Inspiration from Virtuoso Travel Week

Conventions are a lot like rallies – they’re all about inspiration.

I recently attended Virtuoso Travel Week, kind of the fashion week for the travel industry (specifically, the luxury travel market).  And though it may be high end, the travel advisors, hotels, tour operators and others who attend also get the bottom line of travel: the joy, the inspiration, the life-changing potential of the journey.

So idealism abounds — it’s always a feast of food for thought,.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from this year’s VTW:

“We barely see people we see all the time.”

— Nathan Lump, Editor in Chief, Travel + Leisure, Editorial Director, Departures, Food & Wine, and Cooking Light

On the trend in group/multigenerational travel to include not just extended families but groups of  couples, friends, and others important in our lives

“We specialize in the things people didn’t know they could ask for.”

— Terrie Hansen, Senior VP of Marketing, Virtuoso

On the role of the luxury travel advisor and agency (an observation echoed by other Virtuoso speakers)

“The cowboys could stay on but had to evolve into bison men.”

— Laura Turner Seydel, environmental activist, representing Ted Turner Expeditions

Explaining how her father, Ted Turner, incensed by the decimation of the native bison population,  bought up a million acres of ranch land and returned it to its original state — and a haven for bison and other wildlife.

“You do realize that if they really were loyal you wouldn’t have to give them any points.”

— Simon Sinek, leadership guru and author of books including “Start With Why”

Recalling the opening  of his keynote address to a convention of brand loyalty marketers.

“Seeing isn’t believing. Feeling is believing.”

— Matthew D. Upchurch, CEO, Virtuoso

On a lesson he was remembered  during the solar eclipse, an experience he felt “In every cell in my body.”