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| Counting the Highlights: One of my top travel moments over the past five years has got to be my visit to Portofino, Italy. |
When we launched Luxury Travel Advisor five years ago, we went no further than Bill Fischer of Fischer Travel Enterprises to be our first cover subject. Bill’s name was, and remains, synonymous with luxury travel—fantastic, over-the-top stuff that includes taking over resorts and getting clients access to villas, suites and experiences during the most demanding times. He’s always set a very high standard for the luxury travel advisor community, including the practice of charging for his services.
It seemed quite logical, then, five years later, as Luxury Travel Advisor sought to commemorate its fifth year of being, to feature Stacy Fischer-Rosenthal, Bill’s colleague and daughter, on our anniversary cover. We knew, when we made the decision, that Stacy’s story would not be a rehashed fable of what we already know about Fischer Travel. That’s because over the years, each time we’ve met up with Stacy, we heard of unique experiences she was creating for her young clientele. She’d also expanded the concept of luxury travel advisor to luxury lifestyle advisor, all along the way using her very own creativity, passion and savvy to create a unique formula for success. To read the profile of this fascinating advisor, see pages 42-50.
Since we launched Luxury Travel Advisor, we’ve enjoyed being in a world comprising some of the most intelligent and astute business people we’ve ever met, who also have an extreme zest for life and travel. The opportunities to interview our cover subjects as they carefully recounted the growth of their luxury travel businesses and shared their philosophies on life have been, well, sheer luxury.
Some have made us laugh out loud (thank you, Peter Carideo), while others have demonstrated how strongly knit families can not only get along well in the office but foster multimillion-dollar enterprises, too. Many of the women we profiled grew into the business during those earlier times when it wasn’t always easy to be a woman executive. With their grace and strength, they forged the way for women in business today. For that, I’d like to send out a sincere thank you to each of them.
Is there a common thread that connects all of our Luxury Travel Advisor cover subjects? Virtually all of them are compassionate about the people they work with, nurturing dignified workplaces that also provide all of those tools necessary for selling luxury travel. Strong supplier relationships, where vendors are seen as allies and even close friends, is another common trait. A terrific willingness to share best practices with colleagues and competitors is still another. Looking back, I’d have to say that our entire family of cover subjects is a grand community, and a great-looking bunch, too! For a look at all of our covers, see pages 6 and 7.
For more top moments celebrating the past five years of luxury travel, visit www.luxuryta.com/luxury-travel-advisor-fifth-anniversary.
