One month after taking over as president and CEO of Travel Impressions in the aftermath of its acquisition by Apple Leisure Group, Tim Mullen talked with Senior Editor Michelle Baran about how he will -- and won't -- change the vacation packager.
Q: What are Travel Impressions' advantages over competing company Apple Vacations (of which Mullen was co-president with brother Jeff Mullen until a month ago) and vice versa?
A: They're two very different companies. Apple Vacations is a mass-market, predominantly charter tour operator, focused predominantly on the Caribbean, Mexico and Hawaii. Travel Impressions, while they also sell the Caribbean, Mexico and Hawaii, also sell so much else. They also sell a ton of vacations to Europe and the Far East. Whereas Apple is more finitely focused, Travel Impressions is more broadly focused on product and more narrowly focused on service. Travel Impressions does an enormous amount of passengers every year for being a boutique shop.
Q: What are the changes we can expect to see at Travel Impressions now that you're running the show?
A: I can tell you what's not going to happen, and this is to kind of dispel the myths that are out there. What's not going to happen is that we're going to drop hotel chains like Excellence, Karisma or Real Resorts. We are going to grow the overall business of all our hotel partners, every single one.
Q: Why were there myths about those hotel partners being dropped?
A: Because they're considered competition to AMResorts [which is also owned by Apple Leisure Group]. So, we are not going to shift business from any hotel to AMResorts. We are going to grow the overall business with a focus on AMResorts, but we're going to grow the overall business.
Myth No. 2 is that there are also rumors that we're going to cut programs. That's entirely untrue. We're looking to expand the global reach that Travel Impressions has [into] Asia, South America and Mexico.
Q: Travel Impressions and Apple Vacations are competitors, but they're under the same ownership now. How do you make that work?
A: I would not use the word consolidation. We're not consolidating anything. Some tour operators buy another tour operator for basically their customers, and they change the name, and they just envelop that tour operator B into tour operator A. Other acquisitions like the one we did with Travel Impressions, you're buying a brand and you're buying relationships as well as the distribution. And when you buy all three of those, you don't want to change the name, you don't want to change what the name stands for, and you keep the brand alive, and you keep growing it.
Q: What are Travel Impressions' best assets?
A: Its best assets are its people and its relationships that it has with its customers. It should be the envy of the industry. That's the first thing I saw when I got there. [Travel agents] love Travel Impressions. And secondly, it's their global breadth of product.
Q: Any other myths you can dispel about the future and direction of Travel Impressions?
A: Spending the past three-and-a-half weeks at Travel Impressions has reinforced my complete confidence in the future of Travel Impressions. ... Although we have seen leaders leave, we have a wealth of extremely talented, skilled, hard-working and caring people who will continue to lead Travel Impressions on the path of success in both sales and service.
Follow Michelle Baran on Twitter @mbtravelweekly.
Correction: Tim Mullen's brother is Jeff Mullen. A previous version had an incorrect first name.