We knew it was coming

Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) had been warning us for days that bad weather was on the way. It was called Larry.

So we secured our trailer and five jet skis and waited.

On 20 March 2006 in the early evening, Larry knocked on our door

Larry was a Category 5 Tropical Cyclone and was doing a lot of damage.

It had already hit the small islands in the Great Barrier Reef Heritage area and had demolished the holiday resort on Dunk Island. This was the resort that supplied our customers.

Yesterday we had been running jet ski tours around Dunk Island for their guests. Now there was no resort and no customers, and we had lost our business.

During our 4 years running Dunk Jet Sports, we published a newsletter called Traveljunkies.

With our business gone, we started helping other local businesses damaged by the cyclone, giving them free advertising in Traveljunkies.

The word spread and we were soon promoting small travel and adventure companies across Australia.

And as our popularity spread we grew to promote small businesses around the world, making more than 3200 contacts and many friends.

And this is what we still do today.

Numbers have changed since those early days as small businesses grew and the growth of the big aggregators like Tripadvisor, Booking.com, Airbnb etc. really took off, and the Covid 19 pandemic put thousands or even millions of small companies out of business.

These events put our development plans on hold and we continue to list small travel companies for free in Traveljunkies as they adapt to the changing climate and the drive to sustainability.

If you own or manage a small business in the travel, adventure or hospitality sectors I’d like to offer you an opportunity to market your business with a free listing in Traveljunkies.

You can see more and apply for your own free listing by visiting traveljunkies.com/freeads.

Cliff Chapman
Traveljunkies