PHOTO: Scott Nisbet, president and CEO of The Globus Family of Brands

Scott Nisbet is a Harvard MBA who worked as a business consultant in strategic planning for General Mills and Ryder Trucking before he was brought into Globus as executive director of marketing in 1998. He became COO in 2004 and took on the role of president and CEO in July 2009.

What trends are you seeing?

South America is doing very well. North America is doing well with Canada as a standout. We’ve been seeing great interest in the national parks the past couple of years, with a really nice spike in Canada.

In Europe the big-volume destinations remain on top — Italy, the U.K., Germany, etc. — but, in terms of growth, Greece is really recovering nicely. Portugal is another destination that is doing well. It is up significantly.

In the South Pacific, Australia is doing well. It has struggled a bit in recent years with the exchange rates, but now with a strong dollar, Australia is more attractive. We’re seeing a nice return to the South Pacific, specifically Australia.

How is your business in Asia?

Asia is doing well. In Asia what does well is [any type of program] that has a river cruise in it. If a river cruise is a component it’s doing better than a pure land tour in Asia. That’s not the same in Europe. France is a river cruise destination, but it’s also a land tour destination. It’s the same with Central Europe. It’s good to see these destinations that have river cruising continuing to do well on land. Of course, there is an element of comfort in traveling like that.

In 2015, we will have two new ships in Asia. We’ll have one in Myanmar, and we’ll be adding another one on the Mekong in Vietnam and Cambodia. That’s the destination that has really done well. So we’re adding a new ship.

Myanmar is pretty untouched. It’s really a new emerging destination for travelers, so people are seeing if for the first time.

Asia is up for 2015, and river cruising in Asia is up a lot, significantly. Another destination that is recovering is Japan, which is good to see for us. It’s an incredible destination. People love it. It’s returning to normal levels.

How is business in the Middle East?

The situation in Israel hit us more than the Ebola outbreak did. With the escalation in Israel and the travel warning from the State Department, we canceled our trips. It was peak time for travel to Israel and a lot of trips had to be canceled.

Most customers wanted to move to 2015. Most people decided to pick a later date. We do see a lot of interest in 2015. It’s quite strong with people who were planning to book in 2015 anyway and those returning from canceled trips in 2014. So it could be quite a good year for Israel. A lot of our growth is in religious travel. It’s an important part of our growth, particularly to that part of world.

What about Russia?

Russia has dropped off. We actually had a number of tours historically that were in Northern Europe and went into Russia, and now we’ve stopped them from going into Russia and are keeping them in Northern Europe.

We are still offering the option to travel to Russia, but we figured that it was not going to be the destination for 2014, so we scaled down our product. This year, we actually offered a program to the Ukraine and Crimea. It didn’t do well.

What trends are you seeing in terms of the kinds of products people are buying?

Monograms, our independent package product, is our fastest-growing brand. It continues to do well. We’re adding more destinations and more combinations. We recently released a new video that helps agents to understand the product.

With Globus, the trend is that we are continuing to add must-see sights but also unique local experiences, which we call “Local Favorites.” Each trip has three or more of these more immersive elements.

The other trend is travel to more exotic destinations. Europe is still the largest region of the world for us, but places such as South America, Asia and Africa (until the past couple of months) were doing well.

For river cruises, we launched a new Avalon promotion. If you book one stateroom, you get half off on a second cabin. We haven’t done that in the past. But one thing we are seeing a lot of is people bringing friends. Repeaters bring people they met on their last river cruise. They take their second river cruise with friends they met on their first.

Can you tell us about the latest additions to your “Find a Travel Agent” database?

We have a specialist program for Avalon, Globus and Monograms, and our research shows that specialists outsell non-specialists three to one. So it’s clearly a way to grow your business.

And we’ve added yet another feature to our site — the Travel Agent Locator. A consumer can find a travel agent through our site by clicking on a logo that says “Globus Tour Expert.” But now agencies that have specialists have a “click to connect” button.

All travelers do is put in a few words about what they are looking for and that lead is sent to the agency. For us it makes sense to send it to our most productive agents.