Boston Flora

Tag: Grand Circle Travel

  • Wednesday, March 23 or Thursday, March 24, 9:00 am – 1:30 pm – Boston Get Together Event from Grand Circle Travel

    What better way to celebrate the 2012 Floriade in Venlo, Holland than to experience the event first hand with a once in a lifetime trip with Grand Circle Travel? Grand Circle Travel is the industry leader in providing international travel to Americans over 50.  They specialize in offering exceptional experiences with unique opportunities for learning and discovery.  Their 2012 Holland & Belgium in Springtime river cruise is being modified to incorporate the Floriade, which is held only once every ten years.

    Jim Henderer of Grand Circle Travel would like to extend an invitation to you to attend a Boston Get Together Event on either Wednesday, March 23 or Thursday, March 24, 2011 from 9:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. In addition to learning more about our 2012 river cruise that incorporates the Floriade, the Get Together will provide you with the opportunity to learn what makes Grand Circle so special.  The event will be highly informational, and will include:

    · A brunch and Gallery Tour
    · Group Leader Best Practice Sharing and Networking
    · Complimentary Lunch and a presentation at Anthony’s Pier 4 Restaurant
    · Raffle for a surprise

    To RSVP for this event, please call Jim Henderer at 617-346-6197.  Space is limited.  Upon receiving your RSVP, he will send you a confirmation email with all the detailed information you will need.

  • Driving With No Brakes

    Garden Club of the Back Bay member Harriet Lewis, with her husband Alan, published Driving With No Brakes in August, 2010, and we want our web site followers to know all about it.  The book is available through www.amazon.com, and at many local booksellers.

    Driving With No Brakes is a fascinating, inspirational book about how two courageous leaders built a remarkable company that can thrive in change and succeed in an unpredictable world. The book offers important lessons for any business leader trying to create value in the 21st century.

    Alan and Harriet Lewis, owners of Grand Circle Corporation, reflect on the company’s successes and failures and highlight important business strategies that have propelled it to be held by many as the world’s best travel company. Through the lens of Grand Circle, they demonstrate how they were able to achieve sustained business success amidst the tumultuous and highly competitive travel industry by fostering a values-based organization that embraces risk while maintaining focus on people and social mission.

    In 1986, shortly after Alan and Harriet Lewis bought Grand Circle Travel, a competitor remarked that there was no way a bunch of hooligans from Boston could run a worldwide travel business. At the time, Grand Circle was a travel company with one office, $27M in sales, and was losing more than $2 million a year. Twenty-five years later, Grand Circle has grown nearly 20% per year into a highly profitable company with annual sales in excess of $600 million. The company owns or charters 60 ships, operates 80 trips in 100 countries, and employs 2,300 people in more than 30 offices worldwide. With social mission tightly woven into Grand Circle’s business strategy, the company has donated or pledged more than $50 million USD to educational, humanitarian, and cultural organizations worldwide since 1992.

    Grand Circle is beloved by its customers (American travelers), more than 125,000 of whom travel with Grand Circle Travel and its affiliate, Overseas Adventure Travel, each year. The company has served more than 1.5 million travelers over the years and prospered through more than 300 crises, including the 9-11 attacks, the rise of online competitors, and ongoing global political, economic and environmental challenges. Despite it all, Grand Circle continues to increase its profitability and grow at a rate of nearly 20 percent per year.

    It has been a wild ride, and there were times when Alan and Harriet were literally driving with no brakes. This book tells the story of Grand Circle and of a remarkable couple’s dream to build a company that would help change people’s lives and of the long, hard, and fun-filled journey they took to get there.