PHOTOGRAPHY TRIPS

First blog post

New Zealand

Welcome, this is my first blog post, hurray :-)
About my thoughts, ideas, why I love travelling & the first Kiwi tour!

I have two BIG passions - showing New Zealand and photography. Both marry quite well: Photography is opening my eyes, finding new angles on how to view the particular subject. Guiding is keeping me curious and being a student forever - learning about local community stories and gossip, economy, industry, nature, history, heritage, etc...

While I am currently trying to reinvent my bread and butter - organising tours - I am in some way pleased that COVID forced me to resharpen my senses and provided new inspiration for my personal development. I enjoy challenges and perhaps was missing such a kick in my pants!

Check out our new NEW ZEALAND TOURS

In the previous years I was serving growing Czech & Slovak markets - mostly 2 to 3 weeks long trips between Auckland and Christchurch. I was often guiding myself, however mainly looking after our tours led by our great Czech-Kiwi tour guides.

It was a good time, though I had very limited time to think about new products while Czech and Slovak clients were mostly happy with our time-tested, continuously, but slowly carefully tweaked itineraries. Eventually while we established routine procedures there wasn't a big opportunity to be creative and use my experience from off the beaten tracks.

With COVID the situation has changed things, as it has for nearly everyone. Without overseas tourists I had to quickly adapt and try to serve Kiwis. Actually I wanted to try it a long time ago, just there was never time to develop it. A ‘stranger’ from Prague guiding Kiwis? I thought Why Not, I have travelled all over NZ many times, and do live here with my Kiwi partner and our NZ-born son, it has been my job & passion for the last 16 years, actually nearly 20 if I include my previous personal New Zealand adventures.

Some of you might find it interesting, a refreshing view when I can see the country from both sides - a view of an insider and also from an outside European perspective.

My first Kiwi tour finished just last week. I was showing the beauty of the Southern Scenic Route to members of a garden club for 9 days. Eventually I was so pleased they were excited (first Tripadvisor review) about the way I organised this trip and asked me if I could take them to other parts of South Island as well.

Now I need to get more clients interested to travel with me. Keeping it personal, just to give enough work for me and perhaps one or two experienced tour guides. I would like to try to contact garden clubs, Lions, Rotary, etc… Maybe you would like to help me to spread the word! If you know about a group of friends or a club who might like to discover particularly the South Island, please let them know about my services. I preferably cater to small groups of between 6 to 10 people.

I will love to tailor a tour according to your wishes. Here is a non-binding questionnaire which will give me an idea where / when / who and the details we can organise later.
Or perhaps check out our published tour itineraries at first :-)

Mā te wā

Martin

8 October. 2020