Michelle Hicker Biography

Owner, co-owner and operator of several businesses, the banking industry, the tourism industry, travelling, creative writing, web designing, gourmet cooking and organic gardening are just some of the pursuits that have defined this native New Zealander. Born in the garden city of Christchurch, Michelle was raised on the outskirts of the small farming town of Waimate. Early on in her career Michelle trained as an administrative assistant working first with a large stockbrokerage firm in Timaru and later in Christchurch in banking, excellent training grounds for her eventual career in the tourism and travel industry.

Working in large urban centre's as well as small towns, moving around the country and meeting new people whetted her appetite for travel and Michelle began to look toward the tourism industry as a focus for work. In 1992 she left banking and enrolled at New Zealand's Institute of Management where she earned certificates in communications, marketing, computing and human resource development. From there she moved easily into tourism. She has never looked back and has since worked in many areas of travel and tourism; from client consultation, to product management, sourcing, staff training and management, tour guiding as well as marketing local New Zealand products to every corner of the world.  At one point she worked for one of New Zealand's premier tourism companies, Tourism Holdings out of Auckland, as a senior consultant in the tour coach division.

Michelle saw a growing need for trained and experienced experts who were independent of any one particular company, so in 2000 she started her own business, Independent Tourism Consultancy (I.T.C.). As owner/operator she built up a large client base and became very successful. I.T.C. was well received within the industry.

With seventeen years in the business, Michelle has travelled extensively throughout  Europe, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, both as a member of the travel and tourism industry and as a business associate with her husband, world famous photographer Rolf Hicker. She loves what she does and her energy and spiritedness shine through whenever she talks about her travels. Just ask her about careening across a frothing, flooded river gorge on a flying fox in New Zealand, or what it is like to camp in bone chilling sub zero temperatures in the Alaskan outback, or kayaking up glacier terminal faces and towering icebergs, or the correct words needed to write about the emotional intensity of an Andalusian flamenco dancer.

Of all of the countries to which Michelle travelled, Canada became one of her regular routes for sourcing new and sellable products for travel brochures for one of New Zealand's leading travel wholesalers. There are not many places in Canada that Michelle has not visited, whether it is capturing the essence of extreme weather on the west coast, jostling with some of the twenty million tourists at Niagara Falls, searching for Polar Bears in Churchill, Manitoba, driving the long Dempster highway or watching Capelin fish spawning along the beach at Admirals Point in Newfoundland Labrador, she has probably been there.  In 2006 Michelle officially moved to Canada's west coast as a landed immigrant and has applied her industry experience and her travel writing to co-create with her husband, www.hickerphoto.com, a stock photography and travel writing internet site. Their website receives over two million visitors per month.

Wanting to share their experience of travel and photography with other people, Michelle and Rolf have bought a beautiful house at the northern end of Vancouver Island in British Columbia where they have opened The Artists Point B&B and Photo Tours, a unique bed and breakfast hideaway for "artists and creative minds."