Rafting Guide to Company Director

I am the director of MDA Group. We have a few businesses that sit under our umbrella including MDA Experiences and Mountain Bike Rotorua.

I’ve been in Tourism for most of my life – I first started guiding when I was 16. I was studying for an adventure tourism certificate and halfway through that year I fell in love with the outdoors. I was out hiking and came across a view that made me have an epiphany of “I want to bring people here”. I immediately called a local company, Kaitiaki Adventures, and asked if they had any jobs. They asked if I spoke te reo Māori, if I could sing and if I could swim and it was a yes to all (well – I can play a guitar loud) and I was training with them that weekend. The rest is history!

In all honesty, with every job we’ve created it’s all about how we can bring in a friend to work with us. It’s cool looking after people, and cool providing them with amazing experiences – especially on the luxury side of things – but more than that it’s hanging out with my best mates and my family.

It’s a very people-oriented industry. It’s one of the industries that is still based on relationships more than anything else. It’s why I love going to events like TRENZ – it’s more than just sales – I love catching up with and hanging out with my mates in the industry. Sure, I can do cool things; I don’t know if I would have ever stayed in a luxury lodge or travelled all sorts of places in helicopters without being in Tourism – but it’s the people that keep me around.

I’ve swung from the bottom of helicopters, gone for rides in private jets… I love that I get to take my daughter to all these places and explore all of this with her too.

You should be getting into any industry for the right reasons. My parents taught me not to worry about money – that the “money will come” – but to make sure that whatever I was doing, it was making me happy. And it’s pretty hard not to be happy in Tourism. 99.99% of the people we are dealing with are genuine good buggers who want to get out and have a good time and enjoy the place where they’re at. If you want to get into an industry that is about being surrounded by positivity, aroha, manaakitanga, whanaungatanga then this is one of those industries.