Bespoke Travel Company CEO Sarah Keenlyside Nominated for Global Travel Award

A decade ago, Sarah Keenlyside never would have dreamt that her frustrations with the travel industry could lead her to be named among some of the best entrepreneurs in the world. But that's exactly what happened for the founder and CEO of the Bespoke Travel Company last week when The Telegraph newspaper and Everywoman announced the nominees for the 2019 Everywoman in Travel award, which celebrate the most pioneering woman in travel. Keenlyside has been named alongside five others because her company offers "travelers the breadth of knowledge and transparency of a guidebook as well as the first-hand expertise of a tour operator" according to the official announcement for the global prize.

Keenlyside tells the Beijinger when she started Bespoke in early 2009 "I couldn’t have imagined I’d be nominated for an award alongside women as impressive as this. But I was totally confident in my conviction that more needed to be done to meet the needs of travelers. Coming from outside the industry was a blessing really, because it was very easy to see how much was wrong with it and what could be done so much better."

Keenlyside got her start as an editor at the Sunday Times and TimeOut Beijing but saw a void in China's tourism industry for expat travelers. She took her lifestyle journalism experience and applied those skills to penning customized guidebooks for tourists wanting to avoid tourist traps. Keenlyside also prepped experts to take those travelers' phone calls whenever they needed on-the-spot assistance or advice which, as the Bespoke founder put it "allowed people to be independent."

Successful as those efforts were, Keenlyside said "people kept asking for tour guides. Good ones. And it turned out that was the biggest gap that needed filling, so that was the first pivot we made that started to shape the company into what it is now – connecting travelers with amazing local experts, local personalities and professional guides and drivers that just make everything so easy and informative."

Heartened as she and her team were by making such strides, Keenlyside said Bespoke reached even greater breakthroughs with their collaborative events and the tours they created from scratch. "Carefully curating a number of tours that are totally unique and different has been what put us on the map," she says, before citing Bespoke's Hutong Tour (which includes a stop at the home of a local cricket trainer), their Wild Wall Weekend Tour (along lesser-known stretches of the Great Wall with historian William Lindesay, OBE), the Midnight in Peking Walking Tour (for which participants retrace the steps of historical figures that author Paul French wrote about in his book of the same name), a Street Snacks Tour (in conjunction with Kristen Lum's popular LumDimSum lifestyle blog) and the Beijing Time Chase (a scavenger hunt Bespoke arranged in conjunction with the Beijing Sideways motorcycle tour company).

Beijing Sideways founder Gael Thoreau enjoyed collaborating with Keenlyside on that scavenger hunt tour because “we have the same kind of clients, people who like to do things that aren’t that ordinary. Apart from that, she is very professional, which is always nice to have. We think alike, our clients are alike, and we have the same understanding of what people enjoy in Beijing.”

In its introduction for the prize, The Telegraph and Everywoman highlighted how the travel industry’s "gender imbalance is a disappointing but inescapable fact, so since 2017 the awards has been shining a light on trailblazing women in the business, from apprentices to CEOs." According to Keenlyside, "often it’s the narrative in general around what women should and shouldn’t be doing, can and can’t do that causes the biggest problems. A lifetime of conditioning takes daily work to overcome." Specifically, she details how "women often struggle in shouting about our achievements as loudly as men, so this [Everywoman In Travel] accolade helps a great deal because it gives us the opportunity to say 'Look what we achieved!'"

Regardless of whether she wins this prize, Keenlyside has plenty to look forward to as she lays out plans to take Bespoke to the next level. "We now have some incredible experiences in Shanghai, Xi’an, Chengdu, and Guilin, so we’re excited to offer the Bespoke experience all over China these days," she says.

That nationwide expansion is an exciting prospect for Bespoke fans like Lum, the lifestyle blogger who collaborated with the travel company on the Street Snack Tour and who has booked Bespoke activities for visiting family members. Lum says she is "so impressed with Sarah’s ability to expand her team and Bespoke’s services and signature experiences to other cities now, because it takes so much research and energy to create such unique, specialized travel experiences that you could never get from a guidebook or another tour company." 

Keenlyside adds: "What’s next? Hopefully finding someone amazing to run our Tokyo operation for us, and other partners wanting to get involved in Bespoke offices globally. We’d love to start attracting more Chinese clients too. All in good time!"

To vote for Keenlyside in the Everywoman in Travel Awards, and to read about the prize itself and the other nominees, click here.

READ: Women of Beijing: These Are the Groups, Organizations, and Clubs You Need to Know

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Email: kylemullin@truerun.com
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Photos: Courtesy of Keenlyside (via Sup China), Lum Dim Sum, China Daily