At the USTOA Annual Conference and Marketplace in Austin in late November, I had the good fortune of running into Scott Nisbet, the CEO of the Globus Family of Brands.
As head of one of the most global of all tour operators, Scott Nisbet is a good person to talk to for reading what is happening in the global travel industry. The Globus Family of brands includes Globus escorted tours, Cosmos budget priced tours, Monograms independent tour packages, and Avalon Waterways river cruises. It’s about as broad a selection of travel products as is offered by any company anywhere. Based in Lugano, Switzerland, the company’s reach spreads around the world and touches every aspect of the travel business that is part of a tour, and that’s practically everything. The company offers programs on six continents and sixty-five countries.
When Mr. Nisbet joined Globus in 1998, he was a Harvard MBA with a broad background from working in various industries. Originally from Los Angeles, he attended Colorado College and worked four years for Kidder Peabody, the investment firm, before heading off to Harvard for his MBA.
In the eight years after he left Harvard in 1990, he held positions at General Mills, the food giant of Cheerios and Wheaties fame, and Ryder Systems, which was evolving from a truck rental company to one that defined itself as a provider of 3PL, third party logistics.
His experience with Ryder gave him some foundational insights into Globus, because transport and logistics are two of the principal components of the escorted tour business; but Globus hired him primarily for his insights into marketing, which can apply similarly across a broad spectrum of businesses. Scott wisely chose travel.
Scott was brought on board specifically to help the company elevate its vision from a primary focus on sales, to one driven and guided by a marketing strategy.
His title shifted around as his role evolved. At various points, he was called director of sales, executive director of marketing, and vice president of customer acquisition, retention, and marketing. In 2004, his various roles were consolidated under the title of chief operating officer. In 2009, he was promoted to CEO.
The Stuff of Legend
As CEO he heads the American branch of the global tour operator based in Lugano, Switzerland. The story of Globus is a great chapter in the history of the travel industry. It goes back to 1928 when Antonio Mantegazza started showing people the sights of Lake Lugano in his rowboat, which he had bought on credit. He got such a good response that he was able to buy more boats and enlist help.
In the mid-1930s he bought his first motorcoach and started motorcoach touring. Today the company is still headed by Antonio’s son Sergio in Switzerland. One of the company’s biggest markets is the United States, which Scott oversees from Colorado where the American branch is based.
The Current Scene
I talked to Scott about how business is faring in this tumultuous period. Business is good, he said, “not back to 2019 levels, but far more normal.” It varies by destination. The company is about two thirds of the way back to its 2019 levels.
“We hope to be 90 percent back in 2023,” he said. Though volume lags behind that of 2019, revenue is not lagging as much because prices have gone up. However, pent-up demand is so strong that people seem unfazed by the rise in prices.
The Americas are selling well for Globus, he said, both the North and South. In fact, he said, “The US did well the entire time,” that is, not counting 2020.
“Twenty-twenty didn’t happen,” he said. “There was no business.”
In 2021, domestic travel, practically the only kind of travel that could be done by Americans at the time, came back. It was mostly travel to national parks, and outdoor locations, where viruses are not much of a threat.
Some of Globus’s most popular North American destinations, such as the Canadian Rockies and Newfoundland were off limits because of Covid restrictions at the Canadian border; but domestic travel carried the company through 2021—and it’s still a solid pillar of business for the company in 2022.
Meanwhile, Europe is coming back, he said, especially Italy, the UK and Ireland. Portugal was taking off before the pandemic and, now as travel resumes, is taking off again.
Asia is down as a region, though Japan is doing well. “Japan just reopened, and people are rushing back,” he said.
The Mekong River Cruise through Vietnam and Cambodia is also doing well.
China is off because of its own interior problems now, and likely to remain off for a while.
What’s New?
Globus created a new style of touring during the pandemic. “It’s called Choice Touring,” he said. “The number one reason people tour is because it’s easy. The most important factor is choosing the itinerary.”
Choice Touring empowers the traveler to have more choice and flexibility in the components of the itinerary, and to be able make those choices spontaneously, day to day as the itinerary unfolds.
“With Choice Touring, every other day, or third day, you get to choose from three excursions,” he said. “You may choose the more active, or the more cultural or the most immersive. It’s all included in the up-front price.”
On those days, the group breaks into smaller groups. It’s new for 2022, will be continuing into 2023 and expanding in 2024.
“We’re getting a good response to it,” said Scott. “It’s just getting discovered. It’s getting great reviews.”
Trends
As the world emerges from lockdown and returns to mobility, Scott said he is seeing a trend toward a preference toward more intimate, less crowded experiences. “A trend that we were seeing pre-Covid has accelerated,” he said.
He’s also seeing a corresponding shift toward lesser-traveled destinations such as Africa, as well as Portugal. People are also traveling during historical off-seasons when there are fewer travelers. A growing number of travelers are intent on not only avoiding the summer crowds but also the heat, as temperatures rise globally.
People are looking for more intimate ways to experience destinations, he said. Among those ways are small group travel and private tours. Globus will sell any of its regular group tours as private tours, and the demand for them is growing. Many families are opting for private family tours.
The move toward smaller and more intimate groups also applies to the continued growth in popularity of river cruises. One of the Globus brands is Avalon Waterways, one of the major river cruise operators.
Another one of Globus’s product lines that is seeing growing popularity is its Undiscovered series, such as Undiscovered Italy and Undiscovered Britain.
These tours are designed for people who may have visited a destination once and absorbed many of the so-called must-see sights, but then want to return and dig in a little deeper and explore a little more widely in that specific region.
The Lighthouse Project
Another of the trends that the Covid pandemic seems to have accelerated is a tendency toward greater concern with the environment, specifically regarding climate change. Consumers show an increasing tendency to care about the environmental policies of companies they do business with, and travel companies in particular.
The travel industry has been a leader in taking action to protect and contribute to destinations. Globus’s efforts to promote sustainability have now given rise to the Lighthouse Project
“The pandemic gave us time to build out our strategies even more on sustainability,” Scott told me. “So, we developed something called the Lighthouse Project, with the mission of creating a better tomorrow focused on people, places, and planet.”
Globus has been doing philanthropic projects for many years, but the Lighthouse Project (developed during the lockdown period) brings them all together under one umbrella, with a unified message.
“We have over 50 give-back projects around the world, to support the people and places we visit as a company,” he said. “We want to make sure that we are doing the right thing in terms of the destinations we go to, in supporting the people, helping them economically, that they are happy that we’re there. That’s important to us, preserving places like the National Civil Rights Museum, protecting the planet, supporting the rhinos in Africa, removing plastics from rivers and oceans with an organization called Ocean Cleanup.”
It’s a good time to be grateful for all the good that the pandemic did bring with it. The time to focus on and build the Lighthouse Project was one of those things.
For more information on Globus,
https://www.globusjourneys.com/
866.755.8581
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.
