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COMPANY HISTORY 1984-1994 ReggaeJAM/Calypso Tours was a tour operator. It was an early kind of company that was spawned by the de-regulation of airlines. We sold our tour packages to travel agents who booked them for clients because we specialized in Jamaica, Bahamas and Key West. 1995-2000 We were part of the sales force as All-Inclusive product took over the Caribbean travel market. By this time, we were one of the largest tour operators for the Jamaican Government charter called JAMVAC. We had contracts with Northwest Airlines, Air Jamaica, Delta, Bahamasair and other carriers. JAMAICA BLUE MOUNTAIN AWARDS At the Governor General's Mansion in Jamaica 1995 September 11, 2001 As the weeks went on, it became obvious that we were not getting back to work as nobody wanted to go anywhere. Shortly after JAMVAC shut down all charter operations and airlines began to merge. We had already started selling cruises and fell back on our Caribbean knowledge to create a retail company as the internet was growing as a source of travel bookings. We still had frequent flyer miles from John's road warrior days and employees doing nothing so we do what 2002-2006 Caribbean Tour & Cruise was created to market Caribbean resorts and cruises directly to the general public. The internet was flooded with travel start ups like Expedia, Travelocity and Priceline The company moved into the back of Leisure Travel in Temple Terrace to share expenses. We learned the retail travel business, which vendors to use and about the myriad of travel products and countries in the world. It was an interesting time as the map of the world kept changing countries so the huge map on Leisure's wall was always outdated. 2007 Late in 2006, Leisure Travel finally shut down. Many travel agencies did not make the jump to a digital age and our friend got sick so she decided to close the agency and work from home. This was practically the last full service travel agency in our small town so it seemed that we could make a go of what our industry calls a "bricks and mortar" agency. We rented a very small office on the back of a doctor's office with a door that faced Fowler Avenue and expanded from the Caribbean to handle the whole world. Tampa Bay's Cloud Based Travel Agency 2015 As of May 1, 2015; we will no longer operate walk-in service at the Tampa office. We are transitioning to a Cloud Based Travel Agency but we are still based in the Tampa Bay area. We were finding that we were doing 85% of our business over the telephone and email. People were discovering our web pages but they did not live around the corner. We had made the decision to close the Fowler Avenue office May 1, 2015. The cloud and our new web based tools will allow us to travel and still service our customers where a fixed location made that difficult. From the time of that first Apple computer, we have always changed and adapted to the changes in the market. We are working to do that one last time with our move to the cloud, mobile enabled websites, web based electronic booking tools and our entry into social media.

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COMPANY HISTORY 1984-1987 John and Gina met while attending the University of South Florida. We graduated with business degrees in 1982. We got married and took a honeymoon in Jamaica. John ran Market Access Promotions and Gina managed a bank branch. Mom got married again and bought some timeshare in St. Maarten. We got the bonus week. As we returned from each early trip, we immediately wanted to travel more. John's marketing company started running spring break trips for college kids to Jamaica. This gave us an excuse to head to Jamaica a few more times because we paid "taxes only" which amounted to about $30 in the eighties. If you wore nice clothes you might get upgraded to first class which was a special treat on Air Jamaica including champagne and a meal on real dishes. We had a contract for marketing with the USF Athletic Department and our startup had free rent in the basement of the USF Sun Dome. We also handled marketing for the new arena and we had backstage passes to the biggest indoor concert venue in Tampa. It was the beginning of the digital age and we were able to take advantage of this for marketing purposes when we bought one of the original Apple Macintosh computers but our laser printer cost $6000. College kids began flocking to Jamaica and Bahamas plus were even renting small cruise ships (anybody remember the Regal Empress?) and filling them with college kids. ReggaeJAM was our first tour product where we sold small hotels that nobody else sold. After turmoil in the industry with airlines like Eastern Airlines going bankrupt during de-regulation, we created a mainstream program called Calypso to handle high end hotels and the emerging all-inclusive vacations that had recently burst on the scene. Our contract with Air Jamaica expanded as the airline expanded. Traveled to Jamaica, Bahamas, St. Maarten, Florida and Key West 1988-1994 ReggaeJAM/Calypso Tours was a tour operator. It was an early kind of company that was spawned by the de-regulation of airlines. Our business was successful and Gina quit the bank to count heads and pay bills. Once the department had three employees, we realized it was a back-office in travel lingo. We sold our tour packages to travel agents who booked them for clients because we specialized in Jamaica, Bahamas and Key West. We still use some of our larger competitors like Go Go and Apple that have been around years longer than the online guys today to book Caribbean packages. We started doing the marketing using reggae music promotions and we were heading to Jamaica frequently to contract and inspect hotels plus we were guests at Reggae Sunsplash, a yearly buying conference called JAPEX in a different Jamaican city and were involved with the original organization of Reggae Sumfest in Montego Bay. Life was fun as we met most of the large reggae artists like Third World, Freddie McGregor and even Ziggy Marley. We traveled and toured around the islands of Jamaica, Bahamas, Antigua, Barbados, St. Kitts, Nevis and Key West. Most vacations were work and play which became a pattern since we were in the travel business. We ran a small program with a Cessna airline called Cape Air. It flew from various Florida cities to Key West. We were approached by BWIA which was the Trinidadian airline that was expanding to the Eastern Caribbean and needed tour operators. We started selling charters to Jamaica with the Jamaican Government and worked with Sir Freddie Laker in Bahamas. A hotelier friend in Jamaica convinced me to get involved with an orphanage so we ran a school shoes program with our wedding and affinity groups and once took an entire Toyota full of shoes up after a group. We built a proprietary database to keep track of passengers and documentation which propelled us into the next stage of growth. The tour company was still humming along on used Apple Macintoshes, desks and cubicles. Being a tour operator allowed for longer stays in the island for vacation/work as we had 13 employees in the 90's including dept. managers. Money was flowing in America and everybody was invited to the party so the economy grew. It was a time when a doorman in New Orleans could easily save up for an all-inclusive week in Jamaica. We were very lucky to have experienced genuine Caribbean culture including local restaurants, stays at friend's villas and the experience to drive rental cars into every niche of an island. Plus we were running our own jet airplanes and flew for free or reduced rates on most of our carriers so why not run down for the weekend? We moved the company into a 1200 square foot facility with offices, a back office and a sales floor. The company employees were older ladies who had worked in the tour business and college students. We found the college kids could deal with the emerging technology and the older ladies would show up on- time to open the place plus they knew how hotels operated and the importance of details in the travel industry. Pay and bonus was good for everybody including our cubicle workers and back office people. 1995-2000 We were part of the sales force as All-Inclusive product took over the Caribbean travel market. All-Inclusive originated in Jamaica with Sandals and SuperClubs which included the famous Hedonism 2. We never knew there was a "clothing optional" segment of the travel market but it was now 10% of our business. By this time, we were one of the largest tour operators for the Jamaican Government charter called JAMVAC. The mission of this Government organization was to run charters to the island from cities that needed air service to Jamaica. We had contracts with Northwest Airlines, Air Jamaica, Delta, Bahamasair and other carriers. Most of our travel during this period of high growth involved work with vacations stuck on the end. We were running charter aircraft from New Orleans and Memphis to Jamaica. We received invitations to New Orleans Jazz and Heritage festival plus various festivals in Cajun Country and the Memphis Blues circuit. We were also immersed in New Orleans culture as Gina's had family there and the charter allowed us to spend a lot of time with her aunts and uncles as they got older. The Jamaica Shuttle from New Orleans/Memphis to Jamaica ran for eight years with very high load factors because of our company's leadership. Traveled to New Orleans, Lafayette, Memphis, Nashville, New York City, The Maine Coast, Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, Puerto Rico, St. Maarten and Guadeloupe. By this point, we had been to Jamaica almost 100 times and other Caribbean islands 10 or 15 times. JAMAICA BLUE MOUNTAIN AWARDS At the Governor General's Mansion in Jamaica 1995 Blue Mountain Award Winners We were moving about 9,000 bodies a year as we specialized in opening markets for the Jamaican Shuttle charter plus we inherited a major airline contract every time we moved on to a new city. John was a good sales person so the crew always knew which town he was in as the phones would start ringing when they did a sales blitz to annouce the charter. Gina used her banking experience to learn the travel industry from the back end where the people actually get processed. One day in 1995, we received an engraved invitation from the Government of Jamaica. It invited us to the Prime Minister's mansion and also the Governor General's House the following September. John rented a tux and we took Gina to get fitted for a party dress. It was quite a scene in Kingston Jamaica as they closed streets for our motorcade that was led by Jamaican motorcycle police in their dress whites. A stamp was issued in Jamaica in all of our honor. One night we were hosted on the Prime Minister's lawn and the next night at the GG's house as they would say in England. Jamaica is an independent nation but is still part of the British Commonwealth so they have a Governor General who is the representative of the Queen of England in Kingston. It was a grand party and all our tour operator friends won so it was a pretty big party with people we knew from all over the USA and the World. At our conference, we would always see Paolo from Italy, the Brits and the guys from Havanatour. John Rice worked personally with hundreds of Travel Agencies as the company Sales Manager Chris Wright of Jamaica Tourist Board still calls on our company. September 11, 2001 As our college workers were now married (and mommies), we worked a later shift starting at 10AM as we never left the office during this stage until 7 or 8PM. We had employees stuffed in every niche of the office and the economy was so good we had a hard time finding qualified call center employees in Tampa even though we paid above average with bonus. We were approached by Morgan Stanley and others to sell the company which might have been a good idea in hindsight. As I got out of the shower on my way to work, Gina called me to the Today show and the first airplane had already hit the first tower. About that time, the second jet aircraft plowed into tower 2 and we went to work to find grounded airplanes and stranded passengers worldwide. We worked 18 hours a day as we tried to get everybody home to the United States and the feeling was sinking in that the Travel Industry would be hurt drastically. We assured everybody that the company would go on as we had built up a good cash cushion plus we had everybody's deposits escrowed as the company grew. As the weeks went on, it became obvious that we were not getting back to work as nobody wanted to go anywhere. We had refunded about $100,000 in deposits and pre- payments for canceled trips. Employees were sitting around a quiet office and all our travel agents were saying business was dead because people were scared. On the morning of November 12, the tail fell off an American Airlines flight 597 over New York City and John made the decision to fire the six of our last 7 employees. Shortly after JAMVAC shut down all charter operations and airlines began to merge. We had already started selling cruises and fell back on our Caribbean knowledge to create a retail company as the internet was growing as a source of travel bookings. We still had frequent flyer miles from John's road warrior days and employees doing nothing so we do what we always do when the going gets tough, we go on vacation. November, 2001, traveled to San Francisco and Northern California Wine Country 2002-2006 Caribbean Tour & Cruise was created to market Caribbean resorts and cruises directly to the general public. The internet was flooded with travel start ups like Expedia, Travelocity and Priceline that gained marketshare on "do it yourself" travel by cutting prices and employing workers in places like the Philippines for $1.25 an hour. Traveled Italy/Sicily, France most of the Florida coastal cities following our hobby of back-country kayak fishing plus we began to take cruises to the Western Caribbean and the Bahamas. The company moved into the back of Leisure Travel in Temple Terrace to share expenses. We learned the retail travel business, which vendors to use and about the myriad of travel products and countries in the world. It was an interesting time as the map of the world kept changing countries so the huge map on Leisure's wall was always outdated. Our cruise business was rapidly growing and we sold a lot of all-inclusive products on the web and phone to people who discovered our web pages and did not want to "do it yourself". John was also learning how to program web pages. As we started with a marketing company, we have been successful at driving people into our companies using digital marketing so web pages were just another form of digital marketing. We also switched from phone books to search engines and from mail marketing to email marketing to our opt-in customers. 2004 Traveled to Florence, Rome, Naples and Sicily 2004 was the year of our twentieth anniversary of marriage. It was also the year of the Grand Italian Trip to Florence, Rome, Naples and Sicily. As it was a big anniversary, it was celebrated with fancy hotels and first class tickets. We had an apartment in Rome that was absolutely delightful, stayed in a 12th century Palace in Naples and flew from Naples, Italy to Catania Sicily with the intent of visiting Gina's Grandfather's home town. We saw Pompeii, The David and the Vatican, stayed a night overlooking Mt Etna which was erupting at the time and could be seen from Taormina then we went on to Cefalu, Sicily where we checked into an apartment on the sea for three days. We met Kate and Pipo plus Gina's other cousin Mary. Gina's grandfather had a brother that did not like America and went back to Sicily. These were the decendants of that man. One of the Uncles in New Orleans had made this connection 10 years earlier at the completion of a Globus escorted tour of Italy/Sicily. We got to see the Country house and also their beautiful apartment in the old town of Cefalu. 2006 Trip to Paris and Reims. This was our first experience with couch surfing as Gina's brother had an apartment overlooking the Seine in Paris, France so we crashed on his Futon for eight nights. I can attest that an Ikea Futon is pretty comfortable and we could see half the Eiffel Tower so we waited until midnight every night to turn in when they turned off the Eiffel Tower. It was late March and the first week of April so it was a nice time in Paris and the museums were not busy during our visit. It is true what they sing about April in Paris as the flowers, flowering trees and bulbs were all coming out. Since we were couch surfing, we bought food for the week. We took a daytrip to Reims to see the champagne caves and the Marc Chagal windows in the church. Paris and Reims Blog at this link 2007 Late in 2006, Leisure Travel finally shut down. Many travel agencies did not make the jump to a digital age and our friend got sick so she decided to close the agency and work from home. This was practically the last full service travel agency in our small town so it seemed that we could make a go of what our industry calls a "bricks and mortar" agency. We rented a very small office on the back of a doctor's office with a door that faced Fowler Avenue and expanded from the Caribbean to handle the whole world. We had come to the internet late so our Caribbean URL was pretty long but we were able to secure http://vacationtc.com and we operated the internet company as Caribbean Tour and Cruise but we created a new identity for the local agency called Vacation Tour & Cruise. For a while, we operated under both names as Caribbean had a solid internet presence but the new company did not. The internet and search engines are becoming more important even for regular travel agencies as phone books were disappearing and agencies could reach outside a 5 mile radius with an internet presence. In 2007, we also went back to Italy/Sicily but we also drove across Tuscany, visited Siena, Ravenna, Sansepolcro and Venice. Italy blog is available here On top of La Rocca "The Rock" in Cefalu Sicily. Driving the Fiat around Tuscany View is back towards Palermo Sicily. 2008 Vacation Tour & Cruise was pretty successful with walk in customers during the entire period that we were located on Fowler Ave. At the suggestion of one of our old friends Ron Horne who worked for Carnival Cruise Lines, we test marketed a promotion at the Red Barn Flea Market in Bradenton. It was a success. Early in the year my Mom won a trip to Las Vegas and Gina went along as the companion. She became a Las Vegas specialist after that vacation. Gina's vegas blog is at this link. We got bumped on the way to Italy and had a $400 voucher that was going to expire so we booked a flight to Montreal Canada in the fall to see the fall foilage. We stayed in the Old Town of Quebec, Canada and took daytrips around the area Iles d Orleans, Montmorency, Charlevoix and Jacques Cartier National Park to see the beautiful Canadian countryside. Quebec Blog Traveled to Eastern Canada and Las Vegas Our election was ongoing and when we returned from Vacation the economic world fell apart. This was not good as we had committed to office rent and cruise prices along with competition from failing desperate public companies challenged our company profits. November 1, John went back to Red Barn in Bradenton and began to build a new clientele with the snowbirds from the midwest and Canada. Red Barn is an upscale flea market but we sold plenty of cruises and even some high end vacations as it is frequented by snowbirds from Bradenton, Sarasota and Sun City Center. We began building this into a seasonal location rather than a temporary promotion. This has been a great high traffic laboratory for John and Gina to learn every conceivable type of travel product imaginable. 2009 When 2009 dawned, it looked pretty much like the end of the economic world and the talking heads were using the word depression. This coincided with our 25th wedding anniversary so we agreed that we would pick a "travel agent deal" on something when it came available over the course of the year. Our anniversary is in August, but we usually travel in the fall as the travel industry slows down quite a bit so we are planning for a two week fall "bucket list" trip every year or two. We had decided we would close our new office for two weeks every fall when we took this bucket list trip. The river cruise industry was getting ramped up in 2009 with new competitors and new boats. One of our preferred suppliers is Avalon River Cruises which is part of the Globus Family of Brands. They were offering agents the deal of the century so we selected a Rhine cruise as we wanted to keep it under two weeks and the river cruise portion of the Rhine is only seven nights. We extended the trip in Amsterdam and also toured Zurich on our own on arrival day. We loved river cruising and we sell a lot of river cruises. For John Germany was a genealogical trip even though we did not meet any family or travel to homeland cities as we stayed along the river. He was surprised as he felt the pull of the homeland in the food and customs plus this digital blog is connected to the Gutenberg bible through his Uncle Ray (his Godfather) that was from an area about 100 miles south of Mainz yet he was a German immigrant typesetter who worked with hot lead type and early linotype machines. Germany is the cradle of publishing and Heidelberg is famous for the best printing presses in the world in addition to the castle. It is amazing the long span of years between Gutenberg and Uncle Ray and the short span of years between Uncle Ray and this digital blog. We visited Heidelberg Castle and also did walking tours of many of the Rhine towns including Strasbourg, Cologne and our favorite Speyer. This was a good beer trip. At this point, we are selling a lot of cruises but not making much money as cruises were "upside down" and extremely cheap. As the recession widened worldwide, pretty much all destinations had deals and even some steals. At this point, Google invested heavily in local and we began to understand web SEO. We were at the right place at the right time and we became a favorite place on Google. You will find that our websites contain actual content unlike many of our competitors as it helps to bring in business and increase search engine placement for our company. Get our River Cruise Blog at this link John and Gina at the confluence of the Rhine and Moselle Rivers in Koblenz, Germany. On this trip, we sailed to Switzerland, France, Germany and Amsterdam 2010 Back to the California Wine Country California Wine Country Blog 2011 We kept feeling the tug from Sicily as we had met Ginas other side of the family and they were such nice people. The Cousin we met in Palermo on our second trip had passed away and Gina's brother was heading back again plus we were all a few years older. That year the Italian airlines had consolidated so there were no cheap tickets from Rome to Sicily. We did find airline tickets from Barcelona, Spain to Palermo so the plan was on. We stayed three nights in Barcelona on the way there and another night at an airport hotel in Barcelona on the way home. We did take an overnight trip while in Sicily to go to see the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento. In Barcelona, this was the trip where Gina secured the suite for only 45 euros a night at the Condes de Barcelona. We think it was supposed to be 450 euros a night but the hotel manager kept the reservation since we had already confirmed the room and made a deposit. The deal was supposed to include a mini-cooper for half a day but we did not even ask about that given the room overlooked the Passeig de Gracia and had a large balcony. Check our Barcelona Trip Blog at this link Check out our Agrigento Sicily blog with the Valley of the Temples On this trip, we traveled to Barcelona Spain and Sicily. Up in the tower of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona Spain 2012 We visited Cancun/Riviera Maya Mexico and we were back to Couples Resorts and Sunset Beach Resort in Jamaica. John won the Mexico certificate at a trade show and we traveled to the Barcelo Tropical Riviera Maya. It is amazing how much they have built south of Cancun. We drove the rental car as far as Tulum and there are now resorts all along the 1 hour drive. We had not been to Jamaica in quite a few years so we wanted to see some old friends. Gina had accrued some free nights at Couples Resorts and we have always loved Couples Sans Souci. Jamaica had changed but also was the same in many ways. More stuff keeps getting built and we went by the new cruise port at Falmouth to see how it came out. We skipped a rental car in Jamaica so we were pretty much couch potatoes in all-inclusive land. Our trip blogs are taking off so we are selling a lot of Italy. Red Barn is going crazy with the cruise deals but we are learning about bucket list destinations and we are selling a lot of escorted tours and river cruises. Most of the European river boats are full as the product category has gone wild. As former tour operators, we are finding that we are particularly good at doing foreign independent travel even if we have not been to that particular destination. Like all pendulums, people are getting tired of doing these types of complicated trips themselves so people are seeking out travel agents again. We only took a couple of short vacations as our Red Barn office is keeping us busy all year even though it is only open six months a year. The situation in Temple Terrace is different in that we are not seeing people with much disposable income, even though cash is not as tight as 2009 working people are not recovering as quickly. After 28 years in the travel business, we never forget that travel is a luxury and people value travel experiences more than money as time off is so short. More boats come out and we are still giving cruises away cheap prices. Link to our 2012 Jamaica Trip Report This picture is at Evita's in Ocho Rios. We had lunch with our Rasta friend Patsy. This year's vacations were taken in Cancun/Riviera Maya - Mexico and Jamaica. 2014 John and his Mom had been researching Irish Genealogy of her grandfather. We had planned a trip in 2013 but we got Mom moved to Sun City Center and the trip was scrubbed until 2014. 2014 was another busy work year for the company so the Irish trip was planned at the last minute. We were doing a lot of overseas trips and some of the European airlines were feeling frisky about strikes. We had a window in late September to October where our client travel was light so John began planning a drive of the Wild Atlantic Way in Ireland. Mom went with us as this trip and it was quite a homecoming for the first one in her family to return to Ireland since the mid 1800s. Ireland is very pretty and yes, very green. The people are some of the friendliest on earth and the food was fantastic including plenty of seafood along the coast. We traveled with a laptop and have access to all our records and agent tools while traveling the world as long as we can get a wi-fi signal. Ireland blog is at this link. Ireland Trip included Cliffs of Moher, Dingle Peninsula, Ring of Kerry, West Cork, Cork, Cobh, Cashel, Kildare and Dublin John, Gina and Mom at the Stague Fort along the Ring of Kerry. Tampa Bay's Cloud Based Travel Agency 2015-2016 As of May 1, 2015; we will no longer operate walk-in service at the Tampa office. We are transitioning to a Cloud Based Travel Agency but we are still based in the Tampa Bay area. We were finding that we were doing 85% of our business over the telephone and email. People were discovering our web pages but they did not live around the corner. My cousin is in the telephone business so he talked to me about the Cloud based telephone communications and we already have one of the strongest digital footprints of any travel agency in the Tampa Bay area. We had made the decision to close the Fowler Avenue office in the fall of 2014 but it was too busy to make the jump to the cloud until May 1. Airline tickets have become a complicated problem so as of May 1, we will only sell tickets as part of our cruises, vacation packages, hotels, independent travel and escorted tours or river cruises. We will still operate the Red Barn office during our seasonal snowbrid season and the cloud will allow us to transfer our phones down to Bradenton. Our phone numbers and email are all the same and the Cloud has a "find me-follow me" feature that can ring our cell phones when we are not at our desk. We hope you continue to patronize our company and we can always meet you somewhere if you want to talk about a trip and we still mail out documents for your travel. Travel is our passion and our life's work. The cloud and our new web based tools will allow us to travel and still service our customers where a fixed location made that difficult. From the time of that first Apple computer, we have always changed and adapted to the changes in the market. We are working to do that one last time with our move to the cloud, mobile enabled websites, web based electronic booking tools and our entry into social media. Our Red Barn office is always busy with snowbirds. Our host agency is in the top Fifty in the Nation in Travel Leaders so we have the best products in the industry and we have less competition as time goes on. Gina is carrying on at home just as she did in the office and 100% of her business is going on by email and telephone. We did not travel a lot during this period as the business was growing rapidly and in transition plus our geriatric cat was sick and unable to make her usual trip to the vacation kennel so our passports expired for the first time in our lives. The Cuban Project and a missed hurricane in Maine 2017-2018 In June of 2017, we lost one of our team members, Boom Boom, our 20 year old cat. She was a trooper, who lived with travel agents, so she made many trips to the kitty farm in during her life in Tampa, before heading for the kitty farm in the sky. Everything happens at a certain time as there is a plan for our lives that we do not control and it was time for us to put our skills, learned earlier, as tour operators back to work. We had been researching Cuba since the Obama administration opened the door to People to People visits. In June, Trump traveled to Miami to announce the new restrictions on Cuba travel, so the same day, we renewed the passports and booked Southwest for the trip to Cuba. We had waited 57 years to visit Havana but the flight was only 55 minutes from TIA to Jose Marti. The tickets were about $275 including tax, luggage and Cuban health insurance. After our worst summer in years with hurricane relocations we headed to Maine for some cool weather and got stranded by another hurricane and cancelled flights but at least the house/office was in tact with electric when we got home. 2017 - Four Days in a Cuban Apartment in Havana We enjoyed Cuba and met a lot of friendly Cuban people. We stayed in an Air BnB in Havana Central. Check our Cuban blog at this link. Cuban Blog In 2010 Cuban began to plan for the eventual implementation of private businesses within the centralized economy. In 2012, Raul Castro stood up in the Communist Party Congress and announced that the government had no business running a barbershop or ice cream stand. By 2017 when we traveled Havana was a frenzy of small business people hawking walking tours, 50s car rides and private restaurants were everywhere. During 2016 and 2017, we were able to move people on tour packages using Independent People to People visits that included hotel, airport transfers and organized group tours. In June, President Trump flanked by Florida’s Senator Marco Rubio ended the independent people to people program with rules to be announced later. The paladars (restuarants) were so busy you definitely needed a reservation as Americans flocked to Havana to beat the US law change. Our vendor Funjet shut the Cuba program pretty quickly after the announcement. As we worked as tour operators at the beginning of airline deregulation, then operated charters to Jamaica; it seemed like we were called to work with our new Cuban friends. In August of 2017 the Cuban Government limited new business licenses in an effort to tighten the system after the US Government slowed the flow of tourists. Then in November of 2017 the US rules for Cuba travel were tightened by the US Government. By that point Red Barn was already crazy and we had another good season with our snowbirds. 2018 - Back to Havana by Cruise Ship and (surprise!) Southern Iceland & Reykjavik Cruise ships are the one bright spot as we are sending people regularly as long as they participate in group people to people programs as existing tour contracts are exempted from the new rules. Once the rules came out in the Federal Register, we could read the text and see what we were up against to continue moving Americans to Cuba by airplane. It was not as bad as we all had feared but the confusion over the changes and problems with the health of diplomats had unfairly curtailed US interest in Cuba. Gina saw that the Royal Caribbean Majesty of the Seas had a great price and was making a two day stop in Cuba, so we jumped onboard. It had been at least 25 years since we had been to Key West and things had not changed for the better as density and traffic on the island was very high. We still enjoyed a walk to South Beach from Mallory squre where the shuttle dropped us off. It was national tequila day so that required a stop at Captain Tony’s. The next morning we were in Havana with some trepidation about our meetings as these would not have been permitted before 2012. If you consider history, the Cubans have changed a lot about the economy in a short amount of time. What we are learning is Havana and all of Cuba are a joy but complicated. We are making progress with the Cuban project but also realize it could be a lifetime endeavor. Cuba FAQ and Majesty Site Inspection Report. Our retail business has grown so the summers are busy again. Travel agents are in vogue again so we have added a lot of escorted tours, river cruises, small ship cruising plus we are planning a lot of independent travel. Gina is doing a lot of cruise groups, ocean cruises and all-inclusive packages. The cloud phones stay busy and life is crazy when Red Barn is open and our snowbirds are in town. The travel business has always been very competitive but as consolidation has continued in the industry, we seem to be more and more competitive. What I mean is there are only two OTA’s (online agencies) as Expedia and Priceline now own everbody else. Many of our tour operators have bought competitors and entered the hotel space through management companies. Agents still control about 50% of the cruise sales. We are aligned with a host agency. Our friend has been in the travel business since we all graduated college in the 80s. The host agency belongs to Travel Leaders so we have access to the best travel industry deals and thousands of speculative cruise groups we can sell you. The host agency is a group of former agency owners along with 5 free standing retail locations so we are respected by all the vendors and sales representatives. Where else can you get access to this kind of buying power just by calling a travel agent? We approached “online” with apprehension and unfair competition from public companies but we have ultimately won the war, so far, as buying power and knowledge are still a value added in travel. Some days we are so busy that we just keep working. When I slow down to work on blogs and vacations we marvel how well all of this change has worked out. I also realize we are only as good as we are today and everyday, we will have some new form of competition so we have to stay top of our game. By the time we started looking at fall vacations, Alberta was on fire, Alaska was sold out and after Cuba it had to be non-tropical. One day, Gina said how about $450 to Iceland Nonstop? We were on that the same day as Iceland Air was running nonstop for part of the year (that service has now stopped; so take advantage of destinations, when the opportunity is there). We had not contemplated Iceland even though it is one of the HOT destinations. Once there, we realized popular to the point of over-tourism. We stayed one night just outside of Reykjavik. After that, we went to the south and Westman Islands before the hot springs and Skagafoss. Check out the blog at this link Iceland blog as Iceland moved into our top ten after this experience and it can be a stopover on the way to or from many European destinations. The scenery was stunning, the people were friendly and Iceland is a place that everybody needs to see. 2019 - Southern England, London, Cuba is closed and Canadian Rockies The Iceland trip worked out so well, we are staying with serendipity in the vacation planning process. Red Barn was so busy that we knew the summer would have a lot of back-office work. We had sold some cheap tickets to London as BA was fighting with Norwegian Air who recently made entry into the Tampa market so off we went to Jolly Old England. We closed Red Barn for the season on Sunday and headed out Tuesday while all the snowbirds were heading north. We really enjoyed the English countryside. The hike to Stonehenge and back was fantastic plus we enjoyed Bath and the Cotswolds. We had a great time in London as we were there when Harry and Meghan had Archie. We were back at the office in time to get everybody’s documents out for summer and fall vacations. Check out the England blog at this link. Before the England trip, we upgraded all the mobile technology, since we were traveling in busy season. It is getting easier to travel and work as long as we have an internet signal, we have access to voicemail and email. The tiny laptop can go anywhere and it is easier to blog in a tiny airline seat on the way home. To all our customers, this means that just because we are out of town does not mean we are out of touch but we do try to work only for emergencies and do call-backs when we get back to work. As everybody knows it is a challange to balance being connected with going on vacation. We try to be connected but disconnected unless somebody needs us while we are out there. We suggest you follow that plan also as the connectivity can take away from the trip. What a difference from the time before effective cellular communications when we traveled the Caribbean in the days at the top of this page. We used to go into the phone store to use our ATT card with a local phone card for time. One man’s lifetime has seen quite a bit of change in terms of the travel industry, technology and the world in general. Our company and our lives seemed to have adapted at each step along the way. I guess that is why we are still successful in this business while others are not. The Cuban embargo is back on so we have temporarily closed our Cuban programs. What a shame for the people of Cuba, our entrepreneurial friends in the Cuban travel industry and the people of the USA who are now prevented from visiting our neighbors to the south. As I stated earlier, we knew the Cuban project would take years given the stupidity with Governments on both sides of the 90 miles. We were looking for another cool weather destination and with some flexibility we were off to the Canadian Rockies for an excellent fly/drive vacation. Two nights in Calgary and a visit to Jasper, Banff, Lake Louise and even a night at the Athabasca Glacier. We are adding video to our blogs and we thoughly enjoyed the Canadian Rockies. We sell a lot of Rocky Mountaineer but we only have a week for vacation so we are just checking out the area around the Icefields Highway and the Canadian National Parks along the way. Check out our Canadian Rockies blog

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