NEW YORK -- Far & Wide Travel Corp., a family of 17 tour
operators, introduced its first companywide brochure in
mid-October, showcasing the Europe programs of eight of the
company's brands. The tours will be dual-branded, using both the
Far & Wide brand and the brands of the individual tour
operations.
Travel Weekly's David Cogswell interviewed Far & Wide's
chief executive officer Phil Bakes about where Far & Wide is
heading.
Travel Weekly:What is the significance of
this Europe brochure?
Bakes: We now have both pieces of the Far &
Wide philosophy. On one hand, you have a rich array of travel
experiences, developed in many cases over many years by niche
operators with different destinations and specialties. But we have
it brought together, unified, co-branded, marketed and distributed
in a cohesive way, which makes it more accessible to travel agents
and to consumers.
You have a common commission structure, common terms and
conditions, a single phone number for the European product and a
common infrastructure.
TW:Is your strategy on track?
Bakes: Yes, it is on track. Generally, all the
companies we've acquired are up year over year.
We've put a lot of things together, such as a database of all
the travel agents that our 17 business units have dealt with over
the years. Putting those databases together is one of the building
blocks to what can we do collectively, and that makes us much
stronger.
We've been hard at work, and not just acquiring companies, but
doing work among the companies, and among the former owners, trying
to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts. And that's
what it's all about. We're moving toward being not a collection of
companies but an integrated company.
Our original precepts remain the same. We are organized very
strongly around the former owners, the people who have built the
businesses. Of 17 companies, there is only one where the owners are
not running it [Central Holidays].
And the person who is running that and the whole European
division [Tom Souza, former general manager of Collette Tours] is
very experienced and savvy ... he is right at the top of the
industry.
TW:How are you gaining synergies?
Bakes: We go through our various strengths and
weaknesses and ask how can you take a strength and leverage it for
the rest of the organization? And if there's a weakness, how can we
fix it?
We had a task force to get common terms and conditions for all
the Far & Wide companies. If we're going to be a unified
company and easy to do business with, we need common terms and
conditions.
We've looked for the best practices. "Best" not from the point
of view of what our lawyer says or what some accountant will say,
but from the point of view of our basic philosophy: We want to be
easy to do business with.
We looked at terms and conditions not just of our companies but
other tour operators out there, laid it all side-by-side to come up
with what we think are the best of the breed.
TW:What are some of the things that will
be done centrally?
Bakes: Finance, accounting, all that kind of stuff
is now gradually being centrally done.
TW:Are you concentrating your buying power
for air seats and hotel rooms?
Bakes: Yes. We have started to centralize the
relationships with the major airlines. We're not quite finished,
but we're pretty well down the road. It has saved us money, but it
has also given us availability.
This year we're going to do something like 120 million room
nights around the world, a fairly substantial number, which gets
the attention of those lodging chains, as you can imagine.
TW:What are your goals in terms of
acquisitions now?
Bakes: There were two things we set as goals to
fill in this year.
One was to have more North America as a destination -- and I
don't mean the Caribbean, Florida and Las Vegas -- but North
America as a destination, whether it be specialty travel, active,
adventure, the traditional group escorted travel, all those kinds
of things.
The second goal was to begin to enter the active and adventure
market through an acquisition. And we closed on the Adventure
Center.
So we've accomplished one of those goals, i.e. to have an active
adventure company, and we're going to do a lot more in that area.
The second we expect we will accomplish before the end of the year,
the North American part.
The other criterion is just general size and variety.
We want to continue to grow in these areas, and we will continue
to do acquisitions.
TW:What are your plans regarding an
IPO?
Bakes: As we said at the beginning, it's probably
about two or three years from when we started, a year and a half or
two years from now.
It's still premature for an IPO when the company is still being
built. Investors like it when there is a certainty of earnings.
When we are further in the building process -- when the earnings
are predictable -- then an IPO doesn't hamper the process.
We structured it from the beginning so there was no pressure to
do an IPO. At some point, we'll want to return to that.
The time frame our investors have in mind is five to seven
years. That's plenty of time.
Keeping a promise to the trade
NEW YORK -- In September, Far & Wide made good on a promise
to the trade by making the products of Grand European Tours, which
it acquired last November, commissionable to travel agents.
The products always had been sold directly to consumers.
The decision was in keeping with chief executive officer Phil
Bakes' stated belief that travel agents will be increasingly
important in selling the tour products of the future.
"We are acquiring a variety of travel specialists who, like
other travel companies, have a variety of distribution histories,"
said Bakes.
"Our strategy, because it makes sense, and our pledge, because
travel agents have supported us, is to make our wide range of
high-quality travel experiences available to travel agents.
"It is in that spirit that we reengineered Grand European's
distribution practice to include and embrace the travel agent
distribution network," he said.
Far & Wide's tour operators
Adventure Center
African Travel
Brian Moore International Tours
Central Holidays
Downunder Direct
Far & Wide London
Grand European Tours
High Country Passage
Intercontinental Travel Company
IST Cultural Tours
Lion World Travel
Pacific Bestours
Prism Holidays
Regina Tours
Swain Tours
Tourlite
Zeus Tours & Yacht Cruises