Best Cities, Lasting Connections: building partnerships that last

James Chandler (0:00)

Hello, James here, welcome back to The IAB UK Podcast. We've got a real treat for you today. We're talking about a very special, a very unique partnership between Time Out and Intrepid Travel. We've got Hazel McGuire, who's the CMO at Intrepid Travel, and Gareth Thomas, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Time Out. And this is a first of its kind partnership. It's sponsoring the amazing Best Cities list that Time Out have done for the last 10 years, the first time they ever had a commercial partner. We talk about the depth behind the partnership, why it's not a one and done or just a badging exercise. We get into what success looks like, and perhaps where they'll go next is a really good one. So here it is, Hazel and Gareth. Welcome to The IAB UK Podcast. Gareth, tell us about this partnership between Time Out and Intrepid. I mean, it feels very unique. It feels like a very special partnership in terms of how you talk about it. For the uninitiated, people who are familiar with it, talk to us a bit about it. I think special is a really good way of describing this. This is the first partnership we've done like this, first of all. So it's a bit of a new adventure for us.

Best Cities as a editorial pillar is something that we have been really successfully running for 10 years. This is actually the 10th year, 2026 Happy anniversary. Thank you very much. And like all good things, it was time to look at something from a new perspective. We've never had a commercial partner come in and support. And at the same time, we really wanted to find a partner that was complimentary as well and would add something new.

It is the definitive ranking of the 50 best cities globally each year. Sort of like the Michelin star of cities. Yeah, yeah. I mean, definitely I would say that. It's something that our audience kind of know and trust. It's really respected.

And not only do we rank the 50 best cities, we also break that down. So when we launch in March every year, you get your 50 best cities. So number one this year was Melbourne, number two Shanghai. So very diverse cities. And then every month for the preceding 10 months, we will then do, for example, Best City for Nightlife or between Spaces, or this year for Gen Z and lots of them across the year. So there's loads of different ways of cutting that data.

And it's been really exciting to have Intrepid involved this year to kind of add a wider story and more oomph to the thing. And as I'm sure we'll talk about, like we've achieved some really lovely things together.

Hazel McGuire (2:48)

Yeah.

James Chandler (2:48)

Well, lots of our listeners will know and love Time Out, so we're really aware of the brand. Maybe less so within TREPID, Hazel. For the uninitiated, tell us a bit about the brand.

Hazel McGuire (2:56)

Yeah. Well, I hope we're changing that. But yes, in TREPID Travel, we are a global toad operator. We offer adventure travel in small groups around the world. So we've got some 950 different experiences globally. So something for everyone. You can choose different themes and different styles. So we have different thematics, including Expeditions Act of 18 to 35 We have food trips and just different things for different interests as well. So something for everyone.

We are actually a Melbourne headquartered business, which was quite a nice little unknown tie-in in the best city. A very happy accident.

James Chandler (3:35)

We obviously didn't know the results when we...

Hazel McGuire (3:39)

No, it was great. It was quite nice. It was like, oh, look, yeah, Melbourne. We like Melbourne. But yeah, no, it was a happy accident. But it was...

For Intrepid, really, we have spent time, kind of post-COVID, really trying to build our brand outside of Australia, where we started. And the UK is such a key part of that for us. We're now almost a third of our business comes from the UK, but we're really in the process at the moment of really building the brand. Pre-COVID focused very much on performance marketing. It was very commodity driven. Do you want to tour in Vietnam? Excellent, we can help. But as now we're trying to build the value in the brand and doing things like this with Time Out is really part of that strategy.

James Chandler (4:19)

It feels like such a sort of a natural and an obvious partnership between the two of you. Is this something that you've done a lot of in terms of these deep partnerships, or is this something new for you as well?