VIDEO: Real Talk with Trilogy Excursions President, Gabe Lucy

Tara Dugan, digital sales director of MauiNow interviewed Gabe Lucy, president of Trilogy Excursions to learn how the sailing company and its businesses have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

Lucy has been with the company for 13 years and shared Trilogy’s long history of operating in business on Maui.

“We are coming up on 47 years in June and I’m not sure if we will have to put an asterisk on this year – hopefully not,” Lucy shared.

“We would like to be a 100-year company someday. This last year Jim and Randy Coon stepped down as the owners of the company and passed it onto the next generation,” he added.

Trilogy had to shut down their tours on March 20th because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We kind of went into survival mode at that point. We’ve been trying to communicate with our staff the challenges – that we don’t know the future – and we had to do a pretty sizable temporary lay off of most of our employees on the Trilogy side,” Lucy said.

He hopes to bring Trilogy’s staff back and work on a plan moving forward.

“It was very hard being a family business and having employees that are anywhere from a year to 20 years working for us that have never been on unemployment their entire lives to put them on unemployment and have them worried if they will have a job after,” he said of his staff.

Lucy encouraged businesses to communicate and be transparent with their staff during this difficult time – especially to employees who have been laid off.

“Provide them an understanding of what you’re doing to protect them and to move forward…We need to share all the information we have and try to work through this together as a team, as an Ohana and as an island.”

To learn more about how Trilogy Excursions are navigating the COVID-19 pandemic watch the interview above or visit their website.