In all the years I have been writing about tour operators John Stachnik was one of the greatest of them all. He was a sterling character in every way. He was one of the smartest, most capable, most amiable, kind-hearted and good-humored men I ever had the good fortune of meeting.
He died July 17 at his home in St. Petersburg, Fla. He was 82 years old, though it’s hard to believe. He was an eternally youthful person. He always looked young, like a kid. But more than looks, it was a spark in his eye, a spring in his step and a smile perpetually turning up the corners of his mouth.
I had the pleasure of meeting with him often over the years, because he was always so active in the industry. He was a major presence for 40 years.
He served at different times as head of both major trade associations of the tour industry: the National Tour Association and the U.S. Tour Operators Association. That’s a distinction he shares with only one other person, Arthur Tauck Jr.
He was also chairman of USTOA twice, for two terms separated by a number of years. That distinction he shares only with Jimmy Murphy, co-founder of Brendan Tours (later Brendan Vacations) and AmaWaterways.
The list of awards he received during his career could fill this page by itself. He was an amazing, high-energy man who was always involved in promoting the travel industry and especially the tour segment.
When Bob Whitley died in 2010 after heading the U.S. Tour Operators Association for 32 years, John was the person to whom the association turned to take charge of putting it back on track after the loss of the leader who had come to be almost synonymous with the association. John oversaw the process that led to the hiring of Terry Dale as the new leader of the organization. That task was well executed, so that the choice of Dale allowed the association to continue without losing its stride. And Dale’s dashingly successful 13-year tenure so far speaks to the wisdom of the process that led to him and secured him.
John was one of those people who found a happy niche in the travel industry when he was probably a little too large to fit into most of the slots of the business world. He told me that after graduating from college with a degree in journalism and advertising, he went to a career counseling firm.
“They told me, ‘You cannot be involved in anything that smacks of reality.’” he said. “’You could be happy in the sporting goods business or something like travel, but not something that makes trains or cars.’”
Later he concluded that the counseling session was “the best money I ever spent. It never crossed my mind before, but I needed someone to articulate it. When I thought about it, it seemed like they were right. When I was writing for the Marquette Tribune, I covered sports.”
He worked for a while in the advertising department of the manufacturer of Skilsaw. He was good at it. But he realized, “I can’t do this for 40 years. It wasn’t for me. It’s not my kind of sell. I realized that the difference for me was whether it was an emotional or intellectual sell. If I tried to make a pitch for Skilsaws it would be all numbers and specifications. But in travel you can appeal to people’s emotions.”
He sent letters to some hotels and landed a job in Washington D.C. with the Washington Hotel Company. It was during his time working there that he realized he needed to run his own business. “I had entrepreneurial tendencies anyway,” he said, “and working there honed them.”
It was while working there that he became familiar with the National Tour Brokers Association, now the National Tour Association. As he learned about the travel industry he made the decision to go back home to Chicago and start his own tour operator business.
He joined with a partner in a company called Forlow Tours based in South Bend, Indiana. After nine years he and his partner grew out of the partnership. They needed to go their own ways. In 1979 John made his move.
“I sold out on Friday and on Monday I started Mayflower Tours,” he said. This time his partner was his wife, Mary.
They proved to have one of the most dynamic marriage partnerships ever seen. They built Mayflower Tours into a major company for nearly 40 years of nonstop success. In 2018, they sold the business and retired to Florida.
Mayflower Tours grew rapidly from its inception into a very large, successful tour operation based in Chicago, serving the heart of the nation. Mayflower built a huge loyal clientele over the years. There was no stopping them. They killed with kindness and effectiveness. They were just so nice, and personal! And conscientious. Isn’t that your primary concern when you go traveling with someone?
Mayflower was the perfect tour operator for the Midwest. They captured that market. People from the great middle of the country flocked to them. Mayflower succeeded with good old-fashioned integrity. Give more in use value than you take in cash value, said Wallace Wattles, in The Science of Getting Rich, and you will build your business on a solid foundation and you will get rich.
Mayflower was a monumental success, and as a matter of fact, it is still a major success today with its new owners, under the guidance of Nish Patel, who learned Mayflower’s way of doing business working with the Stachniks themselves for 18 years.
Mayflower started by offering traditional coach tours to popular domestic destinations but eventually branched out with tours to North America, Central and South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Australia, New Zealand and Asia.
They had the trust and the confidence of thousands of Midwesterners who put the security and comfort of traveling with a trusted tour operator above the specific destinations. It became a situation in which their loyal clients were essentially saying, “We’ll go anywhere if it’s with you.” That’s the formula for developing a captive market, and Mayflower had that. They had to branch out with more destinations to meet the desires of their loyal customers.
They conquered with kindness and competence and the lively imaginations of both John and Mary. John and Mary were the kind of couple that John Lennon referred to when he titled an album he did with Yoko Ono “Double Fantasy”. In some cases, when you combine the energies of two people, you get something much greater than the sum of its parts.
John and Mary were a combination so dynamic they just produced an ongoing flood of success. They couldn’t help themselves. And it seemed so effortless, not that they weren’t clearly hands-on running that business with great vigor, but that they enjoyed it so much, it wasn’t work, it was play.
Another relatively minor thing I appreciated about the Stachniks, they never ran away from the word “tour.” In the ‘90s market research was showing that people were reacting negatively to the word “tour,” thinking it sounded too regimented. Many tour operators ditched the word “tour” and replaced it with “vacation.” I love both tours and vacations, but they have different connotations to me. With “vacation” the emphasis seems to be getting away from work and relaxing. I think of lying on the beach for a week as a great vacation. A “tour” to me indicates an exploration, an adventure. For me the word always had a sense of romance to it. Bands went on tours. “Grand Touring” was a name given to some of the greatest cars ever produced. “GT” was an exciting acronym. I was disappointed that the market grew to shun the word. But I was happy that Mayflower continued to be “Tours.”
“Nearly all of our competitors and friends in the tour industry were walking away from that word,” John told me. “But I’ll shout it from the rooftops. That’s what we do. We just thought it’s time to be a little contrarian. So that was our decision.”
Mayflower didn’t have to worry what market research said about the word “tour.” They had a following so loyal they could have called the company “donut,” and people would still be flocking to them.
Hurray for the Stachniks! And for John, whom we celebrate today, and miss fondly.
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.
