Question #2 of the business class questionnaire took some thought and personal reflection (two things that I avoid at all costs).
- Did you do any research on need before you began the business?
Picture the internet in 1999. No Google. No social media. No TripAdvisor reviews. Companies were just figuring out this whole “World Wide Web” thing—building websites that looked like digital brochures designed by someone’s nephew who “knew computers.”
But it existed. And I had a mission.
After I got back to the States, I started my hunt over many late nights. I wasn’t looking for market demographics or feasibility studies. I was looking for one simple thing:
Was anyone else crazy enough to do this?
I became an explorer of a different kind—navigating the digital wilderness armed with AltaVista searches and a stack of dog-eared travel magazines I’d been collecting since my time in Europe. Conde Nast Traveler. National Geographic Traveler. Wanderlust. I spread them across my desk like ancient maps, circling ads and making notes in the margins.
The big tour operators? They were all the same story: “12 Days, 8 Cities, 47 People, One Cranky French Tour Guide Who Hates Americans.” Buses that smelled like diesel and disappointment. Rigid itineraries. Herded from monument to monument like cattle wearing fanny packs.
The adventure companies? They’d take you rock climbing in the Atlas Mountains or sandboarding in the Sahara—single activities, not journeys.
Night after night, I searched. Website after website loading one agonizing line at a time. Magazine after magazine, ad after ad. I was looking for someone—anyone—who offered what I wanted to give: Private. Customized. Real Morocco. Your pace. Your adventure.
I wasn’t conducting market research in any formal sense. I didn’t hire consultants or run focus groups. My methodology was simpler, more primal:
“This is how I wanted to see Morocco. The people I met—complete strangers who became friends—they wanted to see Morocco this way too. So… is anyone else offering it?”
Page after page. Click after click. Ad after ad.
The answer kept coming back the same:
Nope.
Not a single operator offers truly private, customized tours where you decide the route, set the pace, and write your own Moroccan story with a guide who knows the country’s secrets.
That’s when I knew. Not from spreadsheets or market studies or business school theories, but from the most reliable research method ever invented:
I’d found a hole in the map. An empty space where something should exist but didn’t.
And empty spaces? Those are just adventures waiting to happen.
