Thursday 21st August 2014 – Kingston, Jamaica: Chukka Caribbean Adventures is one of the region’s leading action adventure tour companies, with locations in Belize, Jamaica and the Turks and Caicos Islands. With a wide range of activities including zip-lining, forest and river excursions, Chukka offers a rich cultural experience while allowing its customers to get hands-on with the natural beauty of the environment. Having developed a strong customer base, the company continues to expand throughout the region, with plans to become a regional tourism operator in up to 20 countries.
The Challenge
As a geographically-dispersed company with major plans for growth, Chukka’s senior management team faced the challenge of having to travel every quarter for meetings. As a result, travel and accommodation was becoming a significant expense for the company.
The Solution
Digicel Business provided an Avaya videoconferencing solution supported by dedicated internet access (DIA).
In less than a year, Chukka began to see ROI from the solution as the capital investment required to implement the solution across all the Chukka Caribbean offices was equivalent to the cost of travel and accommodation for one year. Additionally, the company has been able to realise savings of approximately 15 to 20% on their travel and accommodation costs.
Increased Productivity
The videoconferencing solution has helped to save Chukka Caribbean Adventures an estimated 10 to 15% on meeting time – resulting in increased productivity for the staff. Previously, travel would account for some loss of productivity among the team members. Additionally, meetings take less time as the videoconferencing solution eliminates a lot of the distractions and detractors of audio conferencing.
Improved Quality of Communication
For Chukka, one of the most significant benefits of the solution included improvements in the quality of communication that it enabled. Marketing Manager of Chukka Caribbean Adventures, Alexander Melville, cited face-to-face communication as an important advantage provided by the solution. He said; “Previously, travel would account for some loss of productivity among the team members. But now, meetings take even less time with the videoconferencing, as we don’t have to deal with the distractions and detractors that come from using just audio-conferencing. Business is about developing and maintaining relationships and cohesive teams. The best thing about the videoconferencing solution for me is the ability to see gestures and facial expressions – these add greater engagement to the conversations while improving the closeness of our team. This face-to-face setup also makes people more comfortable as you are able to see exactly who it is that you’re talking to.”
Security
The Avaya videoconferencing solution offered a more secure channel for communication. Unlike the popular free, consumer-based video chatting products, the Avaya solution comes with built-in security which includes encryption and uses a private connection between both parties. Therefore, Chukka’s team has been able to discuss and share sensitive business information securely without fear of compromise.
With the help of Digicel Business, Chukka can now manage their travel costs better and focus more on growing their business throughout the Caribbean.