Two decades and a loyal cycling community
We spoke with Sven Thiele from Hotchillee this morning, after the recent announcement news that there will be no LONDON-PARIS Gravel 2024, Sri Lanka Gravel 2025, and Cape Rouleur 2025, as the company is closing down. My condolences. I was a service provider with to the Rouleur in years gone by and fondly remember the exemplary passion of their teams and sheer enjoyment of their riders.
After a brief discussion with a fellow cyclist this week, the question came up whether the same can happen with the tours that we organise and it differs from the Hotchillee model. The answer is obvious and very simple:
Our model is different. No fixed costs. No offices. No salaries. No flying around staff. We are a group of friends who pool together to make an extraordinary bicycle tour every now and then. Entry fees are received from riders, applied to tour expenses such as lodging, meals, victualling, water points, support, transfers etc — and the surplus is split among stakeholders on completion of the tour.
It’s lean and simple, but organising these cycle tours is a responsibility we don’t take lightly. Hence we use a formal legal entity, consider insurance and terms, work with reliable service providers, have a succession plan, and a team that has been together for the better part of a decade.
Finally, the organisers are professionals and or businesspeople in their own right, with careers and other sources of income (and a passion for cycling) and as such are not dependent these tours. But it does help us to further our hobbies and be able to spend more time on the bicycle. So where are we cycling to next?
