My family and I have just returned from our vacation, a two-week getaway ritual that we've been practicing for the past 23 years. The planning for each vacation is done about 14 months prior to departure. When we leave, we always know where we are headed next.
Our vacations take us to a few exotic destinations, but for the most part we travel to areas of the world where our clients might like to travel. In that way, we can both relax and feel that we are experiencing the world in a way that might be useful to our business. We try not to repeat, and I like destinations that might provide a column or two of observations and, if I'm lucky, inspiration.
We don't normally do so-called fam trips. There are a couple of reasons why, the most important being that I have long advocated the end of fam trips as we know them, so it would be hypocritical to join one.
Fam trips are, in my view, the single biggest mediocrity generators in our industry. They are the reason why the clueless clingers-on and the pretend practitioners of our craft still exist. But suppliers have figured out that fams, at their very worst, can fill empty beds, even if they are being filled with empty heads. So I don't do fam trips.
I will travel for a story, like the time I flew to Milan to investigate claims that someone had opened a seven-star hotel in the Galleria. But a trip filled with part-time, card-mill agents that includes group hotel inspections? Never!
We call our annual vacation our "Signature" trip. But here, I suppose, is where it gets slightly weird. We have brought along 30 or 40 of our clients on every one of those 23 vacations. We call it "a gathering of the tribe."
Now I've been asked about this at industry events, always with a sense of disbelief, as in "Richard, I have to ask you: Do you really take all of your vacations with your clients?" This is always followed by a sentiment akin to "Why in the world would you do that?"
This is not, as you might imagine, a practice I recommend for everyone. You can be an amazingly successful consultant without ever viewing your favorite client in a Speedo or sharing a rest room in the Istanbul train station. But we have spent some of the most wonderful moments of our lives in the company of our clients. It has enriched us beyond belief, and we have gotten to know individuals we would never have met under normal circumstances.
In the beginning, we would try to jump-start our Signature departures by trying to determine where our clients wanted to go. That turned out to be tougher than finding Waldo.
We found that our analytic skills were useless. In fact, our clients could not really tell us where they wanted to go next year. Their thoughts were just as scattered as the possibilities. I did, quite literally, throw a dart at a world map during one of our staff discussions in the early days. I would design a tour for our clients in whatever country it landed. The dart landed on Guam.
Soon after that, we decided we would plan our future trips where we wanted to go. If our clients liked our vacation ideas, they could tag along.
Our travels have taken us to Russia and its waterways and have included a truly memorable two weeks tracing the footsteps of Peter Mayle's Provence. We've done an Insider's Alaska, cooked our way through New Orleans, chartered French barges in Burgundy and cruised on yachts in the British Virgins.
Our vacations have taken us to all parts of Italy. We've traveled Europe with "winesters," and we once spent two weeks in the kitchens of Italian grandmothers. We've stayed in villas in Tuscany, discovering the fettunta ritual, and experienced the passagiata in small Umbrian villages.
We couldn't find an itinerary we liked in Croatia, so we designed a new itinerary along the Dalmatian coast.
We made dim sum in the kitchen of Hong Kong's Peninsula, and we pulled a huge Mercedes bus down the narrow driveway of the villa on the outskirts of Florence where I once served as headmaster. We've had private business briefings and peeks inside China's emerging middle class, and we've met American expats who told us about their lives in modern Beijing and Shanghai.
Our longest vacation was a three-week cruise to ports in Australia and New Zealand. This year's vacation was a wonderful romp around Spain, the Canary Islands and portions of Morocco.
On every one of these personal, family vacations, we were accompanied by no less than 30 of our clients. I can't tell you why our clients travel with us. I can't tell you why our clients put up with our now-6-year-old daughter, whom we never leave home. I can't tell you why every single Signature trip we've ever offered has sold out.
We can't chalk up the success of these trips to our own charisma. In fact, we are usually the first among the group to go to bed. But we arrange the kind of sightseeing that enables us to get a real sense of local life, and we always do a presentation about travel trends and strategies.
I often wonder if we don't actually need our clients more than they need us. They have made every vacation we've taken in the past 25 years an exploration with friends.
Our clients come from mountaintops in Colorado, villas on the Big Island, the Laguna Beach area south of Los Angeles and the North of Broad section of Charleston. We travel with headhunters, nuclear physicists and the owners of a motel on an island in New England. No two trips are the same, but we do have our regulars who have us put in their names and deposit, no matter where we're headed.
We don't have a client profile. Our client list comes from 46 states and more than a few countries. In theory, they should have little in common. In theory, this should all feel like work. But somehow it all works because we maintain a near-zero "jerk factor" on our client rolls. We interview every referred and potential new client and simply don't accept the socially marginal.
Sometimes when you start drumming in the woods and get the word out that there will be another "gathering of the tribe," people come together. It isn't us; it's that our clients, despite their geographic diversity, have discovered that they really seem to like one another. Our greatest joy has been watching lifelong friendships develop.
Now before the cynics send me their emails, let me admit that, yes, we actually earn money every time we travel. But not enough to subject ourselves to anything that is less than joyful and fulfilling.
Next year it will be Iceland and the Norwegian fjords.
Guam is still on the back burner.
Contributing editor Richard Turen owns Churchill and Turen, a vacation-planning firm that has been named to Conde Nast Traveler's list of the World's Top Travel Specialists since the list began. Contact him at rturen@travelweekly.com.