Daniel Sullivan Jr.
POSITION: President and CEO, Collette
Vacations
BACKGROUND: Founded by Jack Collette in 1918, Collette Vacations has been owned by the Sullivan family since 1962, when Dan Sullivan Jr.’s father bought the company. In 1985, after rising to the rank of general manager, Sullivan became president and CEO. His wife, Kathleen, their three children, and Sullivan’s siblings also work at Collette.
EDUCATION: B.S. in marketing, 1973,
Fairfield University, Fairfield, Conn.
RESIDENCE: Lincoln
AGE: 55
Collette Vacations is the oldest escorted tour operator in the United States and one of the largest in the nation, offering more than 130 tours to 50 countries on all seven continents. But well-regarded as Collette may be for its tours, it is philanthropy that put it in the spotlight this month.
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President and CEO Dan Sullivan Jr. and his team give generously to charitable causes and they volunteer in Rhode Island and abroad. This spring, Sullivan led the first escorted tour back to New Orleans, with the proceeds going to charity to help revive tourism in the city.
Sullivan spoke with the PBN from Quebec City last Monday, the day before Collette was to be honored as “Outstanding Philanthropic Corporation” for 2006 by the Rhode Island chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals.
PBN: Is this award for your work with New Orleans specifically?
SULLIVAN: No, I think it’s connected to everything we do in the area. Yes, we gave a lot of money [$50,000] and time – 35 people went down to Biloxi and Gulfport, [Miss.], to work down there, and we also took the first tour back to New Orleans. My sales team, 75 of us, will be working in New Orleans in December as well, to try to help the communities that really need it. But we give most of our money to Rhode Island charities: Hasbro Children’s Hospital … muscular dystrophy, the Amos House in Providence. This week, [my family] and some of the Collette team were working at Amos House, and we have people who go every month or more.
PBN: How does philanthropy fit with your corporate mission?
SULLIVAN: We’re a corporation that’s been around since 1918, and we’ve built up a lot of equity. Our commitment is to give back to the community, and to give back particularly to children – and children with cancer – but also people who’ve been hit with unfortunate situations like [Hurricane] Katrina and the tsunami in Thailand. … But as we move forward with our new Collette Foundation, we’ll also be focused around the world, to help in the Andes, [for example]. … We take clients all around the world, and sometimes into impoverished areas, and we feel that it’s important that we give to those areas as well.
PBN: How successful have you been in bringing tours back to New Orleans?
SULLIVAN: I took the first tour back because what New Orleans needs right now is visitors. … But that didn’t happen till May, so we’ve only done two, because the clients just haven’t been there. We used to do four or five trips a week there. There are more coming early next year – starting, I think, in March. But people see it on TV and they think it’s not a place to go.
PBN: Shifting gears, I see Collette has been growing a lot – 14 percent from 2004 to 2005 alone.
SULLIVAN: Our average has been about 20 percent a year, and we’re trying to get to 20 percent next year – and we may; it’s early. But we’re having very strong growth. We feel the reason is, people trust us because we’ve been around since 1918, and we’re one of the financially strongest tour operators.
PBN: You offer a wide range of tours, from “value” packages to the four- and five-star “signature” series. What’s driving your growth: Is it the luxury packages?
SULLIVAN: No, I think it’s the mainstream American traveler, and taking tours that really capture the flavor of the area. I’m up here in Quebec, working on a new tour that would take people to great hotels in old Quebec City, where you overlook the St. Lawrence River, and then you go out and have breakfast at a sugar shack, a typical French Canadian breakfast. And then go and see how cheeses are made out in the Province of Quebec, and you see how they make the honey products. And then you go to a chocolaterie. … I think that’s why people go with Collette, because they know we create great products, and it’s a good value for the money.
PBN: What kind of prices are we talking about?
SULLIVAN: For instance, you can go to New Orleans for $1,200 including air fare, for five days, with most meals, most sightseeing, a jazz show. If you go to the Canadian Rockies, your rates might be, for eight to 10 days, $1,800 to $3,500, including meals and sightseeing and airfare. It’s an affordable price, so if it’s something that someone can’t afford, we’ve got something that they can.
PBN: What are the areas where you see the most growth?
SULLIVAN: Italy, South America, the United States – West Coast, Pacific Northwest, California, Arizona, Georgia, Carolinas. Canada is doing very well for us, the Canadian Rockies in particular. And we are the largest [tour operator] to Australia and the South Pacific.
PBN: To some extent, I think of group travel as fairly old-fashioned. Who’s your audience?
SULLIVAN: It’s unbelievable. We have clients in their 30s, 40s going, but it’s 62 and going down, because the baby boomers are coming on at 50, and they’re traveling. … It’s much more affordable than doing it on your own, and … let’s say you fly to Italy, and you’re driving from Rome to Assisi. An independent traveler might drive by the Roman aqueducts and not know what he’s seeing. On a Collette tour, you have a great guide – we have more than 110 guides all over the world – and they’re pointing out the Roman aqueducts, they go through the history, and now it’s an experience. … Once a client does this, they realize, “This is not what I thought, that it was like taking a bus down to the casino. This is, like, fun.”
