I spotted this on the Daily Telegraph, but I think it is only available to subscribers, so here is an insight into how the Loch Ness cruise boat industry works. I went on the new Cruise Loch Ness boat last April and it was an enjoyable and interesting experience, but more on that at the end of this article.
Not
every small business owner can say they offer customers a chance to get
up close and personal with a legendary monster, but Debi Mackenzie can.
For more than 50 years, her tour company Cruise Loch Ness
has ferried curious clients back and forth across Scotland's
second-deepest loch. Most come to learn about the region's history and
geology, but in the back of their minds is always Nessie, she explains.
"There's no getting away from it – people are mystified by the
creature!"
Based in Fort Augustus, a "quaint little village" on the banks of the loch's southernmost point, the family-run firm
offers a range of scenic and exhilarating tours. Its standard offering
is a 50-minute cruise that runs several times a day to Invermoriston and
back, while more adventurous travellers can take a rigid-hulled
inflatable boat (RIB) to Foyers, Urquhart Castle and beyond at high
speed.
"We try to cater for all ages and
budgets," says Mackenzie, who thinks that her company's key
differentiator is its local workforce. "Our staff are well versed and
very passionate about the place, as most have lived here all their
lives." The director isn't local; she used to
work in banking in Glasgow. In 2010, a mutual friend introduced
Mackenzie to her now husband Ronald, the owner of Cruise Loch Ness. His
father Norman launched the enterprise with a second-hand lifeboat in
1968.
The
couple began dating, but living a three-and-a-half-hour drive apart
proved tough. "One of us had to move, but Loch Ness is Loch Ness and we
couldn't shift that," jokes Mackenzie, who relocated to Fort Augustus in
2012 and took a job with a local bank. "This was about the time the
business began to take off and Ronald was working really hard on it,
doing pretty much everything himself."
He asked his partner if she wanted to
come aboard. "He expected me to say no, but I loved rural life," she
says. "I wanted to see what we could do together to make the company
even better." Ronald's time was mostly spent working
on the boats, which meant that the back office suffered. Mackenzie used
her banking expertise to introduce new finance and administration
processes. "Everything became streamlined," she says. A new website and
bespoke booking system brought even more efficiency and a better customer experience. Business increased by about 20pc each year after that point, she claims.
The family slowly but surely grew its
fleet of boats to meet demand, but by 2017, a much larger passenger
vessel was needed. With nothing suitable second-hand, the Mackenzies
commissioned a new build. It was "stressful" and a "huge risk", admits
the director. "When you're a home-based business working from laptops, you don't expect to spend £1.5m on your next piece of kit."
The
custom craft, Spirit of Loch Ness, was launched last year and brought
capacity across the company's five boats to more than 350 people. Word
of mouth marketing, local tour operator partnerships and a new social media strategy have all helped to keep bookings high.
With
nine award wins over the past year (including being crowned small firm
of the year at the recent Federation of Small Businesses Awards), things
are looking up for the enterprise, which employs 18 people in peak
season and has an annual turnover of £1.6m. But Mackenzie and her team aren't
getting comfortable. "We're always worrying about keeping things
attractive so that people want to come," she says. The remoteness of
Loch Ness can be a challenge. "It's a popular tourist destination but
still in the middle of nowhere," she states. "With rising fuel costs and
so on, people don't always make the effort to come that bit further
north."
Winter trips can also be a difficult
sell. "The village is so quiet and quite a few shops are closed," says
the director. "It can be hard to get tourists to the village when it
doesn't offer as much as it does in the summer." Fort
Augustus being so isolated also makes it tough to attract talent, but
Cruise Loch Ness is "lucky" in that it employs so many locals. "We're
family," says Mackenzie. "Ronald grew up with most of them, which can
present challenges now that he's their boss, but there's also a lot more
respect."
The secret to keeping staff happy
is simply to look after them, she thinks. "Pay them well and listen to
their concerns." Her advice is to hire people who are as passionate
about the business as you. "Our employees give the same tour
presentation seven or eight times a day, but they do it consistently
well because they really care about the company."
Having family members running the firm
means there will always be passionate and dedicated people leading it,
but working and living together can be hard. "It can feel like it's
24-7," says Mackenzie, who has two young children with Ronald. To fit
everything in, they're often up at 6am writing emails, which can be
physically and mentally taxing.
The flip side, however, is that the
highs are much higher. "Being able to celebrate the wins together as a
family at the dinner table is really nice." Cruise
Loch Ness will soon open a new booking office, which will "transform"
how the team works. "Ronald and I will have an on-site office space and a
person purely focused on admin," says Mackenzie. "It's going to make a
big difference." Two new RIBs are also on order. "There's going to be a
lot of shiny new boats."
Could the future also hold a new
sighting of Nessie? Mackenzie isn't sure, but adds that stranger things
have happened. "A few years ago, one of our skippers captured an image
of a large object on his sonar device screen," she explains. "It was
quite deep below the water and a few metres in length, which is very
unusual."
She is of course referring to Marcus Atkinson's 2012 sonar contact, but going back to my own recent experience of the boat, I do take a somewhat contrary position in watching the sonar screens more than the waters outside. According to one of the older staff I spoke to, the boats have had about 600 sonar contacts over 10 years, most of those which were GPS tagged and when revisited were gone.
One crew member said he had once seen a sonar contact on the screen which required his thumb to cover it. What that quite meant in terms of the physical dimensions of the corresponding object under the waves is another matter, but as I watched the screen, I did spot my own sonar blob which aroused my curiosity. You can see it in the photograph below as the blue dot just above the loch bed above the "6" of "64.0".
The depth would be about 140m (460ft) going by the vertical scale on the right. You can see the smaller dots representing fish near the surface, but this blob is somewhat bigger, but not hugely. Though it has to be remembered sonar images denote changes in density and not physical size. So what was it? A seal (unlikely since they are not indigenous), a salmon kelt, ferox trout or something else?
The route did not allow to check whether it was still there on the way back, that would require paying for another trip and going over the same spot. However, one sonar contact of interest roughly every week on average since 2009 makes one wonder what other cruise boats are seeing on their boats? The aforementioned 2012 sonar contact may have comparable ones which have received little or no publicity (such as this one). It would be good if they were made available for examination and discussion.
One crew member said he had once seen a sonar contact on the screen which required his thumb to cover it. What that quite meant in terms of the physical dimensions of the corresponding object under the waves is another matter, but as I watched the screen, I did spot my own sonar blob which aroused my curiosity. You can see it in the photograph below as the blue dot just above the loch bed above the "6" of "64.0".
The depth would be about 140m (460ft) going by the vertical scale on the right. You can see the smaller dots representing fish near the surface, but this blob is somewhat bigger, but not hugely. Though it has to be remembered sonar images denote changes in density and not physical size. So what was it? A seal (unlikely since they are not indigenous), a salmon kelt, ferox trout or something else?
The route did not allow to check whether it was still there on the way back, that would require paying for another trip and going over the same spot. However, one sonar contact of interest roughly every week on average since 2009 makes one wonder what other cruise boats are seeing on their boats? The aforementioned 2012 sonar contact may have comparable ones which have received little or no publicity (such as this one). It would be good if they were made available for examination and discussion.
The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com
