From Commerce to Mountain Bike Rentals

I'm the owner of Paihia Mountain Bikes and I run the rental operation at the Waitangi Mountain Bike Park.

I fell into the industry. I did a Bachelor of Commerce, majoring in Finance, but ended up working for Haka Tours for a wee while helping them set up their mountain bike tours and got a taste for travel through them. I grew up in the Bay of Islands and a mountain bike park opened up and I thought "Hey, this is a really good opportunity"; so, I set up a mountain bike rental operation, which has now moved into shuttles, coaching and workshops and, hopefully, more. We're really excited.

My favourite thing is when I see someone who has been brought along on a ride in the form of a group trip - be it a corporate event or a birthday, for example - and then we'll see them about a month later and they've bought their own bike because they loved it so much. They tell us that their experience with us changed their life. That's what we try to do here - we want to get bums on bikes and promote healthy outdoor exercise for people.

I start the day with a morning ride! Then I turn up onsite to open up and get the bikes ready, make sure the staff know what they're doing for the day, then by 10am there's an onslaught of customers. So mornings are meeting and greeting customers and making sure they're ready for the day; then the afternoons are spent collecting the bikes and washing them down and other general business operational stuff.

Having a background in commerce has helped in terms of setting up the business; but I think working in someone else's business first is a great way to see for yourself how it all works and you can transfer those skills. Then, if you feel you have a really cool product that NZ could benefit from then, by all means, take the plunge and give it a go. It's trial by fire.

I'd recommend getting work experience with a few different operations, because we're all so different. You really do need to be effective communicating with people and be confident chatting to people from all walks of life. A lot of people think that when you come into tourism it's a short term gig before finding a proper job, but I think that this is quite far from the truth. I think there's real career opportunities to be developed. Yes, you will be working in frontline roles to begin with, but there are a lot of management pathways involved. Generally in businesses there is room to expand and you can put your hand up for this or transfer into companies who align with your career goals.