All Grown Up

After a while more and more backpackers and students were joining in on our madness, and things got a little serious. We consulted lawyers and other people with shoes and determined it was time to get legal. Offices were sought, staff hired who actually knew things, and Stoke Travel became an official, although oftentimes not for profit (unintentionally), business.

There’s No Such Thing as Bad Press

Realising that he’s not going away anytime soon, Toby and Stu take on long-time Surfari manager, Wade Gravy, on as a partner. The plan is to create media the likes of which backpacker travel has never seen. Advertisements are created, and banned; provocation ensues with gratuitous honesty. At that time we figured that backpackers just wanted to have fun, to party and make out with each other, and see sights but not as a part of a checklist. Nothing’s really changed….

A chance meeting with Denis Geary, the dreadlocked CEO of Wicked Campers Europe, results in a diabolical partnership that sees Wicked use Stoke for their festival needs and Stoke using Wicked for their notoriety and professionalism. The garish and provocative Wicked fleet joins Stoke and the party doubles, as does our pulling power at Europe’s festivals. This partnership really gets things cranking.

The Stoke Bar

It seemed like a no-brainer – get a bar, thereby fulfilling our fantasies, and using it to make big bucks, and act as a HQ for our travel operations. Turns out it was a bit of a no-brainer, as Stoke’s productivity hit an all-time low during this époque – who would have thought that we’d drink our own bar dry?

Growth

Since those halcyon days Stoke has only gone from strength to strength, achieving annual growth of over 50% between 2011-2014. We’ve now expanded to some 24 destinations and counting Europe wide, as well as forays into Morocco, as mentioned, and Brazil.

Canadian mega-travel-group, I Love Travel, join with Stoke and with them bring much needed experience and professionalism, blowing Stoke’s latest yearly numbers to over 16,500 guests, who between them put away some 90,000L of beer. And we’re only just beginning.

London Calling

For the first time since our inception, Stoke really turned its attention to London and made moves that would appeal to the antipodean expat community in the big city. We launched the London Big Day Out, a day, a big one, of sports and music, partying and nostalgic comfort food from Australia and New Zealand. For those who’ve known Stoke for a while, the choice to host a sporting day would seem a little strange, but you should know that we’re the work hard/play hard type and we made sure that all the exercise was washed away with cheap drinks, bad dancing and even worse decisions.

And in order to get in with the London dandy set we started taking groups of frocked (and pissed) up lovers of horses, gambling and champagne to the Royal Ascot race meet, where we made sure to completely ruin our fancy outfits with ridiculous shenanigans.

Rounding out our London domination, we commandeered a train and sent it into Scotland to get buck wild with Edinburgh for its Hogmanay New Year’s Eve celebration, an evening of fine conversation, haggis, loose street parties and stranger pashing. With the addition of Hogmanay our London foray was an overwhelming success, and now we have a dedicated team working out of London, for travellers of all stripes who find themselves ensconced in Old Blighty.

Glamping and Greece

Admitting that while our regular camping is amazing (seriously, who offers more than us, for the tiny price?), we came to the conclusion that some travellers have a little bit of extra money saved up and want to treat themselves from time to time. Enter our very popular (sold out!) glamping option at most destinations. Better beds, with cozy bedding, more space, electricity and mirrors, so you’re all charged up, refreshed and as hot as can be.

2017 was the year that saw us host more guests than ever before, 20,000 travellers including 7,500 at Oktoberfest alone. We’re doing double the trips, we’ve reinvented The Running Of The Bulls by concentrating more on the party (cultural and crazy) and less on the bullrun, hosting bands and food trucks at the El Molino campsite by the river with our Stoked in the Park festival; Ibiza Beach Camp was sold out for the entire summer, the San Sebastian Surf Camp settled in wonderfully into its new hillside farmhouse (also sold out!), and our Barcelona team had a gangbusters summer on the boats and in the city.

It became the right time to give back to travellers in need, so we started up our Charitably Stoked division that works to raise money so we can support the refugees struggling to survive on Europe’s borders. This year we raised funds through our drinking cups’ voluntary donation system, and flew with the crew after Oktoberfest to Chios, Greece, to see the situation firsthand, donate the money we’d raised to charities working in the area (while soaking up the Aegean sun and our share of ouzo).

Stoke Meets Music

This is the year when we moved massively into the festival travel space with the super successful launch of Stoked in the Park, Pamplona, our music and goodtimes festival that happens alongside the Running of the Bulls.

In 2018 we hosted Australian electro lords, Art Vs Science, who blasted the fields with their absolute bangers and got our bull run survivors, plus a whole bunch of travellers who were there only for the music and the laughs, dancing. This followed on from Yolanda Be Cool headlining our London Big Day out, and paved the way for MNKY BSNSS to come all the way from Colombia to Munich to really get the Oktoberfest masses grooving.

The other huge news for 2018 was the growth into the Stoke Brands suite, including Stoke Eats, food trucks and catering, Stoke Threads, street and festival wear, plus a gorgeous little shopfront down in Barceloneta, and Stoke Australia, which marks the beginning of our inevitable growth into many of our Stokies’ home country.

And Beyond

2019 and beyond: we’ll be moving more into music festivals, both at our campsites and across Europe, expanding our destinations, introducing Europe to summer camps for adults, and encouraging travellers to grow, learn, and do something maybe a little more nourishing — as well as party as often, and as hard, as they possibly can