- Ask how often leaders have declined your batch for a better offer.
- Look at the last gear check and who signed it.
- See when health and consent forms were collected for the last departure.
- Ask the office team what Thursday and Friday look like.
- Read the last social post and compare it with what the trip delivers.
- Confirm with a qualified professional the consent, insurance, freelancer and safety obligations that apply, and note open items.
Confirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
How GullyHR helps
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
- Learning and development
A leader grading path with first aid, navigation and group skills.
- HR documentation
Freelancer terms, forms and incident notes in simple written form.
- Workplace health, safety and wellbeing
Gear checks, briefings and incident review routines.
- Attendance, shift and leave
Weekend duty rotas and rest after departures.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Our HR transformation approach
- 1
Assess
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
- 2
Identify gaps
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
- 3
Design
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
- 4
Implement
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
- 5
Automate
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
- 6
Measure
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
- 7
Improve
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
Blogs worth reading first
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in hospitality, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Industries
Fresher hiring and a first-year training programme for a small IT services company
A founder's guide to hiring freshers and running a first-year programme: campus or open drives, a screening round, a training plan by quarter, mentors and checkpoints.
6 min readRead article
Industries
Keeping mobile app and web developers: what actually moves retention in a small firm
What really keeps mobile app and web developers in a small firm: stay conversations, growth paths, fair release rules and a risk sheet an owner can use this month.
6 min readRead article
Industries
A practical safety routine for rubber product makers: who checks what, and when
A shift, weekly and monthly safety routine for rubber plants that names who checks platen guards, mill trip bars, autoclave doors, burst-test cages and slings, and who acts on near misses.
7 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Questions owners ask
Pay fairly and on time, give them a grade and a path, and offer regular departures. Confirm the freelancer terms with a qualified professional.
Set levels with first aid, navigation and group handling at each stage, observe them on trips and sign off before they lead alone.
Use a checklist and tag for each item, assign a named keeper and retire damaged items. Review the sheet before each departure.
Early, at booking, with a brief reminder before departure. Check the wording and use with a qualified professional.
Set cut-offs, share a duty rota and write a handover note. Plan quiet days after a heavy weekend.
We would look at how leaders are graded and engaged, how gear is checked and how guest forms are handled. A leader training path with freelancer terms, or a post-trip review routine, is a likely opener. We set out scope, timing and fee in writing afterwards, so you decide what goes ahead.
More on HR for hospitality
All 143 business types in hospitality · Find another business type
Adventure tourism companiesCampgrounds, RV parks and glamping sitesTourism and travel companiesHotels and guest housesEvent planners and banquet hallsEscape rooms and entertainment venuesLearning and Development in hospitalityRetention and Attrition Management in hospitalityHealth, Safety and Wellbeing in hospitality