After years working as a finance manager for a large
agricultural company, 33-year-old Allan Wright was itching for a
job that would combine his love of the outdoors, athletics and
international travel. After doing research and taking a bike tour,
he decided in April 1997 to launch Zephyr Inline Skate Tours, a
specialty travel company that leads skaters on guided vacations
through New York City, the San Francisco wine country, the
Pennsylvania Amish heartland, the rail trails of southern Minnesota
and the Netherlands.
Wright, who works from his home in Minneapolis, believes his
company is the only one in the United States to offer in-line
skating tours, but he certainly isn't alone in catering to the
specialized tastes of today's travelers. Tourism is the
nation's third-largest retail sales industry, and specialty
travel is one of its fastest-growing segments, according to Steen
Hansen, publisher of Specialty Travel Index, a biannual
adventure and specialty travel magazine. Last year, more than 25
million people-many of them baby boomers with unprecedented
discretionary income-traveled on tours, an increase of 22 percent
since 1993.
"If it's done right, any interest can become a
specialty travel business," Hansen says.
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Little professional training is required; Wright says one of his
primary forms of research was "dating a bicycle tour
guide." He also prepared by taking a trip to the Netherlands
to do research. Today, Wright generates most of his clients from
his Web site (http://www.skatetour.com).
With 231 customers and $254,000 in anticipated sales for 1999,
Wright is rolling his way toward success. But he knows that with an
estimated 30 million in-line skaters in the United States, his
journey has really just begun.