Thank you, Adi, for taking the time to talk to us spontaneously.
I'm happy to do that, but it's not a good sign that I have time spontaneously, there's nothing going on with us at the moment.

Bike Adventure Tours will be celebrating its 30th birthday next year. Have you ever experienced such an existential crisis in these 30 years as you have in the last few months? In the early years, we had far fewer destinations. If we no longer offered one for safety reasons, that could also mean a big loss. But back then we were able to switch to other areas. That's not possible now.

Have you adjusted your offer since the coronavirus pandemic has been raging?
Yes, we have started offering tours and weekends in Switzerland again and we are still working on building up trips to nearby countries. The Swiss tours were also well booked, but they can't compensate for the canceled long-distance trips. It is important for us to show that you can still travel with us.

How big is the damage in 2020?
It is immense. During the lockdown, we postponed everything until the fall. But that didn't bring any opening either. Now we're rebooking a lot of things for next year or paying them back. We are surviving thanks to a Covid loan and our employees are on short-time working. We are reducing our team for next year.

How are your partners in the target countries doing?
In some countries, there is some domestic tourism that allows them to earn at least a little money, but in others, nothing at all.

Can you support them?
We have made partial advances so that they have some money for food. The best support is to travel again.

Some people expect that the travel industry will not return to its old level for a long time even after corona, if it does at all. What do you think about that? It's like this. Several things come together: Climate awareness and corona. Some people also want to fly less in the future. That's why we are now increasingly offering trips without flights. It's becoming more conscious travel. We have always put this in the foreground. When you travel through a country by bike, you experience so much more and have so many more intense encounters than when you travel by coach.
We believe in our business model. That's why we have once again printed a catalog with our travel offers. As far as I know, not many of our competitors have done this.

You will be offering 30 anniversary tours next year to mark your 30th birthday. What makes these tours special? They are all special trips that long-standing tour guides have put together for us. I am riding a gravel trip to Morocco. I would have preferred to offer it in the Sinai, where our first trip ever took us. But it's been too dangerous there for years. Pesche Fahrni lived in Brazil for a long time and knows his way around like a local. The same goes for Martin Jost, who lived in Mexico for several years and leads a tour there. Or Kurt Hegglin: he carried his bike up Kilimanjaro for the first time around 45 years ago and has been up there countless times. The guests will first circle the mountain and then climb it. If you want, you can take your bike with you as far as you can manage.

A jubilee guide is not actually a guide: André Lüthi, CEO of the Globetrotter Group, to which Bike Adventure Tours belongs. What's the story behind it?
André will be riding the North Korea bike tour. He is a passionate mountain biker, has led countless trips around the world and has already been to North Korea. It's a very special country, maybe I'll go with him. If everyone who has made a reservation actually books, then the tour group is already complete.

What is the level of interest in your other anniversary trips and long-distance travel in general in the coming year? It's great and that makes us optimistic. People want to travel, our booking status for next year is good. We offer the opportunity to reserve a place in a travel group before you book. In addition to these reservations, we also have people who have already made definite bookings. What's more, an incredible number of bikes have been sold. I'm sure that sooner or later some of these people will want to go on a bike trip.