PHOTO: Dan Sullivan IV represents the third generation of Sullivans at Collette. (Photo courtesy Collette)
Collette, the Pawtucket, R.I.-based international tour operator, promoted Dan Sullivan IV to the position of vice president of sales. Dan Sullivan IV is the son of Dan Sullivan Jr., president of Collette.
That's right. You heard that right. Dan Sullivan IV is the son of Dan Sullivan Jr., not the grandson. It can be confusing. Is there a lost generation of Sullivans?
Explaining how Dan Sullivan IV could be son of Dan Sullivan Jr. requires a little history lesson. But now that the two Dan Sullivans will be operating side by side as president and vice president, a little history is in order.
America's Oldest Tour Operator
Collette is the oldest existing tour operator in America. Collette Vacations was founded as Collette Travel Service by Jack Collette in 1918, offering transportation services and regional tours in the Greyhound Terminal in Boston's Park Square. The company's first offering was a 21-day trip to Florida that cost $61.50. It soon added $50 Cherry Blossom specials to Washington D.C. and found a healthy market on which to build a business.
Jack Collette built the company on that basis from 1918 until World War II, when most tour businesses stopped operating. At the end of World War II a young man named Dan Sullivan returned from Europe where he had been serving in the army working in counterintelligence under Gen. George Patton and took a job with the New England Transportation Company running passenger operations in South Station, Boston.
New England Transportation Company, later sold and renamed Sage Short Bus Line Company, had a working relationship with Collette Tours and Sullivan developed a working relationship with Jack Collette. When Jack Collette was ready to retire at age 70 in 1962, Sullivan negotiated a purchase with him and took over the company.
As the travel industry evolved, Sullivan expanded and grew the company through the 1960s into the explosion of travel in the 1970s, when Collette began offering escorted tours to Europe.
Around that time, Sullivan's son, also named Dan Sullivan, started to work with the company, first as a tour guide, then gradually working his way up through the ranks. To distinguish the son from the father, people started calling the younger Sullivan "Dan Sullivan Jr."
That worked fine for a long time. But there was one complication. Dan Sullivan who had bought the company from Jack Collette, was actually a junior himself. His father had also been Dan Sullivan.
The more senior Dan Sullivan had never used the title of "junior" and he was just referred to as Dan Sullivan. So people took to calling his son Dan Sullivan Jr. It just happened that way.
Dan Sullivan Jr., as he came to be known, was actually Dan Sullivan III. As the company expanded its operations to Australia, China, Africa and Mexico in the 1980s and South America and Antarctica in the 1990s, Dan Sullivan Jr. took on increasingly senior roles in the company. In 2006 the father turned the company leadership position over to Dan. Jr.
Now the next generation is coming of age and Dan Sullivan IV is clearing up the historical record. There is no missing generation. Dan Sullivan IV is the son of the man who became known for convenience as Dan Sullivan Jr., who was really Dan Sullivan III.
Travel Pulse spoke to Dan Sullivan IV about his promotion to lead the company's sales force.
Travel Pulse: Congratulations on your promotion to head the sales team at Collette. What are your plans now?
Dan Sullivan IV: Thank you. It's exciting. I was just at our global sales meeting in Fiji. It was a lot of fun and a great opportunity to get everyone together in a beautiful destination and game plan with the sales people to really get things going.
It was a great opportunity for us to further align the business. That was the key objective.
The opportunity was to more deeply align the organization with what is important to us as a company and making sure the left hand and the right hand are talking and pulling in the same direction. What we can achieve if we pull in the same direction is dramatically more than if one side of the organization is doing one thing and another side is doing another. Not to say that was happening widely, but this is going to just further ensure that everything is deeply aligned.
TP: So that was the purpose of the Fiji meeting, to align different parts of the company?
DS: We do one or two sales meetings a year where we bring all of strategic sales and strategic marketing together. Sometimes we bring some of our product team as well. And we get them all together to do a big brainstorm. We do some training with the sales reps. We get to see the destination we travel to.
We always do some foundation work. We have a foundation site in Fiji where we're helping to build homes for needy families, people who otherwise would not be able to afford having homes. We were out there painting, helping to put up fences and things while we were there. In those sales meetings we try to incorporate some good will, some nonprofit activity. It's something that's very near and dear to us as an organization.
TP: So now as head of the entire sales division, you'll be able to work on achieving that alignment.
DS: Now I'll have all of field sales, inside sales and our strategic sales team all reporting to me, so that way we can make sure all three parties are always marching 100 percent in the same direction. Not that that was a major problem in the past, but I just think when everything reports under the same hierarchy it make it easier to make sure all three teams are aligned.
TP: What was your previous position?
DS: My previous title was director of strategic partnerships for all of North America, our strategic trade partners, our consortia partners.
TP: So in terms of succession planning, you are just taking on more and more responsibility.
DS: Yeah, we're in succession planning. We're a family-run business and we're starting to move the business into the third generation of Sullivans. One of my goals is to make succession planning a constant throughout the entire organization, not just with family members, but with all employees. So we're always looking at different people with an eye for talent and looking to put people into leadership positions.
TP: People learn of travel at different points in their lives, it must have been interesting growing up in a sort of travel dynasty. You must have learned about travel at about the time you learned to talk. What was that like?
DS: I'm not exaggerating, I exist because of Collette. My mom and dad met on a Collette Tour. If my mom had not gone on that tour I wouldn't be here having this conversation.
TP: So your mom met your dad on a tour? Was he the tourguide?
DS: It was a cruise tour from New York to Bermuda in partnership with one of the cruise lines. They met on that tour and fell in love and the rest is history. I literally owe my existence to Collette.
It's funny because when they met they got into a little squabble because apparently she brought too much luggage and my father was telling her, "You can't have so many bags." So that's how they got started. We laugh about it now.
TP: I guess you must have traveled from the beginning.
DS: We did. We had a very blessed upbringing. We had a lot of opportunity to travel. As kids we would occasionally go to Europe. We would spend some time in the Canadian Rockies. When I was a little kid, up to the age of 12 or so, Collette was primarily a domestic operator.
We didn't do a lot of international travel. So our trips were more often little three-day trips down to Atlantic City, two-day trips to New York, four-day trips out to the Brandywine area of Pennsylvania, four-day trips up to Montreal. Then when I hit my teen years we started going abroad. We started going to Europe, the National Parks in the Canadian Rockies, California. We were very fortunate.
I was an athlete growing up so during the time when I was playing sports I was never allowed to travel. But as I got older or when I wasn't playing sports we would always have one or two family trips a year to some really cool destination. It was always fun.
My father was always a good adventurer. He would get us out there. He always said travel is the great educator. We'd always get out on the road and it was very educational.
TP: So obviously you're committed to the travel industry for life.
DS: Yeah, this is what I want to do. It's always been. I used to work in the tech industry and I really enjoyed working in that industry. But I always thought back to Collette and how we could incorporate the things we were doing at other companies I worked for. And when I would read articles in Fortune magazine, I would always think of how could we apply that at Collette. And when I was getting my undergraduate degree at URI and taking marketing and business classes, I always asked myself, "How can we do that at Collette?"
It's always something I visualized, myself at Collette and helping people experience their dreams and have the opportunity to see places in the world they've always dreamed about.
TP: How long did you work outside the company?
DS: We have a rule at Collette. If you're a Sullivan you have to have a college degree and work three years outside the company before you can work in the family company. I got my bachelor's degree at URI in 1998 and then I worked outside the company for three years. The company I was working for moved me to Southern California as an outside regional manager and in my third year I got recruited by Collette as a sales manager for Southern California. That's when I decided to go with the family business.
TP: I guess you must have always had your sights set on the company.
DS: I did. I always envisioned myself at Collette. At least from the age of 20 or 21. I'm not sure before that I knew what I wanted to do. But as I hit 21 it became clear to me that I could add some value and it was something I had a passion for. I had a passion for business. I had a passion for winning. I had a passion for learning and growth. And I think my biggest passion was leading. I felt it was in me. It was a calling.
But I had to learn before I could do that. I had to earn my stripes. I had to get out there and learn our product, learn about our chain of distribution, learn about the nuances of a tour company before I could start moving up.
TP: What are you looking at as your objective at the moment?
DS: One of our key objectives is helping travel agents, our partners, to stay relevant. One of the ways we do that is to help them to compete with online entities who compete almost solely on price. We walked away from all the big discounters.
Number two would be to help our travel partners be able to make a strong living selling our product. The average commission is over $800 per booking. So I think we're achieving that goal through that.
And then number three is coming out with new product lines that touch on growing trends. Our small tour explorations product line, for example, taps into a growing trend; our garden tours with the Royal Horticultural Society; our Spotlights program, which is all guided city stays, these all touch on trends, some that are in early stages of emergence, some that are full swing, coming to fruition. So our goal is to help agencies stay relevant by giving them the most up-to-date products and tools.
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