Delivering a customer experience that gets rave reviews  

About Aquascene Magnetic Island

Aquascene Magnetic Island have created tour experiences that combine snorkelling and exploring Magnetic Islands’ glorious bays, beaches and fringing reefs. Their tours are for smaller groups (up to 19) and are suitable for all ages and abilities. The focus of their tours is immersive marine adventures for everyone.  

Guests enjoy a tour that is full of stunning scenery, interaction with a diverse marine environment – above and below the water, cultural connections, stories, and history. The team take great pride in creating individual adventure experiences for all guests; catering for private charters, educational groups, and guests living with disability.  

Owners Adam and Steph Hinks deliver nature-based tourism experiences with strong interpretation values, and are committed to nature conservation and investing in the local community.  

They are proud Master Reef Guides, certified and trained ambassadors for and educators on caring for the Great Barrier Reef and marine environment, and are skilled in snorkelling instruction, conservation education, and storytelling.  

“At the heart of everything we do is the desire to make a difference to guests' experiences, the tourism industry, the environment, the community, and not least, our team. 

Our business values are passion, commitment, adventure-immersion, detail, fun, and inclusion. Our philosophy is based on providing service excellence, and undertaking sound business practices in harmony with environmental responsibility and the highest professional standards.” 

Customer Reviews  

The family-owned company is rated by its customers so highly that its TripAdvisor reviews made it the #7 in the Top 10 Experiences in the world in 2021 in the Travellers’ Choice Awards, which is based on customer reviews on TripAdvisor.  

Aquascene also received a 100% score in Tourism & Events Queensland’s Best of Queensland Experiences Program which is based on  

• customer reviews  
• social media engagement  
• consumer expectations of websites (such as being user-friendly)  
• industry best practice (accreditation).  

 Adam and Steph make it easy for guests to provide feedback on their website or through the everyday conversations with their guests, so they can make improvements based on customers’ needs and expectations.  

Guest Experience  

“We are always mindful through each stage of the guest journey to deliver an exceptional guest experience, and to provide the beautiful and unexpected moments where we can.” 

Steph also attributes the positive guest reviews in part to their mindset.  

“I’m always thinking about what it’s like to be a guest on my boat. ‘How does it feel from the guests’ view?’ If we were the guest, how would all the different aspects of the tour feel? This mindset is all about putting yourself in the other person’s “flippers” so to speak, and that creates a very personalised view. Our crew are always providing a guest experience with this as front of mind, always thinking about how would it be best to do this from the guest experience point of view, for every action and interaction. Asking myself ‘How would that make me feel?’ is how I make decisions for my business. 

Connecting to each of our guests on tour is a priority for us. Every interaction is a chance to make a difference, from the moment a guest contacts us to the moment they leave, we are listening and personalising every interaction. For example, in the three minutes of one-on-one time when we walk each of our guests down to the boat, we have chats and get a feel for what experience they want from the tour. We start to build a connection with them before we have even departed and it just builds from there. We are very ‘in-tune’ with our guests, do a lot of people-reading and have a lot of personal interactions during the tour so we can personalise for their needs and exceed their expectations. Tuning into people is really important. I love interacting with people. We are hosts, and each guest has personal time with us. Our guests are always going to remember how we made them feel. ‘Arrive as guests and leave as friends’ is how we want our guests to feel.  

We start that process from the very first contact by treating them as if they are our friends. I want them to form a connection so if they’re ever here in the region again they come to me, or that they choose to come to the region again because of the friendliness and connection.  

I am known for having thousands of messages on my phone that I don’t delete, my work mobile is full of all my text conversations with our guests, so when they return, we can pick up from the last conversation we had. Repeat guests love being acknowledged, and we believe that is an important element of creating a great experience. 

‘Connection’ is an important concept that we use a lot and something Aquascene is really good at and well known for. I want our guests to feel connected to what they see, experience, or feel on tour. For example, I encourage guests to discover something they think is really special when they snorkel. It could be the tiniest little fish that swam with them the whole time during their snorkel, but that little fish created a connection.  

We believe that when you connect with something, you want to protect it. That connection helps create awareness, blend that with some educational information and you create life-long memories that guests take home with them. Those memories help create awareness for all the actions the guest may make in the future.  

Humans are intrinsically about connection – that is wellbeing. It makes me feel good to be kind and make a difference to someone. I also try to connect guests who share common interests with each other.  

We provide many different experiences and encourage guests to really enjoy the simple moments during our tours, creating opportunities for simple meaningful connections - even sitting on the beach doing nothing can be amazing.  

However, we also aim to provide a lifechanging experience, such as overcoming a fear or a personal challenge, such as being afraid of going into the water or of snorkelling. When you encourage someone to successfully face a challenge, they feel so confident and ready to tackle the next one. There is no better feeling when you provide those moments for your guests.” 

Staff  

The team has slowly grown from the husband and wife team, when they started Aquascene 18 years ago, to now having three crew and an office staff member.  

“They all bring something special to Aquascene and help create the experiences we are well known for.  Staff are carefully selected, not just for their qualifications and skills, but their ‘soul and energy’. We prioritise getting the right people who bring the right ‘essence’ to our tours, ensuring passionate and caring staff with a mind-set to make a difference. We know that people will always remember how you made them feel and we value that at Aquascene.  

Our ethos at Aquascene is to create meaningful connections in a fun, safe environment in a personalised way, this is also important for our staff as well. Building a family feeling with our team is really important, creating a happy work environment for them. I think about them like I think about our guests: ‘How does this feel for our staff?’  

I believe we are only as good as the people we surround ourselves with and each of our team help create the essence of ‘better together.’ Our success relies on us being exceptional together as a team to deliver a great experience. 

We create a feeling of ownership for each staff member, where they are proud to part of the team, what they do matters, and they really do contribute to make a difference and create great experiences for our guests. I want our staff to feel ‘the Aquascene feeling’, which is about making a difference in people’s lives. We encourage our team to bring their own marine interests into their tour commentary – everyone is passionate about something and it’s great to share that. It's these little things that make the biggest differences. 

As the owners, we always encourage and support the learning process and lead by example in everything we do. We do our team training together, we value our staff’s vision and input, and encourage them to always think about how we can make things better in all that we do. Staff genuinely love working here and don’t want to leave!” 

Mentoring  

“A gamechanger for us was a mentoring program with Russell Boswell from Savannah Guides, as part of a hero experience development program run by Townsville Enterprise. That mentoring changed the direction of our business.  

Even today, we still reflect on some of the things we learnt in that program. We realised the importance of collaborations and relationships within the tourism industry. That was a turning point for Aquascene, and our strong relationship with Townsville Enterprise has been vitally important to our business. I don’t know how business owners go it alone – Townsville Enterprise help us so much and have been instrumental in the ongoing growth, success and resilience of our business, always a guiding light and unwavering support.”