Keith Baron, former president of Abercrombie & Kent, joined Perillo Tours as chief operating officer a little over a month ago. Baron will lead the day-to-day operations from the home office in Saddle River, N.J., and report directly to Steve Perillo, the president and owner of Perillo Tours. Baron was in his first month at Perillo when I ran into him and Stephen Perillo at the USTOA conference this month.
Stephen Perillo seemed almost giddy with Baron joining Perillo. “The spiritual part is changed instantly,” he said, “the feeling. And he’s a hit in the office. You’d never know because there are 50 people in the office. You bring in someone new, and you don’t know who’s going to like whom. But everyone loves Keith. Everyone.”
Baron’s Background
Baron brings 35 years of travel industry experience to Perillo, starting as a tour director with Tauck in 1986, He spent 24 years working with the Connecticut-based tour operator. He spent about five years as a tour director, learning the basics of the business from the point of delivery, where the business meets its customers.
“As a tour director I learned many things,” he told me. “I learned about understanding the needs of guests, how to work with suppliers in a partnered way. I learned about accounting, logistics, planning, and timing. That’s where my foundation was built, at the delivery touch points.”
Being a product manager was a good foundation for tour operation. “As a product manager I did a lot of work that a DMC might otherwise do,” he said. “That includes traveling to destinations, crawling under rocks, designing itineraries, figuring out whether to turn right or left, designing choreography so you get to the exact place at the right time, when the sunset is just hitting, and all of these very important things, the emotional side of what touring brings to an emotional experience. It takes a lot of thought, if you want to do it right.”
From there, he moved into product operations, as a product manager, in both international and domestic programs. In that role, he spent half the year traveling. He managed about a third of Tauck’s international programs. He designed itineraries, and what Tauck calls the “choreography” of its tours.
He worked his way up the management ladder at Tauck, and led worldwide operations for many years. He led crisis management for Tauck and later for Abercrombie & Kent, where he worked for 12 years, seven as president. All of these roles gave Baron valuable experience in all aspects of tour operation.
“When you travel in the world, things happen,” he said. “And it’s always good to expect the unexpected and have contingency plans. Crisis management is planning and preparation. Then when a crisis hits, it becomes a full-time job. That’s what you do, because the most important thing is taking care of those guests on the ground, and the staff. So you go all in and dedicate 100 percent of your time to security and safety. I gained expertise in that, which is valuable in those situations.”
After he retired from Tauck he partnered with fellow Tauck executive Phil Otterson in a consulting company named Cragmont Baron. The company worked with tour operators, tourism boards and other travel companies for three years before both partners were recruited into A&K. Baron and Otterson both joined Abercrombie & Kent in April 2012, Otterson as president, and Baron as senior vice president of strategic growth and development.
When Otterson moved into the position of vice chairman, in April 2017, Baron became president of A&K, a role in which he served for seven years. His total time with A&K was 12 years.
Perillo Looks at 2024
Perillo Tours is closing out what will be one of the most successful years of its history in 2023. Forward bookings for 2024 are dramatically beyond those of 2023. Business has already surpassed that of 2019, the last pre-COVID year.
Perillo Tours has achieved its slogan as being “synonymous with Italy,” but the company has done other destinations during its nearly 80 years in business. Now with Baron on board and demand for Perillo products booming, the company will do more branching out.
Perillo has been operating to Hawaii since 1988. The program was doing exceedingly well till the catastrophic fires in Maui struck. Now business is down. But Perillo will not abandon Hawaii. It will wait till business comes back.
As the pandemic has wound down the company introduced Greece and Spain. Both launches were successful. Greece has exceeded expectations and sold out.
“Greece is an area that we’ll be very focused on developing and growing further, with new itineraries in the future,” said Baron. “But beyond Greece and Spain our expectation is that we’ll be further growing Europe, because one of the things that we believe we can take better advantage of is our repeat travelers. If you have a large number of happy guests who have traveled with you to a single destination, but you offer few destinations, there are very few places to travel with you again and again. People do repeat with Italy, there’s a lot to see in-country. But these people don’t just travel to Italy. They love Perillo. They love what we deliver to them. They want to travel with us to places that we don’t currently go.”
In the proposed expansion, Perillo is going to concentrate on its dealings with travel advisors. “We’re going to really triple down on the travel advisor channel like we’ve never done before,” said Perillo. “They’re going to be our main partners going forward.”
“We understand how critical and influential the travel advisors are and can be with their clients,” said Baron, “because they know their clients like no one else. We also believe that for those travel advisors who know Perillo, they understand our level of delivery and that people do come back happy. For a travel advisor, happy means there is repeat business.”
Three Generations in the Family
“The brand awareness is extraordinary,” said Baron. The company was founded in 1945 by Joseph Perillo, the grandfather of its current president, Steve Perillo. It started as a Bronx-based travel agency specializing in trips to Italy, back when transatlantic travel was by steamship. At the time it started, Joseph’s son Mario was serving in the army. When he returned from his tour of duty, he attended New York University and earned a law degree. Later he went to work for his father, eventually taking over the business.
Mario Perillo became perhaps the most well-known tour operator through his TV ads in the 1970s. He became known as “Mr. Italy,” and the company earned a reputation as “synonymous with Italy.”
Steve Perillo, like his father, attended university before joining the family business. He got a Bachelor’s degree in music composition at Boston University, and had some notable successes with his compositions. He put out a series of CDs from 1995 to 2005. Several of the CDs are still available from Amazon, and on Spotify.
Expansions
As Perillo looks toward its future, it plans to expand its destination roster, but will hold tightly to its original mission. While continuing its escorted tour business, it will also be doing more to get the word out about its FIT business.
“One of the things we’re not going to stray from is the DNA of the company,” said Baron, “the depth of understanding and expertise in delivering a depth of experience in an authentic way. And we’re not going to stray from continuing to deliver high-quality experiences at extraordinary value. That’s what company is built on. But we’re also going to be looking at ways to approach different audiences. On the FIT side, guests tend to be about 10 years younger than those who travel on group tours. So we’re going to be looking at experiences built for guests who are more time-constrained, a little more active.”
For more information about Perillo Tours, call 800-431-1515 or visit www.perillotours.com.
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.
