Collette, America’s oldest tour operator, passed another milestone in its 106-year history last week with the promotion of Jaclyn Leibl-Cote from president to CEO. She succeeds her father, Dan Sullivan Jr., who became CEO in 1990, and now will serve as executive chairman. Leibl-Cote is only the fourth person to take the top position since the company was founded in 1918 by Jack Collette. In 1918, the term “CEO” was not used; but Jack Collette was the equivalent for the time, the founder and owner. He ran the company until 1962 when he sold it to Dan Sullivan Sr., the grandfather of Jaclyn Leibl-Cote. She is the first female CEO of the company.
It’s been shown that only about 3 percent of family businesses prosper into the third generation. Collette has achieved a place in that tiny pantheon. The company is one of the largest and most comprehensive tour operators in the world, operating some 170 guided vacation packages in more than 50 countries on seven continents. It is well ahead of its numbers in 2019, the year before the COVID crash, and business is better than ever.
Jaclyn became president in June 2018. She also was the chief customer experience officer, based on her central role in transforming the company’s products and services in her previous positions. By then she had worked in practically every department of the company. As a family member, she grew up in the shadow of Collette. She joined officially in 2005 after completing a Bachelor of Arts degree in communications from the University of Rhode Island and an MBA from Babson College.
At Collette, she served in various roles, learning every aspect of the business from the ground up, as a tour guide, client care agent, product designer, strategist and head of marketing. In her last role before becoming president, she served as executive vice president of product development. During a company realignment in 2015, she was also given responsibility for the tour management division of the company, working closely with the tour directors. At that point, she was in charge of the company’s products from concept, design and creation through delivery and operation. It was good preparation for her position now at the seat where the buck stops.
During her six years as president, she focused on transforming the company for a new generation of travelers. She focused on the company’s small tour product, Explorations, widening the range of individual choice of activities while on tour, and further differentiating the small group product from Collette’s classic guided tours, which also continue to sell well. The Explorations small group tours carry 14-24 customers, usually about 18. The classic tours carry 34-36 people.
Jaclyn also shifted the management focus toward an increasingly data-driven operation. “We have a different approach to the design of tour products,” she told me. “We are listening closely to customers, improving the ease of service for travel advisors, giving them the technology for self-service on quick, actionable things. We are also working hard to continually evolve on the customer side, reading all the feedback.”
Her efforts were highly successful. Collette’s business is up considerably from the year 2019, the last year before COVID demolished the travel industry and wiped the slate clean for a fundamental transformation.
During the lockdown period, Collette revised its policies to give greater support to its travel advisor partners. It changed its payment policies so that travel advisors were paid at the time of booking, not when the client returned from the trip, which had been standard in the industry. The change was intended to help travel agents stay in business during an unprecedented crisis. It’s now being rewarded by those it helped to stay in business, and who are now more loyal than ever to Collette. Collette’s business with the retail community expanded substantially during the recent period.
As for Dan Sullivan Jr., he will continue in a hands-on role. “He will never retire,” said Jaclyn. “My grandfather never retired, my father is the same. He loves what he does. It’s great to have him by my side during this transition, to support me.”
An Ideal Family Business
Collette continues to be a unique model of a family business, the real deal. Jaclyn’s husband also works within the company as executive vice president of global sales, managing the call center and the outside business development team. The couple has twin boys age 13 and a daughter age 11.
It’s a classic business success story, going back to 2018 at the end of World War I, when it was still known as ‘The Great War’ or ‘The War to End all Wars.’ The enterprise started as Collette Travel Service, operating transportation and regional tours out of the Greyhound Terminal in Boston’s Park Square. The company’s first offering was a 21-day trip to Florida for $61.50. Collette soon added $50 Cherry Blossom specials to Washington D.C. Jack Collette kept the company operating and growing for decades.
Collette became acquainted with young Dan Sullivan Sr. in the post-World War II period. Sullivan had served under General George Patton in the Intelligence Corps. In 1945, at the close of the war, Sullivan began running passenger operations for the New England Transportation Company out of Boston’s South Station. The New England Transportation Company was purchased by George Sage and became Sage Short Bus Line, which worked with Collette. That’s when he crossed paths with Jack Collette and began working with him. They became close friends. In 1962, when Collette was looking to retire, Sullivan persuaded him to sell the company to him.
The company grew as the travel industry evolved. Under Dan Sullivan Sr., the company expanded its operations to Europe in the 1970s; then to Australia, China, Africa and Mexico in the 1980s. He turned over the reins to Dan Jr. in 1990, who continued the expansion to South America and Antarctica in the 1990s.
Dan Jr. started working part-time with the company in the early ‘70s as a tour guide while in college at Fairfield University. When he graduated, he joined the company full-time in 1973. In 1990, after 28 years running Collette, Dan Sullivan Sr. stepped down and turned the reins over to Dan Jr., though he continued to be involved in the business. In early 2005, Dan. Sr. passed.
Collette has clearly placed itself in that 3 percent of family businesses that thrive into the third generation. As large and old as the company already is, it is now in a growth cycle. They know what they are doing, and they are holding on to the family culture, which is also the business culture of the company.
It’s good to have them there, on the scene, showing that even in a world and an industry of relentless and accelerating change, some good things remain.
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.
