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Contact Us
| Tours.com Inc. |
Telephone: |
(415) 332-7916 |
| San Francisco, New York & London |
Fax: |
(415) 332-7980 |
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Offfice Hours: |
M-F 9am - 6pm PST |
In order to maximize creativity & offer the best service, it is good to develop a talent bank or a coterie of individuals with unique & diverse talents & abilities, whose individual talents, when added together, are more than the sum of the parts.
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Executive Staff |
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 | Joe King, Founder & Chairman
After graduating from Georgetown University, Joe joined the Hotel Corporation of America - International Division and was responsible for the marketing of hotels in the Caribbean - Bermuda, London, France, and the Middle East. He was active in New York City with the major travel entrepreneurs and airlines that invented in the late 60's "modern wholesale travel." He also worked for the Radisson Corporation and Holiday Inn. Joe dealt on a daily basis with the top tour operators of the era such as Gill Horache of Liberty, who established the model for today's mega agencies by popularizing the inclusion of price packaged vacations, Steve Lohr, who created European Ski Packaging, and Stan Fisher, the inventor of package vacations from abroad.
In 1980, Joe started King International, a tourism development consulting firm. King International has a distinguished client list seeking guidance in the intricate area of international tour packaging and marketing. They include the cities of Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., the states of Virginia, and Maryland, and organizations such as American Sightseeing International, Lincoln Center, Carnagie Hall, and Tavern on the Green.
Joe is an established member of various tour and travel organizations and has participated on various Board of Directors.
Joe King Passed February 13, 2009 |  | Dr. Paul du Quenoy, Corp. Execvutive Vice President
Dr. Paul du Quenoy is our Corporate Executive Vice President. A trained historian, he holds a Ph.D. (with distinction) from Georgetown University and B.A. (summa cum laude) and M.A. degrees from George Washington University. In 2003-2004 Paul was a Fulbright scholar in Russia and subsequently spent a year as a fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, DC. He currently serves on the faculty of the American University of Beirut, where he specializes in Russian and European History. Prior to his assumption of that post, he taught at the American University in Cairo, Georgetown University, and George Washington University and directed study programs for American students in St. Petersburg, Russia. His new book, Stage Fright: Politics and the Performing Arts in Late Imperial Russia, was published by Penn State University Press in 2009.
In addition to his academic career, Paul is a consultant for a number of business enterprises, travel and tourism companies, arts endeavors, and educational institutions. He frequently contributes commentary to various media outlets and speaks internationally on a host of scholarly, educational, and business topics and writes occasional music criticism. Paul speaks fluent French, Russian, German, and Italian and is conversant in Spanish, Arabic, and Polish.
Private E-mail: paul_du_quenoy@hotmail.com |  | Maria Polk, President & CEO
After college, I joined Hotel Corporation of America (HCA), in Washington, D.C. it’s newly created "Hotel Management" division, which for the first time created opportunities for women in hotel management. Recruited by Holiday Inn, I spent 4 years at the Minneapolis property (the largest convention hotel in the system at that time) as Director of Sales & Catering. I was later reassigned to St. Louis by Holiday Inn to spearhead the conversion of 5 franchise properties back to corporate ownership for the Sales, Marketing & Catering departments. Recruited by Ramada Inn and relocated to San Francisco to open the new Ramada Inn Fisherman's Wharf as Director of Sales & Catering. While in San Francisco, I founded Lorries Airporter, the only available (licensed through the Public Utilities Commission - PUC) door-to-door airport shuttle, which became the prototype for the numerous companies providing such services today. Joined American Express Travel in 1977 As Director, West Coast DSM to 1983 when I established CENTRES - a Central Hotel Reservation and Marketing Service for independent hotels, which then was acquired by a major subsidiary of the Greyhound Corporation. 1991 moved on to become Executive Directory/General Manager for ASI – American Sightseeing Int’l- a 52-year-old worldwide association of sightseeing, tour, and motorcoach companies. Became involved in the Internet in 1994 and in 1995 founded Tours.com – The WorldWide Directory of Tours & Vacations.
maria@tours.com |  | Marijo Douglass, Executive V.P. Finance
Marijo graduated from Mt. Mary's College with a degree in Romance Languages. She joined American Express as a bookkeeper in a local travel office in Southern California. She was promoted to Travel Counselor and after only 2 years was named "Pacesetter" (one of the top sales people in the nation). Marijo was promoted to acting Manager of the Retail American Express Travel Store after 4 ½ years.
Marijo then accepted a transfer and was promoted to Manager of a Travel Office in Northern California where she increased sales and grew the office to one of the top agencies, of its size, in the nation.
Then transferred to San Francisco to assist with the development of the DSM - Inbound Services Offices. This newly created office within American Express Travel was a start-up division that serviced clients from throughout the world, through group movements, FIT's , convention and incentive arrangements. The normal accounting practices, staffing, contracts etc.. all needed to be established. Since this office was the first one of its kind in the American Express System we established the standards.
After 12 years with American Express Travel Marijo left and with two partners began a successful accredited Travel School.
A former colleague from Taiwan now President of the Ritz Taipei Hotel Corporation in Taiwan contacted Marijo and Bruce, her husband, also a former Manager of an American Express Retail Travel Store who is fluent in Chinese, to join the company. The corporations expansion into Canada required their background and trust to oversee the construction and management of the new Ritz Hotel in Vancouver, B.C. Marijo and her husband moved to Taiwan for one year to learn the Ritz systems then moved to Canada and assumed the title of Corporate Director of Sales and Marketing for four years.
With this contract completed she moved back to the U.S. and became partners in a $35,000,000 travel company located in Sacramento, California, and also joined the King International Team working on the ASI, American Sightseeing International contract.
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History of Tours.com |
 | How it Began...
Maria Polk and I gave our first Internet Conference in London, England - November 1994 and purchased the URL, tours.com, in March 1995. We have over 3 decades of tour and travel industry experience and tours.com was a natural name for us to register.
We had many ideas of how best to use this URL. We were very enthusiastic about the Internet and resolved to learn all about it. It seemed so logical and we found all the support and expertise that we would need right next door at Silicon Valley. We found that the tour and travel industry, however, did not embrace this new technology and in fact was hostile, perceiving it as a threat. The vast majority of tour operators and wholesalers around the globe were not on line and in fact only started putting their information on line in 2000 and 2001
In 1997 two themes dominated our thinking: The first was that the worldwide web is a great information tool, which is what Tim Berners-Lee had in mind when he invented it. Its value as an e-commerce medium had yet to be proven. And the second, access to vacation information was extremely limited. Only those companies that advertised, mailed brochures and captured the publics or retail agents attention got the business. That's when the Worldwide Directory of Tours & Vacations was borne. The print medium is inadequate to do the job. Only the new electronic medium is capable. Now, tours.com provides a single digital source for information on vacations of any kind, to almost anywhere. Timely, in-depth, instantly available worldwide 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Since 1995 we have been hard at work compiling research on tours and vacations. We designed our own search engine and added many features, which will be of assistance to both leisure travelers and travel professionals. We went on line on November 8th, 2001, when we felt we had enough links to be a true worldwide directory.
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The Worldwide Directory of Tours & Vacations...
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