Mercury Travel · Guideline
Safety Goals and Objectives
How Mercury Travel sets, consults on, and monitors its safety goals and objectives.
Primary safety goals
- Ensure incident-free tours and DOC walks.
- Maintain participant and provider safety at all times.
- Achieve full compliance with Qualmark standards.
Specific objectives
- Reduce weather-related tour disruptions by implementing real-time itinerary adjustments.
- Achieve zero safety incidents per quarter.
- Align objectives with Qualmark's safety criteria and prioritise participant safety on low-risk DOC walks.
- Mark and Ravit set one primary goal (incident-free operations), focusing on high-impact areas such as weather risks and provider compliance.
Considerations for establishing objectives
- Hazards and risks: objectives address key risks like weather disruptions on DOC walks (e.g. rain at Lake Matheson) and transportation safety (e.g. driver fatigue). Ravit accesses daily weather reports for each location and ensures coach providers are Qualmark accredited, with coaches visually inspected during the tour.
- Mercury Travel uses a cloud-based platform to share SMS documents, safety protocols and itineraries with clients via secure online links, accessible before tours.
- Guides and drivers receive digital daily tour guides and safety checklists one week in advance, with instructions to print manual copies for on-tour reference where internet access is poor.
- As a Qualmark member, Mercury Travel implements objectives aligned with its safety standards to maintain market credibility.
- Ravit consults third-party providers (guides, drivers) via end-of-tour phone calls to identify practical safety needs. Mark incorporates feedback into updated checklists, or discusses changing suppliers, providers or walks with Ravit.
Establishing objectives and plans
- Ravit, as primary tour manager, leads post-tour meetings with providers to discuss all aspects of the tour including safety concerns.
- Client feedback at post-tour dinners is used to improve safety and tour suitability. This happens with every tour, as all tours finish in Christchurch where Mercury Travel is based.
- Technology integration: Ravit uses WhatsApp for real-time provider input, ensuring objectives reflect field realities.
Monitoring and recording results
- At the end of each day Ravit holds an overview conversation with the guide and driver covering how the day went, any safety issues, the mood and well-being of the group, and the next day's schedule.
- Any issue that was a safety concern is logged in the register.
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