On July 12, Tauck will celebrate 90 years since Arthur Tauck
Sr., father of the company’s current chairman, set out from Newark with a group
of six passengers to lead his first motor tour. The decades since then have
been a fascinating journey, from bus and rail travel to jet planes, through
depressions and recessions, and into the digital age.
Arthur Tauck Jr., himself a living piece of travel history
after 57 years at the company’s helm, recently spoke with tour operators editor
Michelle Baran about how it all started.
Travel Weekly: When you got into the touring business, did
you ever think that the company would grow into what it is today?
Tauck: I was born seven years after the company started. But
I can surely tell you that my father, who operated the company until 1958, had
absolutely no vision of where it was going. I think he did it kind of as a
lark. He started before the Depression, so things were looking good. And then
three or four years after he went into business, the Depression hit. He was
just about put into bankruptcy in 1932.
And then along came World War II, and we were licensed by
the Interstate Commerce Commission; all tour operators who ran motorcoaches
interstate had broker licenses from the Interstate Commerce Commission. So we
were regulated by the government then. That doesn’t exist anymore. But because
it existed at the time, they had the authority to put him out of business. So
he got an order to cease and desist right after Pearl Harbor. And he did not
reopen until 1947.
But then the biggest change of all that hit this entire
industry [was] in 1960. Unfortunately, [my father] never saw it because he died
in 1960. But in 1960, Pan American World Airways bought the very first Boeing
707 jet, and jet aviation came into commercial travel. And that just shrunk the
world overnight. In other words, you could fly to the West Coast without
stopping. You could fly to Europe without stopping. The world changed. That was
absolutely the biggest change that happened, and the travel industry was really
born, I feel, in 1960.
"You get in these motorcoaches today, there’s no better way to go. You’re up high, you’re over the traffic, you see more, the air conditioning works, the music works, the TVs work. You can sit back and relax."
TW: So is that when you decided to do international tours?
Tauck: Oh no, that didn’t happen until 1991. We had growth
all across North America. Up until the coming of the jet aircraft, if anybody
traveled west on tours to see the national parks, like Grand Canyon or Bryce or
Zion or Yosemite, they went by rail. I was the first to start linking the
national parks of the West by air. That was probably one of the biggest things
we ever did. We were a forerunner in that.
Our competition was basically all U.S.-domiciled tour
operators who operated only in the United States. Then, all of a sudden, some
of the European tour operators who were also growing: Maupintour, Globus, all
those guys were just operating overseas, but when the dollar weakened, they
were losing money. So they came and started to be our competitors over here. So
we said, “We’ve got to compete with this because when the dollar strengthens,
our following is going to choose our competitors to go overseas, because we’re
not there.”
It was really the flipping of the exchange rate that caused
us to go overseas so that we could have a product and keep our same customers
anywhere in the world, and that occurred in 1991.
And so we started expanding throughout the world. We started
in Europe, and then Asia, Africa. We’re on all seven continents today. And then
we got into riverboating, and riverboating is a good piece of our business
today.
TW: What has changed about tour operating?
Tauck: The changes came largely in technology and equipment
— the airplane. The bus used to be a horrible stigma. People never wanted to
travel by bus because it wasn’t very comfortable. You get in these motorcoaches
today, there’s no better way to go. You’re up high, you’re over the traffic,
you see more, the air conditioning works, the music works, the TVs work. You
can sit back and relax. It’s a delightful way to travel. It wasn’t that way in
the beginning.
The other thing that’s changing, and I think the tour
operators changed it, is we really upgraded the experiences that take place on
our tours. Before, it used to be sit on a motorcoach, look out the window and
let the outside world entertain you. And today, it’s get out of the motorcoach,
get outside and do the things out there that you’ve been watching people do.
TW: Was there ever a time you thought that the challenges
might not be surmountable?
Tauck: The most difficult was World War II, 9/11 and 2008.
Dan Mahar, our CEO, was talking to [some of the fourth-generation family
members], explaining everything that had happened and explaining the growth
years and explaining the tough years and explaining 2008. And one 14-year-old
said, “What would have happened if it lasted four more years?” It was the most
astute comment anybody could have ever made.
[The 2008 economic crisis] turned around, and the industry
came back almost overnight in a couple of years. But if that situation had
lasted four more years, there wouldn’t be very many tour operators out there. I
sat there, and my jaw dropped when he said that. When you’re not in the banking
business, we don’t know what’s going on, we’re just riding the wave of wherever
the economy is. If the economy is going to crash and stay crashed for a while,
we’re going to go with it, along with many other companies.
TW: How has group touring remained such a resilient form of
travel all these years?
Tauck: You know, I read all the comments on our comment
cards. One of the questions we ask on our comment card is, “What did you like
most on your trip? And tell us what you liked least.” The thing [customers]
like most is the people [they were] traveling with, traveling with like-minded
people. Remember, tours attract kind of the senior end of the population, people
who are getting older. They are losing friends rather than gaining friends. And
when they can take a tour and meet other people who become friends for life,
there’s a camaraderie that’s developed.
"The world is becoming jammed. It’s almost no fun to go places anymore. I was over in Rome in off-season in March, and I was shoulder-to-shoulder in the Colosseum."
We also get the flipside of that: people who say, “You know,
I still prefer to go on my own.” And that’s the kind of person who doesn’t want
to have to depart at a particular hour and get back at a particular hour.
Because when you’re traveling as a group, you’ve all got to go at the same
time. So it’s that structure that they don’t like. It’s very few people, but
they’re out there, and you can understand why. It all comes down to who you are
and what you’re like.
TW: What is Tauck’s greatest competition, either within the
tour industry or in the travel industry at large?
Tauck: We used to say in the land-tour business that the
cruise business was our competition. And I don’t think it’s our competition. We
have customers who travel with us, [then] go out and they travel with a cruise.
They’re not 100% loyal to the cruise industry; they’re not 100% loyal to us. I
think that the competition that the entire travel industry — the tour
operators, the cruise lines — face is crowds. The world is becoming jammed.
It’s almost no fun to go places anymore. I was over in Rome in off-season in
March, and I was shoulder-to-shoulder in the Colosseum. I couldn’t believe it.
… I think crowds are the thing that the entire industry has got to overcome.
TW: Will there always be people who want to go on a guided
tour?
Tauck: Yes.
TW: If you had a crystal ball, where would you predict that
the tour business will be another 90 years from now?
Tauck: If I could answer that question, it’d be all B.S.