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INTERVIEW

Romain Masina (PGE 2015) - “Making travel meaningful"

03 February 2023 INTERVIEW

In 2018, Romain Masina founded Odysway, the first agency to specialise in responsible immersive travel. In 2022, he launched Tribus, Odysway’s sister agency that organises unforgettable, responsible offsites and trips for companies, adapted to their size and culture. In this interview, Romain talks to us about the launch of this new venture.

 

Why did you create Tribus after Odysway? What was the rationale behind this development?

From the outset, start-ups, SMEs and the management teams of big corporations were using Odysway to organise their offsites (“workations”, seminars, etc.). While they weren’t our target market and offsites weren’t part of our offering, we managed to successfully adapt our immersive trips and come up with dedicated solutions for business clients. We work with them to design bespoke events that are a perfect fit for their company culture and inspired by our passion for responsible immersive travel. For each seminar, we work with a local player to create team-building experiences and to open up the company to their environment while having a positive impact on the region visited by the groups.

 

What is the link between the two?

Tribus is inspired by our passion for immersive travel, which is in our agency’s DNA and the reason why Tribus is meaningful to our team. We imagine each new project as an opportunity to offer the teams a different experience while having a positive environmental and social impact. The word Tribus (tribes in English) is also a reference to the many communities that our lone travellers come into contact with through Odysway. And finally, that’s also what we call ourselves in-house: la Tribu Odysway (the Odysway tribe).

 

Do you have an anecdote to share about the first months of the business?

Our memorable slogan, “Partez collègues, revenez Tribus” (go away as colleagues, come back as tribes), proves accurate time and again! It’s a powerful promise we make with each new project, whether the teams are going an hour out of Paris or outside of Europe. For these events, one or two members of the Tribus team accompany the companies on their trip to ensure their experience is as wonderful and smooth as possible. We go to great lengths for our clients and this often requires a high level of responsiveness and adaptation – like the time we had to completely reorganise an activity at the last minute due to the weather conditions. It also requires us to become local guides ourselves, to offer a great team-building activity.

We go on reconnaissance trips ahead of projects, to find the best accommodation options and local guides, in some remote part of the Alps or in the middle of the Wadi Rum in Jordan for example. Every time, we make fantastic memories and meet great people :)

 

Contact: Romain Masina - Founder & CEO of Odysway and Tribus

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