Interview: CEO of the Travel Corporation on Selling Tours in the Age of Online Travel

The Travel Corporation, with its portfolio of more than 25 brands, takes nearly two million travelers around the world annually on guided holidays, luxury river cruising, and youth travel. Despite being a specialist in guided holidays with fairly prominent brands, including Trafalgar, Insight Vacations, Brendan Vacations, Uniworld Boutique River Cruise Collection, Contiki Holidays, Evan Evans Tours, and the luxury Red Carnation Collection of boutique hotels, the Travel Corporation historically has had trouble getting the major online travel agencies to promote its wide variety of tours. CEO Brett Tollman brings more than 30 years' experience as a travel and hotel executive to the role, as well as four generations worth of leadership in the privately held company. Skift recently sat down with Tollman to talk about his views on the uphill battle to get online travel agencies to sell his tours, recent merger and acquisition as well as he has a skeptical view on the wisdom of consumer advertising. An edited version of the interview follows: Skift: You've said before you wish Expedia and Priceline would sell more of your tours. Where are you with that? Brett Tollman: I’ve had conversations ongoing now for several years, it started with Dara [Khosrowshahi] at Expedia about four years ago. That didn’t get anywhere because at that time they were consolidating their [technology] environment onto one platform, I think the U.S. one, and since then I haven’t been able to gain any traction with them. I met with Darren [Huston] at Priceline last year and we had a great conversation and apparently they’re putting a [request for proposal] together or doing something to see how they can bring on some of our niche products, what we call guided vacations and escorted journeys. Trafalgar uses guided vacations and escorted journeys is what Insight Vacations still uses. I’m hoping to hear from the folk