Highlights From A Publication of The
Orlando Sentinel February 22-28, 1999
Travel Outcast Scores
By Leslie Clark of The Orlando Sentinel
Travel company is an agent of controversy.
Global Travel International racks up millions in sales, captures the
attention of the travel industry and draws heat from other travel
agents.
A Florida company that has taken the U.S. travel industry by storm got
its start 13 years ago in a college dorm room. Randall Warren was a
travel buff with a knack for using his computer to score good deals on
airline tickets and hotel rooms. Word spread quickly at American
University in Washington, D.C., and the freshman soon had a line of
students at his dorm-room door, looking for bargains.
“I did a spring break trip to Cancun for one girl and soon had all
her sorority sisters coming over to book their travel,” said Warren,
who essentially worked as an independent travel agent, earning
commissions and ticketing the reservations through his father’s
travel agent in Boca Raton. “I was pretty much serving as the
unofficial travel agency for American by the time I left.
The experience stuck with him and a few years after graduating he
called his former roommate, Michael Gross, with a proposal.“I said,
‘What if, instead of one of me there were 10 of me, or 100?’ “
Warren said, envisioning a network of independent travel agents who
would refer friends and family to an office of full-time agents who
would do the actual booking. “We didn’t want them worrying about
the details, we just wanted them to make the phones ring,” Warren
said. The result is Maitland-based Global Travel International, a
controversial but highly successful travel agency that, with its
22,000 independent travel agents, has grabbed the attention of the
multibillion-dollar travel industry. *
“They are certainly what we would consider a high producer,” said
Gloria Jacaruso, a spokeswoman for Miami-based Royal Caribbean Cruises
Ltd. In fact, Global already has sold as many Royal Caribbean cruises
in 1999 as it did last year. “They’ve been growing very rapidly
and producing for RCI,” Jacaruso said. Global has exploded from a
tiny, two-person operation to a company that employs 120 in offices in
Maitland and Altamonte Springs. Its sales have skyrocketed from $4
million in 1995 — its first full year of operation — to more than
$100 million in 1998.
Warren and Gross said the conventional travel agent community —
already beset by competition from Internet bookings and facing
declining commissions from the airlines — is simply threatened by a
new breed of travel agent.
Because Global is buying travel in bulk, it can negotiate huge
discounts from car rental companies, hotels and airlines and pass the
savings along to its independent agents. The independent agents also
get commissions on business they refer to the home office. The
independent agents do no actual booking. Instead, they call one of the
more than 70 Global employees who staff an Altamonte Springs call
center. Those employees function as conventional travel agents, making
reservations via computer and telephone. Global agents earn their fee
back from the discounts they receive on travel and the commission
checks they get when they refer business to Global Many of Global’s
agents are small-business owners who use the company to book corporate
and personal travel, Warren said. About 90 percent of its independent
agents renew every year, Warren said. *
The company’s boasts that it could deliver “huge travel
discounts” and “lucrative commissions” were challenged by a
Better Business Bureau in California. But a review by the New
York-based National Advertising Division of the Council of Better
Business Bureaus found that people who purchased the package could
receive the described benefits. It also found that the word “huge”
falls within “the realm of acceptable hyperbole.
That’s what Vic Troncalli found. A Lake Mary resident and president
of the Popovitch Group, a South Florida-based women’s apparel
manufacturing company, Troncalli said he was skeptical when a friend
began raving about the money he was saving by booking his business
trips with Global Travel.
“It sounded too good to be true,” Troncalli said. But soon after
plunking down the $495 fee, Troncalli was a believer. “I’ve paid
for it about three-fold just by my own air travel and hotel stays,”
Troncalli. “I’m staying in the same hotels I used to, at a
substantial discount.
* Highlights selected from Central Florida Business Journal
(a publication of The Orlando Sentinal)
* As of August 2002 Global Travel has
over 40,000 Independent Travel Agents in 50 States and 85 Countries
serviced by a team of over reservationists and support staff in
Florida. The current price for their program is $545 with an annual
renewal of $199
