Luxury Travel Advisor - April 2008 - (Page 52)

COVER STORY we needed to either start phasing out or do something with it.” Debbie Bush provides still another perspective on the chain of events. “I was trying to figure out how I could gracefully get out of the business, to the extent that we were talking about retiring and building a house in Virginia, among other things,” she says. “So when we were tapped for this Chairman’s Event, we were surprised and flattered, and I saw it as a wonderful opportunity to interact with other owners. I thought, ‘Well, this is a great time—I’ll see what’s out there, talk to a lot of other owners about what they are doing, how they are phasing out.’” One trend Debbie Bush says she discovered among several agency owners who faced similar situations was that of turning to independent contractors. Bush, however, wasn’t sold. “I thought about that for a long time, but I really felt like I had worked too hard to just fold my tent and go away.” As luck would have it, on that same journey through Peru, Craig Bush spent what his wife describes as “a rather interesting evening at the bar, drinking Pisco Sours” with Mauricio Leyton, then Virtuoso’s vice president for North American sales. “Mauricio got us to think a little bit more broadly than we were thinking at that point, and out of that evening came the question whether our son would be interested in joining the business. We said, ‘Oh no, we don’t think so.’ We weren’t sure we wouldn’t kill each other, because we have very similar personalities,” Debbie Bush recalls. “But we finally looked at each other and said, ‘Well, let’s just see what he says.’ And that’s how we came to that weekend. We said to Josh, ‘You know, would you ever? You wouldn’t be interested? Would you? Would you be interested?’” Josh Bush recalls a slightly more spontaneous, if ironic, version of the story, at one point during their weekend getaway marvelling to his parents over a comment a close friend and former roommate had made not long before. “I told my parents, ‘You’d never guess what [Christopher] said to me the other day,’” Josh Bush says, mimicking his friend’s suggestion that Bush join the family operation. “‘Isn’t that the silliest, most absurd thing PARK AVENUE TRAVEL staffers (from left) Kate Rebillard, Joyce Mitchell, Dot Myers, Deborah Bush, Bill Myers and Nancy Zanine outside of the agency’s Swarthmore office (top). IN TURKEY following Virtuoso’s 2008 Overseas Symposium (from left), Leslie Dodson, director of global accounts, travel industry sales, for Fairmont Hotels; Craig Bush; Nurdan Ustman, president/CEO of United Travel Services; Joshua Bush; Deborah Bush; Selbin Okyay, director of sales for Kempinski’s Ciragan Palace hotel; and Roland Largay, founder and CEO, Largay Travel, Inc., gather at the entrance to a traditional hammam in the Ciragan Palace (above). you’ve ever heard?’” But, Josh Bush says, that’s when it dawned on him “that life is a lot about experience and being able to sit down and talk about the things that I’ve experienced in my life, that it’s so much more rewarding than other things I was doing.” The weekend proved particularly serendipitous for Debbie Bush, whose emotions—and life’s plan—ran the gamut in just a few weeks’ time. “The most important thing for me was that when I looked at whether I was going to close up or go forward, the only way to go forward was with a vast infusion of energy that I knew, in order to grow the business beyond where it was, I couldn’t provide on my own,” she says. “I love to sell, I love to plan trips, I love to do all the fabulous parts of working with my clients, but the technology, all of the hands-on management, all of the sales development, the PR work, all of those talents, Josh had.” And so the Bush family’s relaxing weekend morphed into “three straight days of pad and paper and talking things out.” 52 LUXURY TRAVEL ADVISOR | April 2008

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Luxury Travel Advisor - April 2008 Contents Publisher's Letter Editor's Letter London DESTINATIONS India Greece HOTELS Golf Royal Hideaway Playacar Chateau Marmont SPAS Hawaiin Spas Southeast Asia CRUISES: Antarctica Cover Story: Rocket man The Pulse Traveling Gourmet Jetset Sightings Source List

Luxury Travel Advisor - April 2008

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