How Frogs-in-NZ Scaled to 54% Growth Using Tour Operator Software

Key Results

• 54% increase in itineraries created (over the last 90-day period)
• 20+ years at Tourwriter, our first beta tester
• 400+ carefully curated supplier relationships 

The Challenge: Building a Travel Agency from Scratch in a Foreign Country

When Sébastien Michel moved to New Zealand from Paris in 2001, he had no plans to start a travel business. Working in corporate France had left him feeling misaligned with his values. A visit to New Zealand changed everything.

“I had no plans of expatriation, but I discovered New Zealand during a trip visiting a friend,” Sébastien recalls.

 

“I just had this big crush on the lifestyle and what this new life could be. Six months later, I was gone from France.”

But starting fresh in a new country presented immediate challenges. As a French speaker in an English-speaking nation, Sébastien noticed a critical gap: there were almost no French-language resources about New Zealand.

“At the time, there was almost no French-speaking websites about New Zealand,” he explains. “Websites were not a new thing, but there was nothing for French travelers.”

This gap became the foundation for what would become Frogs-in-NZ, now recognized as the leading French inbound travel company specializing in New Zealand since 2001.

A Content-First Approach That Built Trust

Sébastien started with a blog, a relatively new concept in 2001. He wrote articles about New Zealand in French, sharing practical advice and his personal experiences as an expat. The response was immediate and overwhelming.

“It really picked up like crazy,” Sébastien says. “People started asking questions, then I added a forum, and the forum went crazy with people talking to each other. It became the go-to resource for French expats and travellers to New Zealand.”

This content-first strategy became the bedrock of Frogs’ business model. Over the next decade, Sébastien and his business partner Carole Zink (who joined in 2002) published four comprehensive guidebooks in French.

“We’ve always focused on deep content from experience,” Sébastien emphasises. “We don’t produce fake stuff taken from other people. Everything we write, most of it we’ve experienced ourselves. We pride ourselves in deep, deep content, not just about what you’re going to see, but also about history, culture, and context.”

This commitment to authentic, experience-based content proved critical in an age increasingly dominated by AI-generated material.

“I use AI to help me start articles, but I’m always extremely disappointed compared to our content,” Sébastien notes. “AI doesn’t dig into culture or history the way we do. It doesn’t add those little snippets of information that add so much to a story.”

From Publishing to Tour Operations: Organic Growth

While the guidebooks and website built Frogs’ reputation, making a sustainable living from content alone proved challenging. The natural evolution was to leverage their deep local knowledge to help travellers plan their trips.

“We started the travel agency from our knowledge of the country,” Sébastien explains. “We began advising people and booking campervans and things, and we grew organically from there.”

This organic, entrepreneurial approach, building solutions as needs arose rather than following a rigid business plan, became a defining characteristic of Frogs.

“Every time we saw a need, we just did it,” Sébastien says. “Very curious. Very number eight wire ingenuity.”

Today, Frogs serves French-speaking clients from around the world, 50% from France, with the rest from Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, New Caledonia, and Tahiti. They’ve built a network of over 400 carefully selected suppliers and generated an estimated annual revenue of $5 million as of 2025.

The Critical Role of Tour Operator Software

As Frogs transitioned from content creation to full-service tour operations, the limitations of manual processes became painfully apparent. Creating itineraries in Excel, managing supplier details across spreadsheets, and tracking bookings manually was not only time-consuming, it was risky.

“We were tired of doing it on Excel spreadsheets,” Sébastien recalls. “We thought, couldn’t someone invent a software for this?”

That conversation with their accountant in 2004 led to an introduction that would transform their business: Tourwriter was in development, and they needed beta testers.

“We said, ‘Whatever you’re working on, we want to be in,’” Sébastien remembers. “It wasn’t ready, but we started using it straight away. We’ve been with Tourwriter from the very beginning.”

The Beta Testing Experience: Building Software Together

Being first beta testers came with challenges, the software was basic and buggy—but it also provided unprecedented access to shape the product.

“The software was obviously very, very basic in the beginning, but we loved it because we had a direct relationship with the developer,” Sébastien says. “We had direct access to give feedback, and he was fixing things as we went, almost as we watched. That was very enjoyable.”

This collaborative relationship paid dividends. Over 20 years, Tourwriter evolved from a basic itinerary tool to a comprehensive tour operator software platform, shaped in part by Frogs’ real-world needs.

Current Impact: How Tourwriter Powers Growth

Today, Tourwriter sits at the core of Frogs’ operations. The impact is measurable: in the last 90 days, Frogs created 54% more itineraries compared to the same period last year, a significant jump that reflects both market recovery and operational efficiency.

“If you want to focus on customer quality and service, and avoid mistakes, a lot of mistakes, you need software,” Sébastien explains.

 

“It’s the core of our operations. That’s where everybody goes for rates and customer details. It’s been essential to our growth as a professional travel agency.”

The migration from Tourwriter’s desktop version to the cloud-based platform opened new possibilities, particularly around content integration.

“Now the new version is very enjoyable in terms of creating roadbooks,” Sébastien notes.

 

“All our content has been migrated, it’s been a huge project, but now we can really improve our content by adding material from our past guidebooks. We can add more content to our travel roadbooks and play around quicker. It produces a much more sleek online document for our customers.”

The Customer Experience: Where Content Meets Technology

Frogs’ approach to customer service is distinctive. They don’t just book trips, they curate experiences enriched with the depth of knowledge from two decades of guidebook publishing.

“Our customers benefit from not only the booking side, but also from our content,” Sébastien explains. “When they travel, they have all these details about history, culture, local knowledge. They get more than just ‘you go there, you’ll see seals, then you do this activity.’”

This commitment to depth resonates with clients. One reviewer on Petit Futé wrote: “The high-quality documents provided were very useful throughout our 5-week visit to New Zealand.”

Another client praised the comprehensiveness: “Everything was perfectly organized and the service providers selected by Frogs were reliable… We followed to the letter the tour program Marion drew up for us to discover this wonderful country.”

The variety Frogs builds into itineraries also stands out.

As Sébastien describes:

“What people like is that we mix experiences. One day it’s a pod, the other day it’s a luxury lodge, and the third day it’s a bach with a beautiful view. This surprises them every night. That’s the idea, to give them memorable experiences through a variety of suppliers.”

What Customers Say

Frogs maintains consistently excellent reviews across multiple platforms:

Marketing That Works: The Power of Content and Reputation

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Frogs’ success is their marketing approach, or rather, their lack of traditional marketing.

“Our website still provides most of our leads,” Sébastien says. “From the start, it had a reputation for content, and that’s still working today. We still feed it with posts and articles, but we’re in a way surfing on our reputation and past success.”

The business is 95% B2C (direct to consumer), with most leads coming through organic website traffic. They supplement with some Google AdWords to stay visible in sponsored listings, plus occasional lead generation from industry partners.

Lessons for Tour Operators: What Frogs Can Teach Us

Frogs’ 20+ year journey offers several valuable lessons for tour operators and DMCs:

1. Content is Your Competitive Advantage

In an age of AI-generated travel content, deep, experience-based knowledge stands out. Frogs’ guidebook heritage gives them a content advantage that competitors can’t easily replicate.

“That’s even more important now with AI content,” Sébastien notes. “Human-created, human-experienced content has real value.”

2. Invest in the Right Software Early

Frogs’ early adoption of tour operator software was transformative. While the initial desktop version was basic, it prevented costly mistakes and freed time for customer service.

“It’s been essential to our growth as a professional travel agency,” Sébastien emphasizes. “Without it, I don’t see how we could run the company. Unless you’re really a mum-and-dad operation, once you have staff and a customer base, you can’t do without it.”

3. Technology Should Enable Craftsmanship, Not Replace It

Despite using sophisticated software, Frogs maintains a craftsman’s approach to creating itineraries.

“We’re still like craftsmen, artisans,” Sébastien says. “We still do business the same way. These tools just help us save time and improve retention of content and information.”

4. Stay True to Your Vision

Frogs has avoided industry networking events and associations that don’t align with their approach.

“We’re on our little corner of the world,” Sébastien admits. “When we go to tourism events, sometimes we don’t understand what people talk about because we don’t come from that industry. We’ve made it the way we feel we should make it and it’s been working.”

Looking Forward: The Future of Frogs

After navigating the challenges of COVID-19, during which Sébastien took a temporary job to pay bills Frogs is experiencing strong growth. The last three to four months have seen particularly strong booking activity.

“I think people are traveling the world like crazy right now,” Sébastien observes. “We’ve had a strong restart, and it’s picked up again recently.”

Conclusion: The Recipe for Sustainable Success

Frogs-in-NZ’s story demonstrates that sustainable success in luxury tour operations comes from the intersection of three elements:

• Deep, authentic content that provides genuine value and builds long-term trust
• The right technology that eliminates errors, saves time, and enables focus on customer service
• A craftsman’s approach that treats each itinerary as a unique creation rather than a commodity

For tour operators and DMCs looking to scale while maintaining quality, Frogs offers a proven blueprint. Invest in creating genuine content that reflects real experience. Adopt robust tour operator software early not as a replacement for expertise, but as a tool that enables you to deliver it more efficiently. And most importantly, stay true to your vision of what great travel service looks like.

As Sébastien reflects on 20+ years of partnership with Tourwriter:

“It’s the core of our operations. Without it, we couldn’t handle a company like ours. It’s been essential in our growth as a professional travel agency.”

That’s the power of choosing the right tour operator software and using it to amplify, rather than replace, human expertise.