Creating travel experiences full of memories and the unexpected
Collette Tours has been a leader for more than a century because of its local knowledge, attention to detail and understanding of what travellers’ desire.
Creating an unforgettable travel experience starts with the five senses. A great tour needs to include the expected sights but also the flavours of the local cuisine, the aroma of native flowers or spices, the sound of regional dialects and accents, and the textures of soft fabrics or centuries-old stone buildings.
“Those experiences impact people in different ways, so we really try to enhance and bring to life all the different senses on our tours,” said Jaclyn Leibl-Cote. “Those are the things that make a guided experience memorable.”
Leibl-Cote is the president of Collette Tours, which is the longest-running tour operator in North America. Founded in 1918, it offers more than 160 tours to all seven continents — and all designed to showcase the expected and unexpected sides of a destination while creating lasting memories.
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“Different experiences mean different things to each traveller. They can be travelling to a destination because they want to search for their family. A lot of times milestones are the reason people are travelling — a 60th birthday or a 50th wedding anniversary — and that makes the experience memorable,” she said.
“But also, just connecting people to different cultures, that is so important. You really get to experience a place and connect with others — that is the beauty of travel.”
Part of the way Collette ensure that happens is by giving travellers the opportunity to decide how they’d like to experience a destination, said Leibl-Cote. It does this by offering them five different travel tour styles, including its Classic itineraries, the small group Explorations, Spotlight — its deep dive on a city or area, the river or ocean-going Cruise option, and its religious-centred Faith itineraries.
“We don’t outsource the design of our tours. We are hands on and have teams all over the world that designs them so we can manage our customer experience,” said Leibl-Cote. “We are in the locations — boots on the ground — discovering what is new and testing what our travellers will experience to make sure it is what we want on a Collette tour.”
Part of this, she said, means offering their travellers the must-see and must-do in each place, but also surprising them by showing a side of the destination they might not know about — a side only someone familiar with that location can really share.
“I think that sets us apart from most of the tour companies. You get to sit in a local restaurant, you get to talk to the staff, you speak to the locals who can point out the streets that they grew up on — those are the things that make a guided experience memorable,” she said.
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It also means knowing what to avoid and ensuring travellers spend more than one-night in a destination so they can really explore it in a relaxed and stress-free manner.
“People don’t always want to be on the go constantly,” she said. “People when they are in a purchase phase think they know what they want, but we are the experts and are there to guide them.”
Leibl-Cote uses the example of Cinque Terre, a string of five towns perched on Italy’s rugged western coastline. While other operators might take you to all five, Collette will only take you to two of the towns, otherwise “it is too busy, so you don’t have time to shop and walk the streets and experience it properly.”
This also means ensuring Collette travellers experience something truly memorable and unexpected, like on a tour of Australia and New Zealand.
“People typical go because they want to see the Great Barrier Reef and the Sydney Opera House, but what they go home talking about is the beauty of New Zealand and its astonishing landscape — because it is more unknown to them,” she said. “What they think they want to experience, and what they actually experience and talk to their friends about, is completely different.”
Leibl-Cote credits those immersive experiences and knowledge you won’t find in a guidebook — along with Collette’s comprehensive travel protection plans, flexible tour pacing, and strong relationships within the travel space — for making it the tour company people trust. The happiness of its travellers has been its roadmap since 1918, she said.
“We continue to change and evolve because we listen to our customers, our travellers. You have to listen to those who are experiencing the product and continue to change — and that has allowed us to be around for as long as we have. If there is something that they don’t like, something that we missed the mark on, we will edit and change that for the following group — or for the next year.”
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To learn more about Collette Tours and its more than 160 offerings on seven continents, visit gocollette.com.
