Alumni Bulletin - Fall 2008 - (Page 40)

Tauck World Discovery offers more than 130 different trips to 60 countries and seven continents. The trips feature a mix of culture, leisure, and adventure. Rockies they might never otherwise be able to visit. “Banff, Lake Louise, and Jasper is probably the most beautiful area “This was not flight-seeing,” he explains. “This was not going up in all of North America,” he says. “But in those days, it was a frontier and everybody’s looking out of windows. We’d pick up 10 people and land, and the only way you could get there was on either the Canadian leave them on a glacier with a very experienced Alpine guide for maybe Pacific or Canadian National railroad.” an hour and a half. In the meantime, we’d pick up the next group and To Tauck, that offered both a challenge and an opportunity—two put them in a meadow somewhere, then pick up the next group and things he couldn’t resist. put them someplace else. Then we’d hopscotch the groups around. As with Nova Scotia, his idea was to link air travel with the West. “We made less profit on that program than on almost anything Perhaps predictably, however, the hotel managers didn’t take him else we ever did, but the beauty of it was that it gave people such a seriously. strong emotional response. In fact, “They would laugh at me,” afterward you’d see them with tears he recalls, “and they would say, in their eyes because they’d done ‘What audacity you have to something they never thought they come here and ask for rooms could do.” and bring people by airline. The “heli-hiking” program, started Don’t you realize that this hotel in 1978, is still in operation. was built to serve a railroad?’ Evto introduce helicopter sightseeing Tauck Tours officially changed its ery year they would tell me the in the hawaiian islands. name to Tauck World Discovery in same thing, and I’d say, ‘Well, 2000 and now, more than 80 years air travel is coming, so I’ll see after its founding, goes around the you next year, and I’ll ask the world, offering 130 unique trips same question.’” visiting 60 countries and all seven continents (yes, including AntarcEventually, his persistence paid off. Starting with the Banff Springs tica) via every mode of travel from buses to balloons. It has won every Hotel, managers began setting aside rooms for Tauck, and before long, award in the industry. he was filling them. He also went to work on linking America’s great Arthur Tauck Jr. has done more than pick up his father’s ball and canyons and national parks by air. run with it: he has scored touchdown after touchdown. One, Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, site of the sandstone buttes, mesas, and spires that make an appearance in many television commercials and Hollywood Westerns, posed a particular problem, as there was no airport of any size nearby. There was, however, a dirt THE JOURNEy CONTINUES landing strip accessible by small, single-engine planes. To this day, tourists land on that strip to transfer to a waiting Jeep Tauck still retains the title of Chairman of the Board, but he’s left the with a local Navajo guide. day-to-day operations of the company to his daughter Robin Tauck, Tauck is particularly proud that his company was the first to company president, and his son-in-law Dan Mahar, CEO. introduce helicopter sightseeing in the Hawaiian Islands. Later, the Still, he keeps his hand in. company pioneered the use of helicopters to carry older people— “I’m not in the office. But in my study at home, I tune right into all often in their 70s and 80s—to mountain sites in the Canadian the systems over there, so I can find out what’s going on,” he says. tAuck is pArticulArly proud thAt his compAny wAs the first 40 LEHIGH ALUMNI BULLETIN

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Alumni Bulletin - Fall 2008 Contents From the President's Desk Mailbox On Campus Research Arts & Culture Sports Cover Story: The Dalai Lama at Lehigh Heart of a Champion Around the World in 80 Years Fighting for Children wth Autism Keepers of the Flame From the Publisher's Desk Alumni News The Last Word

Alumni Bulletin - Fall 2008

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