Hello again everyone. I wanted to take a few moments to speak to you all about the economy and how we’re responding to it. While it is no secret that things aren’t great out there right now, we foresaw tough times coming a couple of years ago and started battening down the hatches. My son Terry, who handles the computers for the business, also is an active investor. He belongs to a couple of different groups online who discuss the economy and the markets, and they’ve been warning of this type of “Great Recession” for quite a while. While we are not immune to this downturn, we are, dare I say, better able to weather it. This is due to our advance “notice” of it coming, but also due to our “uniqueness” in the industry. You see we are a rather small operation in the scheme of things. Besides myself and my son I already mentioned, the only employee is Linda Lee, with whom many of you have spoken with many times. We run a very tight ship here, and with such a small staff, our expenses are not all that hefty. Compared to some of the behemoths in the industry, we would be considered tiny. I believe that works to our advantage in these troubled times however. We have no large staffs that need to be paid, nor large computer systems that are very costly to operate. We don’t have frequent European tours going out all the time (although I do want to call your attention to our upcoming Oberammergau Tour in the Fall of 2010!!), that are extremely expensive to operate. In the past, our small size might have been frustrating to some of you who weren’t able to pick any weekly departure you might of wanted to book into, or sometimes having your calls go to voicemail when we’re all out of the office. But there’s a cost to having someone sit there to answer the phones, which for our early years we incurred. After a while though we realized that what’s important is the travel experience, not the bells and whistles of a fancy office.
You are all no doubt watching every penny that’s spent these days. If you’re lucky enough to have a travel budget, you no doubt want it to go as far as possible. Any problems or ”situations” with a supplier, could be very painful! We aren’t writing this to “fan any flames”, but we do it to hopefully open some eyes to the state of the business and give you our take on things. There’s no doubt that the economy is not doing well right now, but hopefully things will improve this year. In the meantime, rest assured that we’ll be here to supply those of you who do want to do some traveling with quality trips at a price that’s fair!
