On Sept. 17, Dwight James, CEO of Delta Vacations, the airline’s vacation packaging operation, addressed the gathering of travel advisors at the Delta Vacations University in Atlanta about durable growth.
The agents had come to the event Sept. 17-18 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, at their own expense, to attend a learning conference built around a program of seminars and a trade show. The seminars were packed with specific information designed to enable them to operate their retail travel businesses more effectively and profitably.
“I’m going to talk about the concept of durable growth,” he said, “and a few items under that, so that we can understand more about what we can do differently as your partner, because that’s really important.”
There were seminars on destinations, technologies, business practices such as use of social media; as well as management techniques, and niche markets such as romance travel and national parks. The sessions were focused, concise, timed to fire off in perfect synchronization, and the travel agents in attendance were all business. They knew what they were there to do and they got right to it. They were serious players.
To break it up after a period of intensified seminar attendance, there was a trade show where 200 suppliers came to display their wares, live it up a little, and compete for attention.
It was not cheap. The travel advisors had to purchase their own hotel rooms and flights to make the trip. And fares are high now. This was no free ride that attracts some people who come along for the perks. It was a serious investment of time and money. But it was apparent that, for these agents, converging in Atlanta from around the country was worth it.
I never heard a single word of doubt about that during the conference. Those who came were clearly committed, willing to invest the time and money, and sure of the value of what they were getting in return. The cost of participation served as a culling process, narrowing the group down to only the really serious business people.
Dwight James recognized that commitment and thanked the attendees for it. The group represented the company’s most productive agents, its Diamond travel agencies, truly the heart of its business.
“Thank you for your partnership,” he told the group, from the stage. “You are incredible, helping us deliver what we do every day to our customers.
“And the second thing, I want to thank you for being here. Thank you for your investment in you, and in what we’re trying to do today. We realize it’s really a big thing, you’re taking time this weekend to spend time together, to be away from your family, friends and other loved ones to be here. That’s an investment. Thank you for that. We really appreciate it. And we will continue to invest in you.”
It was the first time Delta Vacations held its University since 2019. It’s normally an annual affair, but COVID, you know… The educational function has been annual since the early 1990s, long before Delta merged with Northwest Airlines in 2008 and absorbed its vacation packaging specialist, MLT Vacations.
Besides Delta’s acquisition of Northwest Airlines, MLT Vacations was a major prize in its own right. MLT Vacations has its own long lineage, going back to its beginning in 1969 as a retail travel agency called Main Line Travel in Minneapolis. The agency developed a wholesaling operation when it started selling Las Vegas packages to other retailers. It expanded the operation to more and more destinations, grew to the point that Northwest Airlines made an offer, and acquired the business in 1985. MLT became the vacation packaging unit for the airline.
MLT Vacations, as it was called in its wholesaler incarnation, became the heavyweight champ of running airline branded vacation packaging operations. At various times it operated Northwest World Vacations, United Vacations, Continental Airlines Vacations, Alitalia Vacations, Air France Vacations, and Aeromexico Vacations.
Although MLT became part of Delta Air Lines when Delta acquired Northwest Airlines, the core of that operation remained intact. Fortunately, Delta knew what it had and took great pains not to upset things.
MLT’s institutional knowledge and framework of business practices still live in the company. It has a strong sense of continuity, and has many employees who have been with the company through many transitions.
After Delta absorbed Northwest, it retained the brand MLT for several years, long after the sun had set on the Northwest Airlines brand. MLT had its own following, which it had built up over decades. That included a lot of the midwestern and western retail markets that Delta had previously not penetrated nearly as much as MLT had.
After the merger MLT operated Delta Vacations, as it had many other airline brands before. During that time, MLT continued to operate United Vacations till 2014. Delta held onto the MLT brand, and MLT U continued as MLT U for years to make the transition as smooth as possible. Finally in 2016, years after the 2008 merger, the MLT brand was dropped.
Delta didn’t even begin to move MLT’s headquarters to Atlanta until 2012. It kept the MLTU conference in Minneapolis till 2016, when it held it in Atlanta for the first time. The conference still returns to Minneapolis in some years. The last Delta Vacations U in 2019 was held in Detroit.
Delta Air Lines knew it had a good thing in MLT, and that the people were the heart of the operation; so it didn’t want to shake things up. It made all its moves carefully and deliberately. While it did move MLT’s headquarters to Atlanta, it left its call center in Minot, North Dakota, intact. It’s still a central part of the operation today.
Taking the long historical view, Delta has managed its vacation packaging deftly. Airlines need vacation packagers to help them fill their airplanes to a profitable level. But the operation of an airline is highly technical, operational, logistical, and tends to be a bit military in attitude. The military mindset is appropriate because operating an airline is akin to a military movement. They are like military operations, and the industry has historically been staffed to a significant degree by ex-military people.
Vacation packaging and leisure travel sales are very different kinds of businesses than airlines. They’re very people oriented, marketing oriented, touchy-feely. Airlines have historically had a lot of trouble with in-house packaging operations. Such operations often don’t thrive in an airline corporate environment. That’s why the practice emerged of outsourcing airline vacation packaging to companies that specialize in that business. Historically, they have usually done it better than the airlines themselves.
But Delta, via the Northwest Airlines component that survives within Delta, found a very good way to approach it with MLT Vacations. It brought into the fold a scrappy wholesaler that grew up from the streets of Minneapolis as a retailer, then a wholesaler and did it better than almost anyone.
It’s like Russian babushka dolls. When Delta purchased Northwest, it also got MLT. And that may have turned out to be the best part of it.
When Dwight James mentioned “durable growth,” it sounded at first like dry business jargon, but he very quickly showed that it was anything but. Durable growth, as I understood it, requires building solid relationships based on competence, integrity and reliability. Growth that is not built on those principles will not endure. The concept of durable growth may be in vogue now, but it’s built on the oldest principles of good business: being people-focused and taking good care of customers.
When Dwight James closed, he brought it back around to the beginning, to thank the agents again for being there; because the most durable business practice of all is courtesy and respect.
David Cogswell is a freelance writer working remotely, from wherever he is at the moment. Born at the dead center of the United States during the last century, he has been incessantly moving and exploring for decades. His articles have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Fortune, Fox News, Luxury Travel Magazine, Travel Weekly, Travel Market Report, Travel Agent Magazine, TravelPulse.com, Quirkycruise.com, and other publications. He is the author of four books and a contributor to several others. He was last seen somewhere in the Northeast US.
