“Six months after I joined McCabe, war began in the Holy Land” - Martin Adams on a year of challenge, change & resilience
- The Firebird Partnership
- Jun 11
- 7 min read
In 2023, the conflict in Israel and Palestine forced a dramatic change of direction for pilgrimage specialist tour operator McCabe. Managing Director Martin Adams reveals how agility, teamwork and planning enabled the business to survive and thrive, with Firebird’s support.
“Around six months after I joined McCabe, war began in the Holy Land”
After a brief pandemic-related break from tour operating, I was keen to get back into the travel industry. Travel really does get under your skin; it is something that just becomes part of you.
Previously I’d worked for a tour firm that specialised in archaeological trips, so the idea of working for McCabe – another specialist travel business built by experts – really appealed to me. In spring 2023, I joined the team as head of commercial, costing and modelling tours; getting them right for our customers, making sure the pricing was sustainable for the business.
At the time, the team was already working with Safia Bhutta and Ian Finlay from the Firebird Partnership, who were helping McCabe transition towards a period of long-term growth and improved margins. It was exciting to be part of the change, finding areas to make improvements. Then, around six months in, war began in the Holy Land. Everything changed.
“Our immediate focus switched from growth to protecting what we had”
At the time the war started, in October 2023, three-quarters of McCabe’s product range was pilgrimages to The Holy Land. Over the course of one weekend, that disappeared. With Firebird’s guidance, our immediate focus switched from growth to protecting what we had, shuttering down and trying to manage the cash flow. As part of this transition, I took over the role of managing director. It was a very challenging set of circumstances to inherit but I knew our team was strong and extremely dedicated to seeing the business through. We all gritted our teeth and cracked on.
In the days, weeks and months that followed, all our discretionary spend was cut to the bone. We had to move out of our offices and find somewhere cheaper. (A teeny tiny office without any windows!) At points I was checking the bank account daily because of cash flow. There was also the issue of what to do with staff and how to support them wherever we could. Thankfully, two brilliant new starters, who had been hired just a few months before war broke out, were able to take temporary roles supporting fellow Firebird client Artisan – which meant we didn’t have to lose them. They got back to working on McCabe operations in January 2024 and have proven many times since then that we were absolutely right to keep them with us.
In the meantime, we needed to find longer-term ways of saving the business. Working closely with Firebird, we began the work of convincing McCabe’s loyal customer base of group leaders to take congregations to other destinations with us. That meant designing new tour products, while Reverend Paul Ellerby – Director Owner of McCabe – communicated closely with the community, generating new groups, creating newsletters and sending out regular updates.
To our delight, many were willing to change direction and the new tours went down well. They included Following in the Footsteps of St Paul (Greece); Istanbul and the Seven Churches of Revelation and new itineraries to Malta and Gozo.
Before the war, Firebird had already started to expand McCabe’s business model to include a direct-to-customer range, and it is no exaggeration to say that this foundation is, in large part, what saved our business. Safia’s expertise in identifying customer interests and trends set us up with a really exciting B2C travel program in 2022, and again in 2023, that we quickly found was perfectly targeted at what many of our existing customers were itching to do. So we had an excellent base to build upon and really lean into after the 7 October attacks.
“Within a year, our numbers were back where they needed to be – we had even made a small profit”
We fought for every single booking during 2024, and although we were smaller than the previous year, we hadn’t shrunk by much. Most importantly, thanks to a more rigorous tour-costing and yield management process that I implemented, our tour margins were far better than we had ever achieved before. At year end in October 2024, McCabe had actually made a small profit, which, it’s fair to say, none of us had expected!
I thought, “Right, brilliant. We’re past this. We’ve done it.” Then, in November, I was modelling our cash flow for the next three months, and realised another pinch was point coming up. I had been so focused on getting to the end of the financial year that I hadn’t seen the last of the fallout coming from the year before. The low point was only over a period of about three weeks. and things were nowhere near as tight as they had been the summer previously. But it was a sharp reminder to me of how far-reaching challenges like we’d experienced can drag on. Thankfully, by January, we passed through that, and had a fantastic month for bookings. At last everything was back together for the rest of the year.
Reaching this point has definitely been stressful – it has been a lot of adjustment and hard work for all of us. Having Firebird’s Ian Finlay as a sounding board at every step of the way has been so valuable, though – I can’t overstate it. He’s knowledgeable, generous with his experience, and is particularly good at helping people reach the answer themselves. While Safia’s foresight to proactively diversify our portfolio of tours helped put McCabe on the best possible footing to weather a crisis that might otherwise have been existential for us.
Being able to navigate through these challenges as a team has also been very rewarding. And now we can get back to the longer-term work of growing the business – from our new office with windows! It’s an exciting prospect.
“Over the past six months, our customer satisfaction has climbed higher and higher”
Today we have an excellent new financial director working with us: his forecasts are enabling us to plan ahead with confidence. We also have monthly board meetings with Ian, which keep us on track as a business. The process means we stay conscious of the numbers, so we never lose sight of where we are versus where we’re aiming to get to.
At the moment, two recently-hired business development managers are looking into opportunities to attract new customers for us. With almost 8 million adults in Britain considering a pilgrimage, there is a large market out there for what McCabe offers.
We’ve had some great input with marketing since last year too: an amazing contractor has been tracking our website activity and visitors, overseeing booking forms and brochure downloads. She is currently bringing us up to speed with analytics so we can focus on what works in terms of marketing and conversions – and where we still need to improve. She also helped us hire a fantastic in-house marketing manager.
Altogether, over the past six months, our customer satisfaction has climbed higher and higher, despite everything we’ve been through. There has been so much for our new team to grasp and understand but they’ve done it so well, so quickly, and during such a chaotic period. That’s probably the thing I’m most proud of: everybody at the company is really driven to make sure every customer has a life-affirming experience on one of our pilgrimages. Our ops team – who temporarily needed to work with Artisan – get asked for by name all the time now. They’ve built up brilliant personal relationships with many of our pilgrims.
“This year McCabe is ready to grow big and fly”
Looking ahead at what’s to come, there’s a good bunch of people in McCabe’s customer base who would jump at the chance to go back to the Holy Land. Of course, the news from the region is constantly changing. We hope for a ceasefire and peace. But interestingly, in a recent customer survey we ran, 50% of respondents say they wouldn’t want to go back. In many cases that’s because of political objections.
Today there are so many other destinations we can get behind, and it looks like this period will be a really successful one for the business. We’ll soon be launching our brochure for next year – the earliest this has been done in McCabe’s history, as far as I know – and we all look forward to welcoming many pilgrims back for their next trip.
After the buckling down of 2023/2024, and the challenges that involved, this year McCabe is ready to grow big and fly.
"There aren’t many tour operators who’ve had as many obstacles to overcome since 2020"
Co-founder of Firebird Ian Finlay, who sits on McCabe’s board as Chair, also sees strong times ahead for the business. Below, he shares his perspective.
There aren’t many tour operators who’ve had as many obstacles to overcome since 2020 as has McCabe. Not only did they survive a global lockdown, but they then had to navigate bookings for an Oberammergau that was delayed for two years as a result. (The once-in-a-decade passion play is a core feature of the company’s long-term calendar.) More recently, the war in Israel and Palestine risked throwing the business off course.
But the team’s willingness and ability to pivot under these challenges – and thrive again – speaks to the strength of the brand as well as the commitment of team members who bring it to life. Martin’s leadership during the current crisis has been fantastic. It’s clear the business is on a strong growth trajectory under his stewardship.
Martin Adams is Director of McCabe Pilgrimages, the UK’s foremost specialist in pilgrimages and faith-based tours. Visit www.mccabe-travel.co.uk
Ian Finlay is co-founder of the Firebird Partnership, and has spent the last 30 years in the travel, leisure and education space: a career encompassing inbound operations, language schools, activity centres, hotels, bars and restaurants, and outbound tour operating.
Learn about Firebird and get in touch at www.firebirdpartnership.com
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