The travel market is constantly experiencing change. Find out how Xuan Tinh Herfort, founder of Stevie-winner Indochina Travels, has learned to compete with major online booking platforms while meeting the growing demands of discerning travelers.

In May 2019, the founder and director of Indochina Travels, Xuan Tinh Herfort, received a Gold Stevie Award for Entrepreneur of the Year in the Leisure and Hospitality Industry category in the German Stevie Awards. Her company, a travel operator specializing in guided tours of Asia with a focus on the Indochinese Peninsula, also won a Bronze Stevie for Company of the Year in the same category.  

But what brought the successful Vietnamese businesswoman to Frankfurt? And what’s her recipe for success in the ever-changing travel sector?

“Love at First Sight”

Xuan Tinh Herfort first came to Germany in 2002. After completing her economics degree at the University of Hanoi and gaining some professional experience, the young Vietnamese entrepreneur grabbed her backpack and set out on a European tour, where she would also stop in Germany. She still describes her encounter as “love at first sight.”

She was so impressed by the land of poets and philosophers that she decided to apply for a scholarship from the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development as soon as she returned to Hanoi, and it wasn’t long before she was accepted onto a 14-month program with stages in Munich, Berlin and Frankfurt.

And of all the places, she was captivated by the Main metropolis. This is where she teamed up with Euvibus GmbH in 2004 to found a consultancy firm that took care of business interactions between German and Vietnamese companies and held events in Germany on behalf of the government in Hanoi. This also involved organizing business trips, which laid the foundations for her next business concept: Indochina Travels. 

Since 2008, Herfort has been creating and selling tour packages to South-East Asia from her office in Frankfurt, putting German holidaymakers in touch with her homeland. Her company has become one of Germany’s leading tour operators for Indochina.  

The Changing Face of Travel

The travel market is characterized by constant and sometimes rapid change. Medium-sized companies like Indochina Travels have to face competition from major online booking platforms while meeting the growing demands of discerning travelers. That’s why Indochina Travels has developed numerous innovations over the past two years to improve the experience of its direct customers and B2B partners.

“The behavior and demands of travelers are constantly changing – and they’re often highly diverse. For example, if you book a hiking trip to the Alps this year, you might be looking for a luxury beach holiday in the Caribbean next year”, explains Herfort. However, one incredibly important trend is the growing digitization of the sector, which is a tremendous challenge for smaller tour operators looking to compete against the major companies. “We see this trend as a challenge, but it’s also a great opportunity for our company. We’ve made quite an effort over the past two years, including the relaunch of our website and the introduction of a tour operator system to automate the booking process and improve our customer experience in the B2B sector”, says Herfort.

The relaunched website (www.indochinatravels.com/) allows the company to clearly and attractively present its wide range of package deals, which can now be booked in just a few clicks. Customers can check the availability and prices of over 300 different tours before making a quick and easy booking. The website came in second place at the Hessian Website Awards in September 2018 for its innovative design and presentation.

Authentic Trips with Exceptional Service

“We find it very important that our trips are authentic”, says Herfort. That’s why the company handpicks all accommodation and meticulously plans its itineraries.

The company is supported by Indochina Pearl, an inbound tour operator founded specially by Herfort in 2010. It’s based in Hanoi with offices in Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos. What else makes Indochina Travels so special? “Indochina Travels is one of the few tour operators in Germany with its roots in the region. We work with our own local subsidiaries to purchase and operate the trips”.

The businesswoman also appreciates her employees’ personal connection to the travel destinations. “Each of our trained advisors has traveled around Indochina on many occasions or even lived there!”, continues Herfort.

The ingenuity of Herfort’s business idea is reflected by her company’s sustained growth. In November 2018, Indochina Travels moved to a larger office building directly opposite the famous Goethe House; its relocation was necessary, as the company had steadily increased its workforce to 17 people and wanted to continue growing in the years to come.

A Businesswoman with Heart

Outside the work that she puts into her own travel brand, Herfort also acts as the Director of Indochina within the Diplomatic Council, a UN-recognized NGO that promotes international understanding through successful business diplomacy. 

As part of her role, Herfort is committed to improving the education of disadvantaged children in Vietnam. Her company makes regular charitable donations in the Indochinese Peninsula. “We see ourselves as sponsors of the region. We support low-income families and promote the education of children in poorer countries. We’re constantly looking for partners to achieve our goals together. We’re also working hard to protect and preserve Hạ Long Bay”.

In 2016, Herfort was recognized by the City of Frankfurt as an “Outstanding Person from a Migrant Background”. Within the travel sector, the 40-year-old has also chaired the Committee for Travel Operators at the asr Alliance of Independent Travel Traders and currently sits on the advisory board at the Travel Industry Club (TIC).

Interested in entering the 2021 German Stevie Awards?

If your manager mentions a team-building and leadership training day, do you inwardly groan? Maybe you see it as a fun day out with colleagues but one that, ultimately, has no long-term benefits. Despite how employees often feel, though, research shows that if you take part in a professionally developed facilitated leadership experience program, the results can benefit you both at work and on a personal level.

Soft Skills

If you've been part of an organized leadership experience before, it's tempting to be skeptical. However, you need to start considering the benefits of soft skills to leaders. Think about the benefits of enhanced communication skills, the bonds of shared experience, and the engagement of employees. All these can help every level of leadership and management improve strategies and techniques.

Communication

Too often leaders’ communication styles are routine and task focused. With leadership building and team away days, though, leaders are thrown into new situations that challenge this status quo. For example, say most of your office communication is done via email. If you’re put in a situation where you must spend time communicating verbally, this can be revealed as an area of necessary improvement.

After the leadership experience, you’ll be required to debrief your team and recap the day. This is an opportunity to ask important questions. Are your instructions clear enough? Are all the leaders giving the same message? Is there room for discussion in the action phase of the task? Through this process, you’ll also discover what your team already does well.

Dynamic Challenges

If you choose a dynamic, action-based leadership development day, you could find yourself performing a historical reenactment. This tests your mettle against great leaders of their times, such as Winston Churchill or Abraham Lincoln. Alternately, you could end up spearheading a virtual rocket launch.

Whatever the situation, you will have to lead your team, harnessing all their skills to complete the challenge in the time frame given.

This method of experiential, hands-on learning connects concepts like team building, leadership, and innovation. Traditional leadership education still has its place, but it can be reinforced for your whole team through an enjoyable out-of-office endeavor.

Morale Boost

Whether you’re a new team or you just want to build on the rapport you already have, getting out and completing an action challenge builds trust. This then boosts employee engagement and morale and fosters collaboration when you are back at your desks.

Fresh Perspective

Maybe you feel you need to reboot your enthusiasm for leadership and management, or perhaps you’re a brand-new leader. Whatever the case, it's always helpful to gain a fresh perspective. You will learn how the leadership principles of the Battle of Waterloo or the mentality required when coaching an Olympic team relate to your own experiences, and you can then see how to apply those lessons in your field.

Dick Richardson experienced this firsthand as his plane came crashing down over New York, United States. From his airplane seat on what later became known as the “Miracle on the Hudson” flight, he witnessed the importance of having a well-trained team.

Richardson went on to co-found Experience to Lead, which focuses on experiential learning in business. The company recently won a Gold Stevie Award for Entrepreneur of the Year in the Business and Professional Services category at the American Business Awards®.

When you’re planning your next training day, consider the benefits of what getting into the field and trying your hand at an experiential challenge can do for your team. Don't stop at the away day, though; make these opportunities to connect with your staff part of your workplace culture.

Interested in winning a Stevie Award in 2020?

For many employees in the corporate world, checking email is the most time-consuming activity of each workday. Despite this, innovation in email has been, arguably, lacking as compared to other forms of productivity software.

That’s where the app Front comes into the picture. The company offers a tool that lets workers combine their multitude of communication platforms, from internal messaging to email, into a single interface.

“By working on the most critical tool people use to get work done, we felt we could improve things on a large scale,” says Front spokeswoman Heather MacKinnon.

The firm, which is based in San Francisco, California, United States, believes it can help users save time by allowing them to access multiple communication channels—including social, SMS, chat, and calls—in a single app. Want quick feedback from your coworkers? By using mentions and comments instead of email, you can reach teammates instantly.

“There are very few knowledge workers who only communicate internally,” MacKinnon says. “From customers to partners, candidates to vendors, external parties have significant sway over what we work on and when.

“Yet these communications today, which largely take place via email, remain in a silo. They’re cut off from the rest of your team, as well as the other tools you use to do your job,” she says. “It’s part of the reason why email is the universal communication tool for work that is also universally hated.”

While apps geared toward internal communication are getting some buzz—the increasingly popular Slack is a prominent example—MacKinnon notes that workers largely rely on tools that have been around for a long time when they want to reach people outside their companies.

“Email hasn’t been significantly updated since Gmail introduced threading in 2004,” she adds. “Despite being the universal communication tool for work, email has only been incrementally improved over the last 15 years and has never been re-architected for the way people work as a team. Front is changing that.”

One of the ways the company is trying to revolutionize communication is by integrating other data sources, whether it’s CRM tools, such as Salesforce, or project management software, such as Asana and Trello.

All-Hands Approach to Customer Service

The roots of Front go back to Paris, France, where founders Mathilde Collin and Laurent Perrin started the business in 2013. The following year, the start-up made its way into Silicon Valley’s famed Y Combinator.

Packed into a home in the Bay Area of California, United States, the initial team of five employees lived and breathed the product for several months. It was a grueling experience, but one the company’s leadership still views as an integral part of the company’s development. The accelerator not only tested the company’s concept but exposed it to business prospects it wouldn’t have otherwise had. In just six months, Front amassed a staggering 3,000 beta testers.

This momentum hasn’t slowed. In 2016, the company was able to secure $10 million from its initial round of funding, and two years later, it gained $66 million of investments from a team led by Sequoia Capital.

Today, more than 5,000 businesses around the world use Front. MacKinnon suggests it’s not just the features of the app attracting those clients. The company also focuses on providing superior customer support in order to ensure users get the most out of their experiences.

Naturally they’re using their own tool to help do that. The team, now more than 100 strong, has shared inboxes in Front for its customer surveys, feedback emails, and support inquiries. All staff members have access to the inboxes, so they’re able to keep apprised of how users feel about the product.

MacKinnon says the company, which was recently named a StevieⓇ Awards winner for Customer Service Department of the Year, also emphasizes a “low-ego” ethos, which encourages workers to keep striving toward excellence. During its regular all-hands meeting, for example, staffers are encouraged to share their “Stumbles of the Week.”

“By encouraging employees of all levels—even our CEO and other leaders—to openly discuss their mistakes, we create a culture of humility and continuous improvement,” says MacKinnon.

The 2018 (16th annual) American Business Awards® - the U.S.A's top honors open to all organizations operating in the U.S.A., and feature a wide variety of categories to recognize achievement in every facet of the workplace- will be presented this Monday, June 11 at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City.  More than 650 nominees and their guests will attend to be presented with their Grand, Gold, Silver and Bronze Stevie Awards.

The presentations will be broadcast live, beginning at 6:45 pm ET.

Here are the organizations that as of this writing will be represented at the event on Monday:

3Dazer
4Life Research
A.wordsmith
ACES
Advance Financial
Aflac
AIG US Life
Allianz Global Assistance
Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America
Allscripts
Anthem Foundation
Aragon Advertising
Arise Virtual Solutions Inc.
ArmadaCare
ASG Technologies
Association of International Certified Professional Accountants
Asure Software
Avasant
AXA
Barclays
BD
Best Western Hotels & Resorts
BetterAir
BGRS
BIA
Blis
Bloomberg Environment
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina
BluePay Processing
BlueToad Inc.
botkeeper
Brightstar Corp.
Brillio
Burst
Cathy Turney
Century Business Solutions
Church & Dwight
Cigna
Cisco
Citi
CityOf.com
Clevens Face and Body Specialists
Company
Concentrix
Condeco
Constant Contact Waltham MA
CoverMyMeds
Create Health Plans
Cruise Planners an American Express Travel Representative
Cummins
Cytellix
Davies
Deloitte
Delta Dental of California
DGC International
DHL
Diligent Corporation
DirecTv
Dow Jones
DraftKings
Dynamic Blending
Eff Creative Group
Emory University
Entercom
EpiFinder
Estee Lauder
Evergage
Fidelity Investments
FIS
Fiserv
FlightScope
ForeverCar
Formativ Health
Foxwoods Resort Casino
Geisinger Health
Generali Global Assistance
George P. Johnson
GL group
Globalization Partners
Glossive Technologies
GN Hearing
Gorilla Safety
GREAT WINE Inc.
Gregory FCA
GuideWell Connect
Hannaford Supermarkets
HCL America Inc. - Ritesh Jain
Health4TheWorld
Heraeus Incorporated
Hire For Hope LLC
HMS
HomeServe USA
IGEL
Ignite Sales
IGT
InfinityQS International
Information Builders
Intel Corporation
International SOS
Invesco
ISG
Jefferson County in Golden CO
John Hancock Financial Services
JVZoo
Karmic Labs Inc.
Keriton
LanguageLine Solutions
Lightcast.com
Lighthouse Worldwide Solutions
Lycored
Makers Nutrition
Makovsky
Marriott International
MDwise
Mercedes-Benz USA
Merck
Meritor
Merkle
MetTel
MONAT Global
Motus
Movember Foundation
Mphasis
NBCU
nCino
NFL Player Benefits Office
Nutrisystem
Oncor Electric
OptumCare Operations
Outreach Process Partners LLC
Pacific Expeditors
PAIRELATIONS LLC
PAN Communications
Panasonic Automotive
Panda Restaurant Group
Parkmobile
Paychex Inc.
Port It Global Inc
Primrose Schools
Progrexion
Public Employees' Benefits Program
QLess Inc.
Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems
RB
Realtor.com
Relic
Revenue Optimization Companies, The
Roth Staffing Companies L.P.
Safeguard Business Systems Inc. Dallas TX
SamsonPR
Scaffidi Restaurant Group
SCAN Healthplan
Scott Hospes
Shade Tree Auto
Sharpen Technologies
Social Finance Inc
SoftPro
Soleo Health
Spark
SparkPR
Spartan Invest
State Street Corp
Sterling Staffing Solutions
STYLE Advertising
Symantec
T and T Consulting Services Inc.
T. H. Easter Consulting LLC
TCS
TekLeaders
Terra Dotta
TGI Fridays
Thomson Reuters
Toshiba America Business Solutions
Transfermate
Trianz
TriNet
TrustLogics
Truth Initiative
TycoonAdvertisingGroup
U.S. Army Headquarters Installation Management Command
UBS
United Educators
United Way Worldwide
UnitedHealthcare
Upsher-Smith Laboratories
Valley Forge Fabrics
Vanguard
Verizon
WebPT
Worldwide Clinical Trials
Xperiel Inc.

The 12^th annual Stevie Awards for Women in Business is now accepting entries. All female entrepreneurs, executives, employees, and the organizations they run, worldwide, are eligible to be nominated.

A new feature for this year's competition is an Entry Kit Brochure. The PDF brochure details all the information you need to submit nominations.

The Stevie Awards for Women in Business Entry Kit Brochure includes:

• A letter from the President and Founder of the Stevie Awards, Michael Gallagher
• The 2015 Program Calendar
• What Past Stevie Winners Have to Say About Their Award
• Information About Judging
• The Top 5 Awards
• How to Submit Entries
• Entry Fee Information
• List of Awards Categories

The program will be especially useful to those who are new to submitting entries to the Stevie Awards for Women in Business. In just a few short minutes of browsing the Entry Kit Brochure, you will find out which categories best suit your organization and how to submit entries.

Get the Entry Kit Brochure now:

• A PDF of the Entry Kit Brochure (2.6MB)

The Entry Kit Brochure is not a replacement for the Webpage Version of the entry kit. The Brochure Entry Kit instructs you how to submit entries through the Webpage entry kit.

How to Submit Your Entries

After you have chosen your categories and prepared your entries according to the requirements per category, do the following:

1. Visit the website at www.StevieAwards.com/Women and click on the ‘ENTER’ button on the top navigation bar.
2. Follow the instructions to complete the registration form for your organization, which will create your entry-submission account.
3. Within your entry-submission account, choose the first category you want to enter, and complete the entry form for that category.
4. Repeat the process as necessary for additional entries.
5. When you’ve created all of your entries, select all of them and click ‘SUBMIT SELECTED NOMINATIONS’ to begin the submission process.
6. Review and agree to the Terms and Conditions of Entry, and choose to pay your entry fees by credit card, bank check, or wire transfer.

There's also a webpage version of the entry kit available to you.

The early-bird entry deadline, offering reduced entry fees, is July 22. The final entry deadline is August 26, and late entries will be accepted through September 23 with payment of a late fee. Winners of the 12th annual competition will be announced at a gala awards dinner at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York on November 13, 2015.  Attendance is not required to win.

This year the Stevie Awards for Women in Business will honor women in more than 85 categories including, among others, Entrepreneur of the Year, Executive of the Year, Maverick of the Year, Mentor or Coach of the Year, Lifetime Achievement Award, Employee of the Year and Most Innovative Company of the Year.