TripADeal, founded by Byron Bay shopkeepers Norm Black and Richard Johnston in 2011, has clocked average revenue growth of 401.7 per cent for the last three financial years to top The Australian Financial Review’s Fast 100 list, all while allowing staff to wear thongs to work.
Tourism is widely seen as one of the Australian economy’s emerging hopes, and TripADeal has latched on to the demand from baby boomers for what Mr Black calls “bucket list travel made accessible”.
Fast 100 entrants must have commenced trading before July 1, 2012, and provide four years of turnover data, with a minimum of $500,000 in the first reporting period (2012-2013). The AFR seeks verification from external auditors or accountants if the entrant is not listed, and calculates the average annual growth rate over the four periods, which determines its ranking in the Fast 100.
TripADeal started as a conventional online travel business, booking villas in Bali.
“But that’s easy to replicate. So we leapt before we looked and started creating our own end-to-end travel products, cutting out some of the multitudes of middlemen in this industry,” Mr Black told The AFR.
TripADeal now contracts its own ground operators, and Mr Black claims its flights division sees most of the same fares as travel agents after early “belief” from Etihad, Emirates and Singapore Airlines helped it establish.
“People used to think of Canada/Alaska, for example, as a $12,000 trip. We’ve made it $5000 and you’re seeing exactly the same things,” he said.
After sending 50,000 travellers on holiday in 2015/16, TripADeal has earmarked a chunk of its $73.8 million transaction revenue on a mainstream marketing push. It spent $2 million on advertising with Seven West Media during the Olympics, is about to open a network of kiosks in news agencies, and sponsors rugby league’s Gold Coast Titans with Mr Black supplying the $400,000 it took to lure Jarryd Hayne to the club for the 2016 season.