Luxury Travel Advisor - November 2007 - (Page 100) LEADERS SPEAK Tim MacDonald Chief Executive Officer of Classic Vacations He may not seem like the typical leader for a luxury wholesaler, having worked as a strategic consultant for brands like StarKist and Lucasfilm and as the VP of product management for the travel discount site Hotwire. But it seems as though Classic Vacations (www.classicvacations.com), a sister company of fellow Expedia subsidiary Hotwire, made the right choice in electing Tim MacDonald as CEO in April. Here, he discusses the fresh perspective he’s bringing to the role, hints at how he’ll keep the veteran Classic relevant and shares the hard way he learned the value of a travel agent. This is your first time interfacing with travel agents. What advantages do you bring to your new role? I had to lobby hard for the position because they were seriously considering bringing someone in who had run a tour operator before. One of the most important reasons why I’m here is because of my past experience working with traditional companies, like Booz Allen Hamilton and Heinz, and putting together strategies for them. What I’ve learned from those experiences is to start with your customers, and the same goes for a luxury travel agent—the client is their most important aspect. I’ve been spending a lot of time with our customers to understand how their business works, what they need from a wholesaler and what we do well and what we don’t do so well. We’re going to be maniacally focused on making our position stronger. How do you do that as a provider of luxury travel? On one hand, Classic is so great because we understand client satisfaction, but when you ask about where we’re going in the future we see opportunity to do even more. Our top initiatives as a company are aimed at delivering great service to travel agents and ensuring client satisfaction. They’ve always been our highest priorities. I can’t really go into details, but these initiatives will be implemented over the course of the next year. If we have this same conversation a year from now, I’ll be able to tell you exactly what we’ve done and you’ll be able to measure the impact on travel agent satisfaction. With so many others repositioning their products as luxury, how will you compete? Customer service is not something that you can build overnight. Others can start selling five-star hotels, but you can’t just flip a switch and start selling greater levels of customer service. We believe we’ve established ourselves as the premier luxury wholesaler to an agent who is focused on ensuring client satisfaction. I’ve seen more people moving down market. I don’t know if I would call it a trend, but I have seen some of it. It sur- TIM MACDONALD, CEO, in front of Classic Vacations' headquarters. prises me because, in my experience, the majority of issues in the industry stem from lower-end products. We’re not spending our time explaining to customers that they received a two-star experience because that’s what they bought. By focusing on the higher end, there is no excuse to be dissatisfied with a vacation. It’s the high-touch luxury agent that’s growing and doing well. Quite frankly, anyone can sell a five-star hotel, and that’s where Classic comes in—selling the services that ensure that hassle-free experience. It’s really hard for one person to do that. Classic Vacations recently reunited with Virtuoso. How have those agents received you? We’ve seen so many Virtuoso agents happy to have us back. We’re such a perfect fit. The Virtuoso agents are the high-touch agents we’re talking about here. You have several years in the industry under your belt. What has been your most memorable travel experience so far? I did a two-week trip to Turkey last year—10 days along the southern coast and five days in Istanbul. The country is such an amazing combination of history, culture and geography. But the other thing that experience taught me is to never book a trip without using a travel agent. The actual travel part is something that a luxury travel agent could have made much more enjoyable. I would have gladly traded all my industry discounts to have someone take care of all the arrangements for me. 100 LUXURY TRAVEL ADVISOR | November 2007 http://www.classicvacations.com
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.