Enchanting Travels

Appropriate for entrepreneurship and strategy courses. The focus in the case is on how two entrepreneurs created a differentiating business model that was dependent on quality service and excellent execution. From a growth perspective, the case discusses two very different approaches to geographical expansion so as not to dilute the customer experience or the brand. Now the business faces the difficult question of how to scale faster. Excerpt UVA-ENT-0144 Rev. Feb. 12, 2010 ENCHANTING TRAVELS In the early days when we were trying to build a brand and it was imperative that every single guest who booked a trip with us had a wonderful time, focusing on the operations or the issues that would have a direct impact on guest feedback or the guest experience would be of prime importance to anyone who was involved with the company—an almost fanatical approach toward guest feedback. And one of the big challenges that we faced and we continue to face is continuing to do what we have done during the past five years. Every entrepreneur goes through that very difficult task. I would say that to be able to build people's skills and abilities you have to at one point take away the safety net and let them figure it out; if the issue or the problem at hand involves solving the problem yourself as opposed to giving someone an opportunity even if they may fail, you reach a point when that focus becomes investing the time and effort in getting that person able to solve the issue or problem rather than doing it yourself. I think that mindset is the big difference between a small start up and a larger high-growth company that needs to enable its people to grow and do things that you would have done. I think in the first year if you had asked me what our focus areas were, I would say that I was involved in creating our product, actually “doing” rather than “managing” operations and personally fixing what went wrong. Now, if you ask me what my focus would be, I would say that investing the time to teach someone or enable someone to fix something would be the focus rather than fixing it myself. And I think that is a point to reach when growing a company. Enabling people around you to do what you do and help you grow the company is a big thing, and one of the big changes we have seen in the last couple of years. —Parikshat Laxminarayan . . .