MILWAUKEE -- Although Mark Travel Corp. is buying a competitor in
Dallas-based Adventure Tours USA, Mark Travel president William La
Macchia said competition will not be affected by the acquisition.
La Macchia said the operations will be kept separate by means of
a "firewall" system the firm developed for its competing
private-label brands, such as United Vacations, US Airways
Vacations, Midwest Express Vacations and Southwest Airlines
Vacations.
The brands maintain strict separation of sales, marketing and
product development functions. Consolidation only takes place in
technology and back-office functions, he said.
LaMacchia said the brands "will be strategic business units and
will have total responsibility for themselves."
Adventure Tours will be operated from Dallas by its current
head, Todd Johnson, vice president and general manager. The
company's call center will be closed and its products migrated to
the Tri Sept system used by Mark Travel.
Mark Travel will make the products available to a wider market
through its reservations technology.
Sammons' Adventure Tours was one of the main competitors of Mark
Travel's flagship brand Funjet Vacations in Oklahoma and Texas
before the acquisition last week.
Agent reaction was mixed.
Foes of consolidation included Pat Nichols, owner of Nichols
Travel in Oklahoma City, who said, "I find it unfortunate. I don't
think consolidation in the industry will be in the interest in the
long run of travel agent community. I think it's going to be a
detriment to brick and mortar agencies."
Other agency owners, however, said they were happy that
Adventure Tours found a good home.
"I'm delighted that [Adventure Tours] is now under the Mark
Travel umbrella," said Dollye Stark, owner of IT Travel Service of
Dallas, a customer of both Funjet and Adventure Tours.
"I get along with them very well. The Mark Travel Corp. is such
a stellar company, they do what they do very well."
Stark said she was not worried about loss of competition. "Mark
Travel owns Transglobal Vacations and that has worked," she said.
"TransGlobal has been left alone.
"I never forget what Bill La Macchia told me when I met him,"
she continued. "He said he wanted to be the kind of tour company he
wanted to deal with when he was a travel agent. I've never seen him
stop running his tour operator that way."
Sam Coats, acting president and chief executive officer of the
Sammons Travel Group until the sale, said Dallas-based Sammons
Enterprises had decided to sell off the group several years
ago.
"We decided strategically we were not going to stay in the tour
operator business long term," he said.
Adventure Tours was founded in 1972 to put customers in hotels
owned by the Sammons Group in the Caribbean, Mexico and South
Texas.
"We realized a lot of consolidation was going to take place,"
said Coats, "and that we would either have to do as Mark Travel has
done -- dedicate ourselves to being the biggest and the best -- or
find a partner."