Gelfuso cruising to travel profits

WELL-TRAVELED: Cruise Brothers owner Steven Gelfuso’s company, with a 40-foot-long sign and an ocean liner adorning its then-Cranston headquarters, beckoned commuters on I-95 for two decades. In April the company moved to East Providence. / PBN PHOTO/NATALJA KENT
WELL-TRAVELED: Cruise Brothers owner Steven Gelfuso’s company, with a 40-foot-long sign and an ocean liner adorning its then-Cranston headquarters, beckoned commuters on I-95 for two decades. In April the company moved to East Providence. / PBN PHOTO/NATALJA KENT

A small window to the tropics for Interstate 95 commuters in Cranston over the last 14 years has left Wellington Avenue.
Cruise Brothers, the outgoing and outsized Rhode Island travel company whose offices since 1988 featured a 40-foot-long sign with an ocean liner, palm trees and the faces of brothers Russ and Steven Gelfuso, moved to East Providence in April.
The move was practical – the new Kent Heights location is larger and has real office space – although not voluntary. The owner of the old Dayton Tire Building wanted to bring his classic-car dealership into the building to utilize its large windows and warehouse-like showroom.
But along with the direct reasons for leaving the Cranston space, Cruise Brothers’ move to East Providence illustrates how the Internet has changed the travel industry and how much the Gelfusos’ 40-year-old family business has evolved.
No longer is drawing in a local clientele the core of the Cruise Brothers business – clients now come from across the country and access the agency through phone and Internet – so physical visibility is less important.
“We are a national business now, only 10 percent of our business comes from Rhode Island,” said Steven Gelfuso, sole owner of Anywhere Inc., the company that owns Cruise Brothers, since buying out his brother. “And with the Internet, you don’t need everyone to see you on the highway.”
The business that would become Cruise Brothers was founded by Gelfuso’s father in the early 1970s, after his secretary started working for a travel agency. In those early days, the travel agency was just one room attached to his father’s law office on Plainfield Street in Cranston.
In 1981, Gelfuso got out of college, where he studied marketing, and began working in the travel business, selling tour packages and booking corporate trips.
In the late 1980s, Gelfuso and his brother, Russ, began focusing on the cruise industry, which was still relatively young. A marketing specialist suggested a campaign focused around the two brothers – one a ship’s captain and the other a mate – and to rebrand the company Cruise Brothers.
Almost immediately, the name and concept stuck.
The cruise industry has continued to grow and evolve since Steven Gelfuso first became involved during the “Love Boat” era. Instead of the largest ships carrying 800 passengers, now the big boats carry 6,000 passengers and provide a wide array of amenities formerly only available on land. For many cruises, the ships are bigger destinations than the exotic locations they call on.
With the size of modern cruise ships, operators have achieved unprecedented economies of scale that allow them to drive down prices to levels unheard of in prior decades.
And the variety of different cruises tailored to individual markets and price points has broadened the demographics of cruise travelers beyond the stereotypical shuffleboard and senior crowd.
“The median age of someone on a cruise is 44 and keeps going down,” Gelfuso said. “Generally, the longer the cruise the older the passengers. … The short ones are popular with a younger crowd who like a bar and casino atmosphere.”
As tastes change, destinations fall in and out of favor. Europe, with its economic crisis and expensive airfares, is struggling, Gelfuso said, while some nontraditional routes into South America, the Amazon and Antarctica are becoming more common.
In his latest business venture, Gelfuso has taken advantage of the traditional affinity between seniors and cruises with Cruisingfree.com, a spinoff venture that teaches travel enthusiasts who may have some time on their hands to book trips as independent agents. For each sale, Cruisingfree gets half the commission.
“Basically these are people who want to get into travel, many of them retired earlier than they wanted to, and it is a great part-time, no-risk business with many benefits” Gelfuso said. “Some people earn tens of thousands of dollars and others earn travel benefits.”
Gelfuso said Cruisingfree has 2,500 people signed up, including 1,700 with their own branded websites hosted by the company.
With Cruise Brothers’ becoming more national and Cruisingfree growing, Gelfuso said at some point he will likely follow the booming retiree population south to Florida, taking another little piece of the tropics away from the Ocean State.
“The market is huge, my major competitors are down there and it is cheaper” to run the business, Gelfuso said. •

COMPANY PROFILE
Cruise Brothers
Owner: Steven Gelfuso
Type of Business: Travel agency
Location: 100 Boyd Ave.,
East Providence
Employees: 35 full time, 25 part time
Year Established: 1972
Annual Sales: $30 million

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