What is Lundgren Tours and who are we?

Lundgren Tours, a Guided Tour Operator business based in Northumberland has been operational now for almost 3 years. We’ll be celebrating our 3rd birthday on 4th April. Rob, our founder set up the business whilst studying Entrepreneurial Business at Northumbria Uni in 2016 and graduated last Summer. So, we’ve only been trading full-time for just under 9 months. It’s been an exciting and sometimes frustrating journey but we’re already seeing the fruits of our labour.

We’re a family business. Rob is the front man, although he does a lot of behind-the-scenes work and is involved in all aspects of the company. He’s not only a Tour Guide, he’s responsible for generating the sales for his trips. A naturally gregarious and outgoing personality, he is happiest when dealing with people – of all ages. Although dealing with technology is not his favourite pastime, he’s also responsible for a lot of the design for LT’s marketing materials. So, he’s a busy lad and is still only 22. In addition to a heavy workload which he finds exciting (most of the time) he has also to-date been shortlisted for 4 awards, quite an achievement for someone so young.

The award that we’re most proud of is the Silver for Guided Tour of the Year in the North East Tourism Awards last November. It was truly an honour to be recognised by the Tourism industry so soon after Rob’s graduation and an endorsement of how good he is as a Tour Guide. Rob likes to inform his audience with history and knowledge but what differentiates him from others is his ability to be fun and entertaining. This is why we introduced our themed tours of Alnwick Castle which has a Harry Potter theme and a Viking tour of the Holy Island of Lindisfarne. For both tours, Rob dresses as the appropriate character and enters into the spirit of the occasion whilst still providing the history and information.

So that’s Rob in a nutshell. What about the rest of the team? Well, there is Tim, Rob’s Dad who is Commercial/Operations Manager. He often says that he does the work that Rob and I (his Mother) don’t want to do, such as customer itineraries, liaising with coach companies (no offence to coach companies!). He even acts as a second guide when we have large tour groups. More importantly, he does the company accounts and stops the Marketing Manager (me) from spending too much money – ha!

So you now know what I do. My name is Karen and I’m responsible for spamming you all with social media posts (my apologies). I have a background in languages and sales which is quite useful for our International customers. By the way, the ‘LUNDGREN’ name comes from my Swedish Great Grandfather, a Mariner who sailed into Amble, Northumberland (the friendliest port) from the island of Gotland. Not wishing to lose this surname which I proudly carried for 32 years, I passed it to Rob as a middle name a few years later. We thought ‘Lundgren Tours’ sounded a bit more classy than ‘Rob’s Tours’ and ties in nicely with the Viking theme of our Lindisfarne and Bamburgh trips.

We’re all excited to see what the business has in store for us in 2019. Onwards and upwards!

Karen Lundgren Jones

March 20th, 2019