Pricing Changes

Pricing Changes for 2025

October 5, 2024

To our valued customers:

We made several decisions over the last two years to alter some tours to keep the price down; however, we now know that those decisions did not significantly reduce our costs, but did erode the quality of those tours. As with every business and family in Canada, we have been faced with increasing costs. While we did respond with some price increases over the last three years, they have not kept up with the increasing costs that we incur when providing most of our tours. There are three main areas where costs have increased dramatically over the past three to five years.
Most people know that there has been a constant upward pressure on employment costs over the last 5 years. Minimum wages in BC have gone up 25.63%, so other wages have had to follow suit. Our employment costs have gone up significantly over the past five years.
Most people also know that food prices have been going up, and the food we provide has not been an exception. Our food costs for tours has significantly increased. We do well to keep food costs down by using our commercial food dryers to dry food for our hiking tours. One group of foods that have gone up inordinately are food for special dietary needs. Gluten free, lactose free and other particular dietary products have gone up faster than most foods. We have more and more of you needing special dietary products. So, our costs for food have risen dramatically, as well.
And the third most noticeable cost increases have come with vehicles and transportation. Tours that require a significant transportation component have seen huge cost increases. Tours with long drives and tours requiring any kind of flight have seen these transportation costs skyrocket. Float plane and helicopter costs have gone up dramatically, and so we have had to increase prices dramatically on these tours.
Of course, most of our overheads and regular running costs have also gone up, but the three big cost increases for us, wages, food and transportation, have really put pressures on our ability to continue to operate. We tightened our belts this year, in 2024, but we cannot sustain ourselves by tightening our belts any more. So, this is to inform you that prices for 2025 on most tours will increase significantly, especially those that have flight or long drive components. We have spent the four months of May, June, July and August compiling operating costs for all the tours we run and have made pricing decisions that allow us to continue to operate and provide quality tours.
Online services, such as the booking platform we use, have begun to consolidate in their market and standardize their practices. That means that there is less competition for these online services and higher prices we pay to use them. Almost all booking platforms have now gone to a percentage of booking model rather than a subscription model. These platforms encourage their users to include a "booking fee" in their pricing to "cover" the increased fees. We have chosen to include a booking fee in our pricing, and be totally up front about it (legally, we have to). We don't have a choice, practically, for booking systems. We have to use the one system for everything or it becomes inefficient and wasteful. We have chosen to make this fee conscious, rather than credit card fees because we are also encouraging alternative payment methods that do not require the same high fees that credit cards charge. We are continuing to absorb those credit card costs without making them conspicuous because of your choice in payment method. We are committed to providing the best wilderness experiences for those of you who have put your trust in our expertise to get you out into the Real World. We will continue to do that.
Happy Adventuring,
Gary Ward and Georgia Newsome