As Tauck approaches its 90th birthday in 2015, it continues to reaffirm its role as an innovator and trailblazer in the tour industry with its latest new product introduction, Tauck Earth Journeys, created with BBC Earth. The Norwalk, Conn.-based tour operator recently announced an agreement with BBC Earth to incorporate the expert knowledge of its nature-based documentaries into some of Tauck's nature-based tours and events under the brand Earth Journeys.
BBC Earth is a division of BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the British Broadcasting Corp., and the producer of documentaries such as "Planet Earth", "Frozen Planet" and "Life and the Blue Planet."
The partnership with BBC is Tauck's second venture into the merging of the crafts of filmmaking and tour operating. Earth Journeys closely mirrors Tauck's partnership with filmmaker Ken Burns, which dates back to September 2010.
The new BBC nature elements will be incorporated into existing tour offerings, and then a new series of tours created by the partnership will be introduced. The final touch will be to incorporate short BBC films into the itineraries of some Tauck tours or events.
Technology provided by BBC will also be incorporated into tours and events, such as motion-activated camera traps, infrared night-vision cameras, long-range directional microphones, underwater cameras and fiberoptic endoscopic cameras, to enhance some of the tour programs.
The Tauck-BBC Earth partnership will begin to take effect in 2014 with Tauck incorporating the BBC expert component into several of its existing tours, including the 12-day "Botswana, South Africa and Zambia" itinerary, the 13-day "Kenya and Tanzania: A Classic Safari," the 13-day Antarctica cruise expedition, and the six-day "Manitoba: Polar Bear Adventure."
A Long Preparation
It took three years from the first discussions to bring the partnership to the market, and it will be several more months before people begin to experience the collaborative tour products. Although there was an instant affinity between BBC Earth and Tauck, it took years to establish trust with the establishment that stands behind the British Broadcasting Corp., a semi-autonomous public service broadcaster that operates under a Royal Charter and a license from the British government.
It was a much longer process than Tauck's similar collaboration with Ken Burns and his historian partner, Dayton Duncan, who were negotiating for only themselves and their families. With BBC, entering a co-branding arrangement for the first time was a matter of precedent-setting importance.
Tauck President Jennifer Tombaugh says the collaboration with Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan is more personal. "It's a very simple relationship. But here [with BBC Earth], and because of the global reach of this too, it's an obligation that I understand that they have to the British people, but also to their global reputation."
After years of working to produce an agreement and then create the product, Tombaugh says the effort is paying off. "We're glad we stuck it out," she says, "because there were times over the years, where we asked, 'Is this all worth it? Do you think this is ever going to work?'"
Premium Brand Equity
The BBC brand is of incalculable value, note the Tauck executives. BBC productions have reached over 500 million people in over 180 countries worldwide to date. According to Tauck CEO Dan Mahar, "The BBC is quite simply the world's leading authority in capturing and sharing the amazing stories of our natural world. We're thrilled by the opportunity to leverage their vast knowledge, incredible passion and technical expertise, and pair it with our 88 years of experience creating authentic, enriching journeys. Our Earth Journeys will help BBC Earth to connect with their millions of fans in exciting new ways, enabling people to now experience the natural world with all five senses. At the same time, Tauck will be providing our guests with a richer, deeper immersion into the natural world's most compelling destinations. It's truly a case of the whole being far greater than the sum of its parts."
Jeremy Palmer, vice president and general manager of Tauck Land Tours, who shepherded the project through from its inception, says that the BBC is appropriately extremely protective of its brand integrity.
"I thought we were protective of our brands," he says. "They are beyond protective, because it's owned by the British people. They've built it over 100 years. They own the largest archive of nature footage in the world. If you see it on NatGeo, Discovery, it was most likely filmed by them. They are deadly serious about what they represent as a higher brand, the BBC."
The business issues were resolved easily, Palmer notes, but the BBC is no ordinary business. "The British government was not sure if sharing brands was okay, because they hadn't done anything like that," says Palmer. "They'd done licensing, but never actually a partnership. Actually saying, 'The BBC and someone is giving you this' - that took a long time to get over. After one year, they said no [to the project]. And then the natural history filmmakers said no [to the jettisoning of the project], that this was important to them and they were going to keep pushing." With the persuasive effort of the filmmakers, the BBC's board found a way to approve the project.
The part of the project that fit perfectly from practically the first moment, according to Palmer, was the shared vision between the tour operator and the filmmakers, and the combined determination to make the partnership happen.
A Shared Vision
"The shared vision was there from the beginning," says Palmer. "At heart of this, they are natural history filmmakers. These people are inspired by nature; they want to share nature's story. They think nature has the best stories to tell, and they want to do it in a way that's credible, emotionally compelling. And, when it actually comes to the videos, they want to do it in a fresh, modern way that you haven't seen before."
The BBC filmmakers are on a mission to share what they have learned in the field with as many people as possible. "They consider themselves privileged to be able to tell these stories," says Palmer. "There is very much personal mandate, a desire for them to share these stories, which parlays into a business strategy for BBC of basically going that last mile, as in 'We've shown you in video,' now they want what they call 'live interactions,' where you can use the five senses and people can start experiencing what we've seen."
When the filmmakers came together with Tauck's product developers, there was an immediate rapport, a sense of common ground and shared purpose. "A lot of the words they use are similar to ours," said Palmer. "We consider ourselves storytellers. A lot of our product is in the natural realm. So from get-go there was a meeting of the minds."
Palmer speaks with pride about Tauck's reputation for delivering quality experiences at the same time that he speaks with humility about what BBC can bring to the product.
"If you know Tauck, you know that if you're coming with us on any natural history product, anything to Africa or Antarctica, we offer something that's really good," he says. "But when we sit down with these filmmakers, just their knowledge, their excitement, their passion - it can't help but be better for our joint guests. And that's why we're doing it at the end of the day, right? First and foremost, it'll be a better guest experience."
A version of this story appeared in the January 2014 edition of Agent @ Home.
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