Real Journeys' new chief executive officer Richard Lauder is looking forward to running a "solid organisation" which does not require any significant changes.
Mr Lauder, most recently chief executive of the Martin Aviation Company, has just completed his first week with the company, which he describes as an "iconic company in New Zealand".
He told the Otago Daily Times that unlike most of the jobs he'd held over the past 20 years, his latest role was something "quite different".
"[Previously] I've been brought in to fix something or make significant changes.
"It [Real Journeys] is a solid organisation ... of all the jobs I've been in the process for, this was the one I really wanted."
Most of his career had been spent in infrastructure and infrastructure services, running contracting companies.
He had also "dabbled" in the aviation sector, through his association with Martin Aviation - he will remain a director of the company - and had previously been involved in manufacturing forestry products, pulp and paper.
While there had been a lot of interest in his infrastructure skills, particularly in Christchurch, having "done that four times ... I really wanted to do something different".
"From the outside looking in, tourism looks a lot more exciting than filling potholes and monitoring water and wastewater networks."
However, Mr Lauder is well aware of the competitive industry in which his new company - it employs 400 people during peak season - operates.
"To be effective in that marketplace, Real Journeys has to continue to be a great company, well run, adaptive, responsive to the changing markets - and we've seen significant changes in the market over the last several years ... to the less traditional visitors.
"That's what I'm here for ... It's to try and make everything we do excellent.
"Any job I've had as a CEO I tend to think of as a five to seven-year journey.
"The organisation benefits from their strengths, but they also suffer for their weaknesses.
"It's always healthy for a company to turn over their CEO."
The company's core business came from the TSS Earnslaw, its Milford Sound and Doubtful Sound operations, the Te Anau glow worm caves, and the "Stewart Island experience".
Subsidiaries included Queenstown Rafting, recently-opened kayaking operations in Milford Sound and Black Cat, a Banks Peninsula cruise company based in Akaroa.
Mr Lauder will be joined by his family - wife Di, daughter Danielle (12) and son Sam (10) - after the end of the next school term, he said.
"There are not many places in the world that would be better than living in Queenstown.
"[I've] lived all over New Zealand - I am a New Zealander, but I don't really have a home town ... maybe Queenstown will be it."
