Kimkim Principles

Focus on Quality

Kimkim aspires to offer the highest quality multi-day leisure trips. Quality means authentic trips, consistently great communication, and dependable delivery. This is achieved by forging close partnerships with strategic specialists to deliver 6-star level experiences. Price, speed, and the number of options offered to travelers are also important factors; however, if there is a tradeoff between quality and the others, quality comes first.

Kimkim also aspires to be the best-in-class platform for local specialists that share kimkim's vision of providing 6-star authentic experiences. Kimkim will provide the tools and support to help these local specialists grow their business on the kimkim platform.

Bias for Action

Speed matters in business.

Many decisions are reversible and making a decision and moving forward is better than not. Making a decision gives us an opportunity to assess the results, collect external feedback, and continue to improve.

Ownership

Individual team members are excited to take ownership and responsibility and own their results. They find or invent ways to unlock themselves, and are comfortable asking for help when needed.

Owners take a “majority stakeholder” mindset, aware that other stakeholders exist and it's part of their responsibility to keep others informed and solicit help and perspectives when appropriate.

Owners feel empowered to make decisions and understand what is expected of them. They feel and are self-sufficient and equipped with the right tools, training, and context to be successful. They are supported when taking risks and learn from mistakes.

Owners work in the best interest of the company, looking for ways to improve existing processes and fix things that don't look right even outside of their core responsibilities. They share knowledge and learnings with the broader company.

Deliver Results

We expect all team members to understand the overall company strategy and their individual roles and goals within that strategy. An individual's performance will be measured on the collective outcome of their decisions, the overall results delivered (quality and timeliness), and their overall business impact.

Data Fluency

80% of aspects of kimkim’s business are quantifiable and measurable, and it is our belief that questions, discussions and decisions should include a data component. That said, we are not “data-driven”, since that would imply that data makes our decisions. Instead, we strive to always be “data-aware”, which means that we seek out the relevant data when trying to understand an aspect of our business, and fluently embed these data into our discussions and decisions.

Comfortably Hard Pace

We aim to grow fast enough to be a significant player in the market, but controlled enough to maintain the quality of our offerings. We are willing to trade off short-term results to focus on long-term investments and have more control over our destiny. We have a clear sense of priorities and prefer to do fewer things well vs juggling too much.

We need to maintain high expectations and push ourselves to realize our vision. However, we also need to do so in a way that is sustainable: this is a marathon, not a sprint. In practice, we should never feel like our work is easy, but we must be mindful of the need to devote time to other priorities in our lives and take breaks as needed.

Growth Mindset

We embrace the growth mindset at the individual, team, and company level. We are always curious and eager to learn and take on challenges that might be uncomfortable or difficult initially. We understand that even with our best efforts, sometimes we do not succeed at first. We embrace these situations as opportunities for growth, a springboard for new learnings, and to stretch our existing abilities.

Community

Human connection is at the heart of what we do. When travelers take a kimkim trip, they feel more like a guest or even visiting friends rather than a tourist or client. This feeling of connection is enabled by meaningful relationships between the kimkim team, specialists, and their suppliers.

We expect all our travelers and specialists to show respect for each other throughout the planning process and during the trip. We don’t hesitate to enforce this in the rare cases where travelers or specialists don’t communicate in the spirit of our community guidelines.

Social Impact

Our vision is that independent travel can and should be a force for social impact. Kimkim trips support economic growth in our destinations, promote cross-cultural exchange and understanding, and embrace sustainable tourism principles.

We favor partnerships with small, local specialists and suppliers, and help them grow their businesses and improve the sustainability of their trips.

We understand that the impact on the climate is one of the biggest challenges resulting from travel. We therefore commit to making our trips climate neutral, in partnership with our travelers and specialists.