The three pillars of unbeatable CX: ease, authenticity, and trust
With Kate Couling, Co-founder & director, World Journeys
“As clever as AI is and as wonderful as all of those websites are, it's not the same as sitting and chatting to somebody who knows it, who's been there, who's smelled it”
Kate Couling
What does it actually take to build customer relationships that last — not just satisfy, but genuinely endure? In this episode, Dr Eslam Afifi sits down with Kate Couling, founder of World Journeys, a bespoke luxury travel agency that has thrived for over 20 years through the internet boom, the rise of online booking platforms, and now the emergence of agentic AI.
Kate unpacks the three principles that have been the backbone of World Journeys since day one: ease of doing business, authenticity, and trust. But as the conversation unfolds, it becomes clear these are not three separate ideas — they are a chain reaction. Get the first one right, and the others follow naturally. Skip one, and the whole thing collapses.
The episode covers how World Journeys manages complex multi-destination itineraries for high-end clients, how they handle crises when things go wrong on the other side of the world, what luxury actually means when you strip away the brand names, and why the most powerful signal of customer trust is a client who sends you a single sentence — and nothing more.
Whether you work in travel, financial services, government, or any service-driven industry, this conversation will change how you think about customer engagement, human connection, and the role of AI in the future of CX.
In this episode
Why ease of doing business is the foundation — not a nice-to-have
How authentic expertise converts curious customers into loyal ones
What deep trust actually looks like in practice — and the three stages to get there
How World Journeys manages consistency across complex global itineraries
Why staying small was a deliberate and powerful strategic choice
How to think about AI as a support layer — not a replacement for human connection
Chapters
0:00 Welcome and 20 years of World Journeys
3:24 Ease, authenticity and trust in practice
5:18 Consistency, partners and managing expectations
9:13 Crisis support and owning mistakes
11:49 Group journeys and small authentic moments
16:51 Hiring for passion and defining luxury
21:08 AI as support, not replacement
23:07 Aftercare and staying small by choice
26:20 Advice for CX leaders: the gran test
About Kate Couling
Kate Couling is a co-founding director of World Journeys and has worked in the travel industry since her early twenties. Her career began the way the best ones often do — travelling the world on a budget, arriving into cities late at night with nothing pre-arranged, navigating bureaucracy and language barriers, and proving she could figure it out on her own.
That formative experience is the foundation of everything World Journeys does today. Kate and her fellow directors built the agency on a simple but powerful mission: to design journeys they would undertake themselves. Every itinerary is crafted from personal knowledge and direct experience — not brochures, not third-party reviews. The team has worked in the industry for over 30 years and continues to travel regularly, because at World Journeys, staying current is not optional — it is the job
TranscriptRead the full conversation24 min read · 5,552 words
Eslam Welcome to another episode of The CX Algorithm. I'm Dr Eslam Afifi. Today's a bit of a special episode for me for two reasons. The first reason is the approach we're going to speak about CX around engagement, around trust, is going to completely change your mind of how to look at AI and how to look at all the technology that we are surrounded by. But a second reason is I have a dear friend that will be my guest today. Kate Couling is not only an expert in travel with more than 30 years of experience, not only that she's leading one of the leading agencies in New Zealand and across the world, I'm not talking about bespoke travel, but she's also a dear friend of mine. And I must have to be honest that I also serve as a non-executive director on her company.
Eslam So first, Kate, welcome to the show.
Kate Thank you, Eslam. It's lovely to see you always.
Eslam Likewise, my friend. First and foremost, how would you describe World Journeys and why did you actually start it in the first place?
Kate World Journeys is probably a bespoke boutique tour operator, travel agent. We don't have a storefront, a walk-in storefront. Um, we design itineraries that we would like to travel on ourselves. We choose destinations that we want to visit ourselves. We're all very experienced. We've been doing this a long time so we can can pick and choose exciting, exotic, incredible destinations and, um, sell those in such a great way to our clients. Why did we start it? We all work have worked in the industry for a very long time. And we found that a lot of them, a lot of the agents and a lot of the tour operations were exploding in size. And when you explode in size, you lose a lot of the personal touch. You lose a lot of the ability to be able to tailor things. You lose a lot of connection with your clients. So we started World Journeys to bring everything back and center everything into what it was that excited us about travel.
Kate And here we are, 20 years later.
Eslam Love that. 20 years. That's an amazing record. So I have to start with a big question. How on earth did you survive for 20 years despite the internet boom, the booking.com wave, and now AI and the agentic AI wave that's coming through us right now?
Kate Well, great. Fantastic. Those are all wonderful things. And they're all things that allow people to do a lot of their own research. And do a lot of their own planning. But if you look at booking.com or if you look at any of those, how does that compare to chatting with me? I've been to that destination. I may have lived in that destination. I can tell you what the best part of town to go is. Where are you going to get a decent seafood meal? How's the best way to get there without, you know, if you choose the cheapest option, you might have a massive stopover somewhere. I can give you the cheapest option if that's what you're looking for, but I can also give you the most convenient one. Lean into our expertise. Lean into what it is that we've seen the last 30 years doing and allow us to help you. If you're a time core, if you want something special, if you need something tailored, if you want it to go the way that you want it to go, talk to somebody that can make that happen. Because as clever as AI is and as wonderful as all of those websites are, it's not the same as sitting and chatting to somebody who knows it, who's been there, who's smelled it, who's
Eslam Taste of it. It's just not the same. I love, I love the value proposition and something that resonates and that's why I'm, I always love to talk to you. I always love to know more about World Journeys But one of the things that I'm really keen on, and it's something that we always talked about in previous conversations, you and I, that whenever you speak about that kind of connection, that kind of engagement that you have, your customers, to embark on a designing a new experience, you always speak about three things to me. And the three things are ease of doing business, simplicity, and trust. I would love if you can lay out one by one to explain to our audience what does it actually mean to you and how do you actually achieve them? Ease of doing business is simple.
Kate We have a system here where we are boutique, we're tiny. If you call us, you don't get a machine. You speak to a person from the first time. You don't get a, press one to book your flight, press two to find your hotel. There's somebody here. If that person can't help you, we will have somebody in our office who can, who's been there, who knows it intimately and will help you. So that ease of doing businesses is connection, and that leans absolutely into authenticity and into trust, because as soon as you start speaking to somebody who can speak with authority on any particular destination that you want to know more, you want to understand what the challenges are about getting there, you want to know, you know, do you stay in this village or in that village? What are the differences and what advantages are there one over the other? It makes such a difference to have that personal connection. And in no time, the authenticity and the trust just follow. They just absolutely follow. People can do as much research as they like. And as soon as they come back and they go, actually, they were right. They were right. And so that then brings us on to people trusting us absolutely. But the number of my clients that will text me and say, you know what I like? This is the destination I want to go to next. And that's it. That's all I get. But if I've done three, four, five trips with them before, I do know what they like. I do know what it is that they want out of their holiday and pretty much we nail it first time. It's an
Eslam Amazing idea. Just to give context to our audience, we're not speaking about any normal tools here. We're talking about a very high-end, but not only high-end, also complex, that we're talking about in a single destination, which leads me to my next question is, when you do this co-design process with your customers, existing or potential, how can you keep consistency? Because if you have, if you you're plugging in three to four destinations, and all of them need to be high-end, but all of them have different tastes, it might be adventurous one, be sports one, be something else. How can you keep that level of consistency across the entire customer experience from the beginning of the
Kate Journey till the end of the journey? Well, there's lots of, there's lots of ways that we do that, and a lot of it is is connection. So there's a massive amount of communication with airline suppliers and so on, all around the world, all the time. We attend conferences, we make sure that we're on top of changes and new things that are arriving. But largely, a lot of the people that we work with in the different countries, they're not our suppliers really, they are completely our partners. We spend a lot of time communicating with them, making sure that they understand what style we go for. And in no time at all, our partners become relationships and friendships that last a long time. You know, we've had connections with some of our ground partners for 20, 30 years, genuinely. You know, I know the names of their children, I know the names of their dogs. The same with my clients, you know, and it's, you know, when they're getting married and when they're away on holiday, and it's, it's a fantastic relationship, and I can trust them and they can trust us to make sure that everything happens the way that it's supposed to, to the absolute peak experience for our clients.
Eslam So we're not talking about only trust building with your customers, it's also with your partners. I love that kind of ecosystem that you have built around how you, because you can see the change once you move from suppliers. And this is not only in tourism, this is in the other industry, from financial services, government, and even consultancy. The moment your relationship evolves, and it moves from being a supplier transaction in nature, and then moving to a partnership, you can see the real value behind it.
Kate Absolutely.
Eslam And still something else I would love to know more, with that level of complexity, how do you manage expectations? Because if I'm a client and I'm coming in and we're talking about high-end, it's not an investment for me. So how do you manage my expectations? Again, underpinning these elements of trust and authenticity that you spoke about.
Kate A lot of it is just communication. It's like maybe complex. It might take me two weeks to build something particularly complex. If I tell you on the regular, okay, we've got your flights in place. I'm communicating with our partners in such and such a destination. We're working on the best thing, there's some availability issues, it's going to take us a few days to sort that out. And then you make sure that you give people deadlines, keep to them, keep communicating, keep going back to them, just keep people up to date. You know, it's difficult being in this part of the world where everywhere where our clients are traveling, we're in a completely different time zone. So a lot of that instant gratification that you get from the northern hemisphere, if you're booking something with somebody that's in the same time zone, we have a luxury here that people expect things to take slightly longer. But so long as I can communicate that to you and keep you up to date about where you are, you're going to trust me to continue with
Eslam It. I love that because I love the research that we have in the CX space always indicates that people are not annoyed by the duration of the process, how long it takes. They actually annoyed of the
Kate Lack of communication during that process. Exactly, exactly. And that's one of the biggest things that you even look at even technology right now, technology apps, even if you're ordering an Uber, people always want to know how far, not only how far my Uber is, if any changes. How far away is it? How far away is it? I would have liked to know. And I would like to see the arrow for telling me how far it is.
Eslam Exactly. And it's just an incredible idea that you have been there with any element of technology. It's like closing, what we call closing the loop. It's just keeping that communication and going further. But this is also leading to my, another bit I would love to know, I would love the audience to know more. But when you're talking about multiple destinations, nations, multiple stakeholders, I would call them stakeholders, I would call them partners on different parts of the world. How would you deal with crisis management? Things like COVID, things like there's a problem with delays, there's something happened to circumstances. How would you keep that element of change management to the experience? And how do you keep that communication open throughout the journey with your clients?
Kate Okay, so you can't stop mistakes happening. You can't stop flight delays. You can't stop COVID. What you can do is you can have a process and you can have a system that allows you to manage and can keep that communication going. So again, because we're on the other side of the world, it does become challenging. So we have a duty manager 24-7. So if anything happens anywhere and you can't get help from the local partner or it's beyond their control, there is always someone to contact, Bevan. There is always a person to speak to. And that person can provide assurance, empathy. Be, we may not have an immediate solution, but we will listen and we will give them a time frame for working out what the solution might be. And because we have the years of experience, we can generally be quite creative with some of our solutions as well. And that is, a lot of my clients have said to me, that's worth diamonds, knowing that there's someone to speak to regardless of
Eslam The day or time and regardless of what. That's a great point, and I couldn't, I couldn't agree more, and again, previous research, previous experiences, the showing that element is a pivotal experience. Because some research at some companies would say the beginning of the experience and the end of the experience are the more high points, but actually middle is also important because sometimes those moments are the ones that stick in our mind that we would remember the next time we interact with that same company, the operator, another service provider.
Kate So if you turned up, I mean, if you'd booked, for example, a lodge in, I don't know, let's just say Botswana, You'd booked a lodge in Botswana online. You arrive and they say, I don't have a record of your booking. You're in the middle of nowhere. There's no hotel next door to check into. What happens now? If you've booked with us, there's a phone call. There's someone to deal with it. There's a proof of all of your transactions. We're very careful at crossing T's and dotting I's and making sure that everything's sitting in place. Very, very careful. But if there's been a mistake, we will also take ownership and we fix it. It's not about the mistakes happening, it's about how you respond. So that's, that's essential for us. Now, I'm going to
Eslam Stay again on the complexity of your, because I want to give our audience the complexity that goes into the planning of this. So if we are, again, if we are talking about individual that might be easier, but how you really deal when you have a group, an excursion that's going with, including number of maybe 10 or 15 people, and they might have a different elements or different taste of what they would like to see? How do you combine that? How do you align all of that group to go together and make sure there's a harmony across the entire trip? Right, we do have an element of
Kate Hosted journeys that we offer. It's not a huge amount of what we do. Most of the stuff we do is tailored, but we find that there are specific destinations and specific types of people that want to travel with others. So we keep the group size small. We give it lots of information about expectations, about what they can see and what they can do. There is some down time where people are absolutely at their own liberty to do what they want, where they want, how they want and how much money they want to spend to do it. The structure around the itineraries is built in such a way that we have quite a blend of culture, history, food, local interactions, sites. So you don't have to attend everything. If something doesn't interest you, sit out. That's fine. And we have the hosts that we send along with the journeys are with you every day. They get to know you. They get to know what your likes and dislikes are. And they can work with the local operator to make sure that everybody, you know, people spend a lot of money to travel. It's their holiday. They don't actually want to be told what to do every single second of every single day.
Kate So the host is there also to help blend, make sure things go the way that people want to. So each
Eslam Person experience the holiday that they want. This leads me to my another point that you always, in our previous conversation, you always speak about how small moments are the ones, sometimes are the most important moments in the experience, things like remembering somebody's birthday, somebody's celebration, a surprise, and you always try to do that, especially when you, even if the client is There's maybe a repeat client and they haven't mentioned it, but you're on top of it. I'd like if you can explain it a little bit more on the examples, some examples on that board.
Kate Well, birthdays are easy because we need a passport copy. So that's easy. Other things like the small moments are fantastic. A lot of those might be locally experienced. So out of a huge itinerary, let's say, for example, through the Middle East, if we have one evening where we go into a local home, The local family has cooked us traditional food that they would eat every day. Everybody sits on the floor around a central. We eat with our hands, with rice, with bread, with whatever. We meet the family. The kids are all tumbling in and out and helping themselves to the food. They will forget that they went to see the temples of Abu Simbel the day before. Magnificent, extraordinary architecture and incredible feat of engineering. Itinerary and they'll go, but did you see that kid laughing when they tripped over the edge of the carpet? You know, it's like those tiny little things can absolutely transform an itinerary.
Kate And we try and build those in for whatever reason, wherever they happen to be. I love that blend
Eslam Because when you talking about high-end, a lot of people, when they think about high-end, everything has to be posh, everything has to be top notch. But sometimes, and this goes back to your element our authenticity, is how you, how you blend in the element of the high-end, element of staying in an amazing hotel, an amazing resort, an amazing establishment, but at the same time combine it with authenticity to be able to have a feel of the real country as well. And if I would love to, if you can tell us more examples of that, either in Africa, Middle East, or even in South America.
Kate Well, we have, for example, we have a small portfolio of women's only tours. There's been increasing, an increasing amount of interest in women who their partners might not want to travel. They may recently have been widowed or for whatever reason, and they feel more comfortable in a small group of women. So we have a small portfolio. And for example, in Morocco, we arranged for them to have an evening meal in a riad with a female scholar who's worked incredibly hard to, in perhaps an environment where women might not be expected to be leading in any particular area, and they can talk freely and openly about the interests and challenges that come along with that. There are opportunities to go for a camel ride in the desert, you know, perhaps go and learn how to do block printing, which if you were in a larger group, half the group are not going to be interested in textiles at all.
Kate You get a small group of women who say, well, we'll go and see how that fabric's made. Let's go and see then in the market where they sell it. So it's kind of like thinking about who's traveling, thinking about beyond seeing the main highlights of a city, beyond seeing the, you know, ticking off sightseeing and giving people real cultural, interesting, life-altering memories of traveling in a particular destination, getting to know it as a destination rather than a list of things to tick off.
Eslam That's fantastic. Going back again to this, that idea of how you created those extraordinary moments. And I love the way that you creating authenticity was a sense of culture, but at the same time, still giving your clients what do they actually need, which is a high-end trend, which makes me to that debate that was for a long time ongoing. I can do that online. I can search online. I can find this online. line. And again, it's going back to that debate about the middle person and how you actually, it's actually funny because maybe 10 years ago, that was a discussion that was happening. But right now the discussion is like, we need that middle person. You need that going back because as a part of the search, I can do it my own, but to be able to blend all of these things, it might be a very difficult task to do. And I'm really keen to understand how do you combine your team to have different expertise to make sure you tackle each part of the world outside? Because you're not only looking at one area of the world, you're actually talking about worldwide journeys, why you call it World Journeys.
Kate Now you're talking about staffing, okay, and finding the right people. That is beyond challenging. That is so challenging. So essentially, I think what we, the ethos that we have when we are looking for people that fit is that they have to fit. So we can teach you skills. Can be shared. I can teach you a system. Him, I can teach you a process, I can teach you, can I teach you passion, can I teach you, you know, the places you've been, the things you've seen, the people you've met, those are vital for our communication with our clients. So every single person who works here is bubbling over with passion, with experience, they are so well-travelled, they've been there, they've done it and they've seen it. All we've done is we've brought them together in a group and slammed them on the phone, they are an extraordinary bunch of people and it is indeed our people that make us. I love that one
Eslam Of the things I'm really keen to explain to our audience is, how are you actually, in your vision not only escape boss was a world journey, how do you actually view, how do you find luxury? Because a lot of people think luxury is different, but every, the more we talk, you can see the audience will be questioning is like, hold on, this is not how do I receive luxury travel, what does it actually
Kate Mean to you? Luxury travel, I think, yes, your hotel has to be beautiful. We don't generally go for the massive international brands. So we tend to focus on authenticity in terms of the building, textiles, the people set up. So a lot of what we do is very boutique. The hotels are small, maybe 30, 40 rooms maybe, but have certain level of comfort and style, absolutely. But also in terms of luxury, it's, it's the care taken. So is somebody going to meet you when you get off the plane and you go into the arrivals hall? Is somebody waiting there with your name on a sign? And do they make sure that you have water in the car when you're on the way to the hotel? Do they check that you're comfortable? Is there anything you need? It's, it's care taken from start to finish, and we're so lucky with some of our amazing partners who just do, who go above and beyond to welcome and wrap up our clients as soon as they arrive. Um, they're, they're amazing. Wherever you happen to go in the world, we have extraordinary partners who are willing to give you the luxurious feeling of not having to worry about what happens next because it's taken care of. I might be the little advocate
Eslam Here, but I have to ask, how do you keep governance across such a vast network of stakeholders? I don't
Kate Know how to answer that. Um, it is, it is a constant communication. We often review, we travel a great deal, we communicate, we check in with them, we look at their buses and their cars, and we talk to their guides and we see their offices and we make time to meet with them and communicate. They often travel here as well. So there's a lot that goes on in the relationship building process, which basically takes care of the governance. It is huge. There's no denying that. It's absolutely huge. And it's just something that's constant and inbuilt into part of our DNA.
Eslam That's great. And I love that being a part of it. To be able to control that consistency across the entire journey, regardless of the number of stakeholders, regardless of destinations, is incredible.
Kate Thank you.
Eslam Now, I would love to ask about the future. And I want to know, how do you see this whole hype of AI and the agents? And how does that money impact your ecosystem and your value proposition?
Kate Decision moving forward with your World Journeys? Most of our clients are slightly older and they are also quite time poor. You know, they've, a lot of them have traveled a great deal and are now at the stage where, do you know what, I could use AI and I could do this myself and I could do that research myself, but I don't want to. I want somebody else to take care of that for me. And a large number of our people have done, tried to book things online and tried to do things themselves. And if something went wrong, realize how hard that is to spend four hours on a phone to an airline trying to get yourself rebooked and just don't want to do that anymore. more. So I think in terms of our value proposition going forward, as much as yes, AI is what an incredible tool, how extraordinary and how incredible that is going to change over the next decade or whatever, there's no comparison to sitting and chatting with somebody and having this relationship and this communication and this community in terms of, I trust you to take care of it, look after me now. So I think if we concentrate on the human side and allow the AI and all of that sort of thing to be a great support, fantastic. You know, keep the human element, and I think that we
Eslam Will always have a place in that regard. The percent, I couldn't agree more, because there is again, I'll refer to a lot of articles in the law of research that shows two things of the element of the customers, what we call perceived risk. It's something that I don't want to take risk. It's in a moment if it's on honeymoon or it's an anniversary with my wife, I don't want to risk because I don't want to be the one who ruined and booked the wrong thing. That's usually the case, right? But also the second thing, it also comes to us, the idea of cognitive load. That as we're all busy, especially if you have that level of income and you can afford that travel, you don't have the time for it. And it's something that can be, as you said, can be very time consuming, which is great.
Eslam Now, moving to something I really would like to kind of highlight is, again, because we had a lot of conversations before about this. You're always proud of your model of how you do post-journey interactions. that you always say the journey with us doesn't end after you come back home. There's always a connection. We keep that connection open. And I would love to know more about that. And what do you guys do post-journey or post-experience?
Kate People often will get either a phone call or an email just to say, hey, welcome home. A lot of our bookings are done via travel agents. So we have a sales team out on the road keeping that connection and that relationship going with all of our agents. so that World Journeys is front of mind for them as well. For our direct clients, the level and the in-depth sort of communication that we have through the planning process and often through the journey as well is just a natural progression for when they get home. And often people need time to decompress and they want to relive their memories. But before too long, they're also now thinking about the next trip. I have a number of clients who will be emailing me about the next as they get on the plane to come home, because they always want something to look forward to.
Kate And if we remember they want something to look forward to, and we keep that communication going, whether it's a quick drop in email, whether it's a little reminder of our latest, you know, offerings done by little sort of an e-cast or whatever, people will remember that we're there and will hopefully, hopefully trust us to take care of them the next time.
Eslam I have to say, I'm impressed by the level of simplicity, but at the same time, effectiveness of all of your methods. Because sometimes we tend, as designers, as CX leaders, we tend to think that the best, our most amazing experiences are the most complex ones. But by the end of the day, the touch points are all to do with this element of trust, empathy.
Eslam My next thing I would love to ask about is how do you keep that DNA throughout the business? And how do you keep that value proposition? It's not lost throughout any of your, I wouldn't say not only your people, your team, but also your board members, your stakeholders, but most importantly, your every single DMC partner that you have outside there.
Kate It's basically a choice. We've decided to stay small. We don't want to be global domination. We don't need offices in every major city in the world. We've chosen to be small so that we can manage all of those things. We are, we pick and choose our destinations and our partners. So you know, there are some destinations where you'll contact us and we'll say, we can't send you there, and it's mainly because we don't, we haven't put effort into finding partners for whatever reason. It could be that there could be plenty of other competition for that particular area or whatever reason. We've also chosen destinations that excite us. So you know, as so long as we have the passion and the excitement, that makes it so easy to sell. So the choice to stay small means that we also have control across the whole portfolio and also, and, and how we, we manage what, what it is that we do.
Eslam I love that. The last thing that I, that I have in mind that I would love to, to kind of, to finish ways is to do with what we always refer to as a hyper-personalized experience. When you design such a complex, and I would say intimate, because it's very important for your customers to understand and actually to go through to ensure that they have what they need. What kind of advice would you give CX leaders and CX designers when they embark on designing such a really complex but at the same time personal experience?
Kate I think basically the way that I would explain it to any new consultant that's coming into us is I say, imagine you're sending your gran. Does your gran know what's happening next? Is she going to have any point of that itinerary where she's going to look around and go, I don't know what to do now. I don't know who's picking me up. I don't know what happens next. And if you think about you're sending somebody that you love away and you want them to be absolutely taken care of from start to finish and you spread that out across every single person, every single client that you manage, they can't help but have a fantastic time.
Eslam Right. Kate, I can't thank you enough. This has been one of the most enjoyable conversations I had on the podcast and I'm sure our audience would agree. Again, we will leave contact details for Kate on the bio, but feel free to please to reach out. She's an amazing social person. And Kate, thank you so much for being.
Kate Thank you. Thank you, Eslam.
Eslam It's a pleasure and see you guys in the next episode of the CX podcast, Algorithm podcast. Thank you.
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