Surf camps by the surf travel craftsman: thank you Sud Ouest!
“L’Officiel de la franchise” magazine: Ocean Adventure to franchise its surf camps
Read the interview with Nicolas Mercadieu, founding father of Ocean Adventure, on France Bleu‘s “ Éco d’ici ” programme:
“Every morning, in l’Éco d’ici, we highlight companies in the Basque Country. Today, in l’Éco D’ici, we’re going to find out about tourism, but this tourism is sporting this morning. Yes, that’s right. Nicolas Mercadieu is the founder ofOcean Adventure. It’s based in Anglet and is the first travel agency to offer holidays specialising in board sports. Their aim is to find you the best surf schools in the region, and they explain where this idea came from.
“As a consultant, I provide a lot of services to the local economy and to local businesses. So I had surf schools. So I worked for these surf schools and put them at the top of Google on Anglet surf schools, Biarritz surf schools. I had one, I had two. The third wanted to work with me and I realised that, with a bit of hard work, I could keep a teacher going all summer. A summer teacher means four lessons a day, €40 a lesson, eight people a lesson. I said to myself “That’s still a lot of money” and from there I said to them “Listen, we’re going to change things a bit. I’m going to market for you and you’re going to give me a percentage of the sales”. It worked out well. We have a selection of around twenty surf schools between Hendaye and Lacanau. We’re trying to expand slowly towards the far north, Brittany and the Vendée. But in total, we have 200 service providers.
“I’m a customer, I want to discover a bit of surfing and at the same time, we’re going on a week’s holiday. How are things going on the site?”
” It’s very simple. We have a catalogue of services, surf lessons or surf lessons with accommodation and that’s a surf camp. And we’re generally in family structures where there are around twenty people, a little less in real life. Between 12 and 15, we have between 12 and 16. So it’s really friendly. In a way, we’re staying in people’s homes, in family structures. And that’s what stands out in the selection of teachers we have, so that they see what life is like, a bit like Erasmus. That’s what I like and I think more in terms of France, Spain and England. I’m very European in my head. You’re going to end up with Italians who speak Spanish, with an Argentinian accent, les Canailles, Fuerteventura, I love it, it’s very Latin.
This year, we made 50% of our sales in Morocco and we have families who go away and we send them to little lost paradises where they are welcomed in pretty houses and they go there with their children, they ride camels on the beach, they spend dream weeks.
The funny thing is that the population, the audience, has changed a lot. As a result, we have proposals for just about everyone. For example, I’ve got pharmacists from Hendaye who are a bit older than me, who must be in their early fifties, who have gone to Taghazout in Morocco for a week’s surfing in a surf camp that’s a bit cosier, a bit more upmarket than the simple B&B in Hossegor. So we’ve got a bit of everything. That’s what’s so much fun.
But we also have educational objectives and that’s what we mustn’t forget. And that’s what stands out in our selection of teachers. And today, I’m taking advantage of my radio appearance to put out a call for projects.
We’re looking for surf teachers who want to set up their own business. We have people who want to put money into renting or buying houses by the sea in France or abroad. And today, the service we’re offering is to teachers we know – we meet them every day – and we say to them, “Don’t you want to set up your own business? We can help you generate a business”. And today, that’s what we’re doing. We send €50, €70, €150.000 to certain surf camps, and that’s no mean feat!
