There is a scene in one of my favorite movies that I remember fondly because it states eloquently a principle that is as precious to me as it is rare. It is a principle that I see often demonstrated in the business practices of tour operators, and it's one of the things I most admire about the tour segment of the travel industry.
I'm talking about the 1951 British filming of Charles Dickens' story "A Christmas Carol," starring Alastair Sim as Scrooge. There is a scene in which a slick and shady operator is talking to Scrooge's former employer Fezziwig.
Fezziwig is the owner of the business where Scrooge had his first job. Everyone who worked for Fezziwig or dealt with him loved him. He brought happiness to everyone he touched because of his magnanimity and kindness.
The slick character, who turns out to be a crook, is telling Fezziwig he should sell his business and get rich.
Fezziwig muses on the idea and then tells the guy, "Getting rich is not the only reason one spends a lifetime building up a business."
The slick operator shakes his head and smirks at the hopelessly old fashioned Fezziwig and his quaint, sentimental ideas. He says, "Well if getting rich is not the reason you spend a lifetime building up a business, I'd like to know what is."
Fezziwig says, "It's to maintain a way of life one knew and loved."
The shady character had no idea what Fezziwig was talking about, but I did. One of the big dreams today is to launch a start-up business, build it up and then sell it and become rich. We all know of the legendary dotcom billionaires and we all wish we could be one of them.
But if you build up a business that is worth a fortune then sell it, you have a pile of money but you no longer have the business you put so much passion into and made it worth lots of money. You don't have the business in your life anymore and the business no longer has the passion of its founder to inspire and drive it.
I've seen this with many businesses. Someone builds a great business, then sells it, and after that the business loses some of its personality, some of its values. It starts to become just another business, just a property that changed hands.
The tour operator business tends to be an exception to this pattern. You don't see a lot of big cash-outs in the tour business. People don't start up companies and then spin them off for fabulous sums of money. On the rare occasion something along these lines happens, it is usually not very successful.
There are several reasons for this. One is that tour operation is not a wildly lucrative business. The margins are tight and the work is intense, highly detail oriented and full of unwelcome surprises that may hit at any hour of the day or night and must be dealt with immediately. The responsibility carried by a tour operator is tremendous. The recent bombing in Brussels was just the latest in an endless series of extremely difficult situations that tour operators must confront as part of their working day.
It takes a lot of passion to operate a tour business because it is just way too much work and responsibility for anyone who is not inspired and deeply dedicated. Tour operation is not an easy money business. Tour operators have to work hard for their money and they need to dot every I and cross every T every step of the way for every customer.
Tour operation is not a get-rich-quick business and it doesn't attract that kind of personality. Some people do get rich operating tours, no doubt about that. But there are few shortcuts to wealth in the tour business that work. That attention to detail is required every step of the way.
So if the people who get into the tour business are not doing it to get rich, then what does drive them? It is what Fezziwig articulated: to maintain a way of life one knew and loved.
Tour operator businesses are almost invariably started by and built around a single entrepreneur with passion and a vision. That individual is charismatic enough to inspire others to join in his or her cause. The vision is always something higher than simply getting rich.
The vision that drives tour operators is usually a love of the adventure and discovery of travel, the belief that it is good for people and the planet, and a wish to share that experience with others. Often it also springs from love of particular places and the desire to preserve and maintain them.
The travel industry has become one of the great forces for preserving beautiful places against various kinds of destructive forces.
That is another reason we don't see big cash-outs in the tour business. When the company is sold and individual charismatic personality is no longer part of the operation it often loses its steam and declines. I have seen this many times.
What is it that you buy when you buy a tour operator? Most of them don't own much in the way of assets. They use other people's hotels, motorcoaches, ships and so forth. The purchaser of a tour operator buys the brand, the contact list, perhaps the office, some technology, and often inherits some employees.
But if the entrepreneur who started the business is taken out of the equation there are few guarantees that the soul of the business will remain intact.
I have met a number of safari operators who went into business for the purpose of protecting a tract of wilderness and its wildlife from poachers and possible extinction. In many cases these are the kinds of ideals that motivate people in the travel industry rather than the wish to make money.
I think of it as the Fezziwig Model, because it is based on the principle he described so well. It is operating a business because of something you love and want to dedicate your life to. That's one of the things I love most about the travel industry.
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