27/12/2019
It’s not often we take up our social media space with confronting articles but we spend a lot of time at WOA reading what went wrong for others. The White Island tragedy is in the early part of the analysis of “what went wrong” but many things can be learnt from the early lessons. We shared with some of our closest advisors the article on the importance of audits (which we have every year, this year’s will be conducted by Austere Risk Management) and the sharing of Emergency Response Plans which again we do. We have a comprehensive training package for our guides and only employ trained and national accredited guides. Let’s be honest here (you are our friends, family and clients so honesty and trust is what you want from us right?) we spend almost $1500.00 on Epipens and if you’re interested almost $7000.00 in first aid supplies all in the hope we never have to use them and believe it or not most of this only lasts 1 year.
This article here has a quote in it “With this system, the company that takes the 'safety first' approach will lose out to its less safety-conscience competitors. It's clearly ridiculous." Whilst Australia is different to New Zealand there are those who take safety less seriously than us. We have in fact had to assist and rescue clients of some other operators and this has happened at least once every season we have owned WOA. So when people ask, is there cheaper tours or other options? There always is, but we operate always with safety in mind and a recognition of the tyranny of distance should something go wrong. So we want to assure all of you “it’s clearly ridiculous” however we take it seriously and choose safety over profit. Have a great and safe new year!
When his daughter died, he thought her legacy would be an end to tourist deaths in NZ. He's devastated to be wrong.
