After seven years as CEO of CIE Tours, Elizabeth Crabill decided not to renew her contract, but rather to move on to the next phase in her career. So far there is no announcement as to what her next adventure will be, but it will no doubt be in travel. While the company is completing its search for a new CEO, the company is being overseen by Stephen Cotter, CIE’s Dublin-based chief operations officer, in the role of interim managing director. Cotter is working closely with Rosanne Zusman, the chief commercial officer, and Stacy Riback, the chief financial officer, as a management triumvirate. Crabill was with the company through October working on the transition.
I had a chance to chat with Rosanne Zusman and catch up on CIE Tours at the US Tour Operators Association’s Annual Conference & Marketplace in Los Angeles in early December.
Trial by Fire
Zusman is still fairly new to CIE. Before joining CIE in 2019, she worked for a dozen years Windham Hotels. When she left Wyndham, she worked for a while in financial services, but missed travel.
“Financial services was not fun,” she said. She considered herself fortunate to find an opportunity to get back to travel, “with a company that delivers superior customer experience.”
As chief commercial officer Rosanne Zusman oversees all the sales and marketing of CIE. She joined the company in October 2019, just in time to get settled in before the COVID-19 pandemic struck in early 2020.
Because of the extreme circumstances of COVID-19 that hit a few months after her arrival, Zusman said, “I didn’t experience ‘normal’ till this year.” And 2023 turned out to be the highest revenue year in the company’s history. It was not the year of the highest in number of passengers, but because of price rises from the global wave of inflation in the wake of COVID-19, it did produce the highest revenue.
Speaking to me at the U.S. Tour Operators Association conference, Zusman told me that despite the departure of Crabill, “We haven’t missed a beat. The CFO, the COO, and myself are a close team. The teams are in good form.” The team has revisited the strategies that were set when Crabill joined in 2016. “A lot of it was sound,” she said. “We’ve made some tweaks.”
When COVID-19 hit, the company stopped actively selling to the Australian and UK markets, and focused entirely on North America. At the moment in the post-COVID-19 environment, the company has no dedicated sales rep in Canada, but that may change. “There are opportunities to grow Canada and optimize the North America business,” said Zusman.
Leaving the House in Order
During Crabill’s tenure with the company, significant changes took place, including expansions beyond Ireland and Britain. Though still primarily an Ireland operator specializing in Ireland and Britain, the company also offers Iceland and Italy. Further expansion into European destinations is planned.
Elizabeth Crabill brought a lot to the company, as a Harvard MBA who had gathered a broad experience from 20 years in the wholesale travel business already at the time she joined CIE. Before taking over the leadership in 2016, she had served as senior director of marketing for Travel Impressions/American Express, vice president of sales and marketing for Lindblad Expeditions, and president of Travel Bound and GTA Americas at GTA.
Crabill took the reins from her predecessor, Brian Stack, who had managed the company for 26 years, starting in 1990. Crabill was able to spend a lot of time with Stack during the transition. She worked closely with him to learn how he had built the company and its strong customer loyalty. Stack had taken over when CIE had been hemorrhaging money in the 1980s, managed to grow it into a highly successful tour operation, and kept it on track during his tenure.
Crabill took the leadership position with a mission to grow the business, expand the digital footprint of the brand, raise the visibility of Irish tourism, and introduce a new generation of travelers to the tour experience. With 2023, Crabill’s final year, being the highest revenue in the company’s history, and having safely navigated through the COVID pandemic, it’s fair to say her mission was accomplished.
The Soul of Ireland
CIE Tours is based in Ireland, owned by the Irish government, and is the biggest and oldest tour operation in Ireland. As a native Irish company, it has a high stake in the game. It has a history that practically pre-dates modern tour operations as it developed in the 20th century in the early days of the rise of automobile and air travel.
CIE Tours was founded in 1932 by the Irish National Transport Company, or Córas Iompair Éireann in Gaelic, which is where the acronym “CIE” comes from. Its affiliation with the transport company gives it the advantage of having its own ground operation in Ireland, so it does not have to rely on other companies. Because it is owned by the Irish government, there is no danger of the company going out of business during a crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
As a government-owned business, CIE has always been more about promoting travel to Ireland, and bringing business and people into the country, than about profit, though it has also done the latter.
Expanding the Offerings
CIE is continuing the strategic expansion strategy that got rolling under Crabill. “Italy and Iceland have done well,” she said. “In 2023 we added the Icelandic Explorer, a 10-day program that circumnavigates Iceland on land.
For 2024, CIE has added a new tour of Italy called Tuscan Treasures, which will include Cinque Terre. It’s an eight-day package based on a hub-and-spoke configuration, headquartering in Montecatini Terme and taking day trips to Pisa, Lucca, Florence, Cinque Terre, Siena, San Gimignano, Castello di Verrazzano, Vinci and San Miniato. The hub-and-spoke design allows travelers to settle in for a week and only have to repack one time, at the end of the trip.
The hub-and-spoke style trip is one that the company is trying in different destinations. “Clients never have to pack and unpack,” said Zusman. “It gives them a feeling of what it is like to live in a place.”
Other trips in the hub-and-spoke configuration include the London Day Tripper and for 2024, the Scottish Day Tripper, which is based in Glasgow and takes day trips around Scotland.
The Tuscan Treasures program joins two other Italy programs that round out CIE’s Italy menu. The seven-day Taste of Italy follows the basic Rome-Florence-Venice plan, and comes in at an eye-opening starting price of $2,345. The 10-day Taste of Italy with Sorrento starts in Venice and moves down the peninsula with two-night stays in both Florence and Rome, ending with three nights in Sorrento, including explorations of the Amalfi Coast and the Isle of Capri.
CIE’s Italy tours are doing well, Zusman said. They give loyal CIE clients opportunities to travel with the company to places beyond Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England. In 2025, the company will add another Italian tour, this one including Sicily.
In 2023, the year-to-date satisfaction rate on customer feedback surveys was 95 percent. The company got a 70 percent net promoter score, which means an answer of “yes” to the question, “Would you recommend CIE to others?”
Although the company plans to extend its expansion in Europe, the expansion will be moderate and limited to Europe. “We have no plans to service the world,” she said. “We want to be excellent at what we do, the destinations we serve.”
The company has added one new destination heading into 2025, Spain, with one new tour. Few details on that are available, and it has yet to be posted on the website.
Meanwhile, time to consider a trip to the Emerald Isle, and remember what the song says:
When Irish eyes are smiling,
Sure it’s like a morn in spring,
In the lilt of Irish laughter
You can hear the angels sing.
When Irish hearts are happy,
All the world seems bright and gay,
And when Irish eyes are smiling,
Sure, they steal your heart away.
(Lyrics by Chauncey Olcott and George Graff, Jr.)
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.