As Kayak More Tomorrow approaches 30 years of operations it’s time to have a look back at our almost three-decade long journey on becoming Norway’s best and most professional sea kayak touring company.
Starting with the trials and tribulations of Hiring Sea Kayak Guides!
Usually, staff is a contributing fact to a company’s success, however in the world of sea kayaking this is most definitely not the case! In fact, it is in spite our incompetent staff that we have succeeded. Over the past 28 years we have hired over 100 ‘sea kayak guides’ and I use term ‘guide’ loosely at best.
As our client base grew, we needed more guides to offer safe sea kayak trips. However, finding and hiring qualified sea kayak guides was more of a challenge than I imagined! Most, in fact all applicants did not even own their own kayak of any kind! If you can believe it!
And, unfortunately, most also had not done the training, work nor gained the experience necessary to be a sea kayak guide, but they still want to be referred to as a sea kayak guide! Understand this is you can, I don’t!
I have done the training, work and obtained experience over the years to be able to call myself an internationally certified sea kayak guide. I have over 3 300 guiding days on class 1-4 seas of the world’s oceans.
We have made hiring mistakes as most other companies, however the stakes are much higher in the outdoor world of sea kayaking, as a sea kayak guided is responsible for the safety and well-being of guests out on the formidable oceans of the world.
Unfortunately, over the years I have had to protect our clients and ourselves from incompetent, lazy and inept guides.
I have been criticized anonymously on the internet by some so-called employees (guides). However, most of them have never worked for Kayak More Tomorrow. And most of the criticisms are not real. Kayak More Tomorrow has not hired guides during the last 9 seasons and many of the critical posts have come during these years.
We have had to remove guides from Kayak More Tomorrow during the season for doing more harm than good. The following list depicts some of most common problems we have had with guides!
· Guides who don’t have the interest or conscience to acquire the skills needed to paddle sea kayaks at the level required of a sea kayak guide.
· Guides who are not interested in our guests but only focus on themselves and their needs and desires.
· Guides who have treated our guests disrespectfully and even physically abused them.
· Guides who deliver the wrong information to clients which has led to accidents and even a fatality.
· Guides who don’t respect our equipment and have caused damage and loss in the excess of € 5000 per incident. We have deducted what we can from outstanding wages but have not gone after more coverage than this.
All former guides who by chance read this know of whom I am referring to and should be thankful that I have not listed them by name!
Over the past 20 years we had had guides from: Canada, USA, Mexico, England, Australia, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Portugal, Spain, Argentina, etc. And of all the guides we have hired there is only a handful that I would hire again; of which, these I can count just on one hand.
We at Kayak More Tomorrow have not hired a sea kayak guided since 2017!
Our guests deserve the utmost quality in a guide when paddling with us. But unfortunately, we have not found any in recent years that have met our standards.
The sea kayak guiding industry is now all most 50 years old, and there still is not a recognized certification body for international sea kayak guides! There have been multiple attempts from a plethora of different certifying bodies, however, all of them have fallen short at some point. And today, several reputable organizations have stopped their guide training and certification programs.
The international sea kayak guides alliance? Well, this is just an ego-centric organization. And not a credible certifying body – I would not hire any of them to guide for Kayak More Tomorrow. This is a worldwide problem for certifying sea kayak guides.
Also, at Kayak More Tomorrow we have done our part by operating a sea kayak guide school, for training and certifying sea kayak guides. However, not one person who went through the program passed all the required skills and knowledge requirements to earn a certified sea kayak guide license.
