Perks keep Collette on fast track

TAKING FLIGHT: Two of Collette’s new hires: Fatima Karantonis, marketing consumer-intelligence analyst, and Jordan Loiselle, IT help-desk-support specialist, taking part in a training session run by company Director of Training Anna Tejada, standing. / COURTESY COLLETTE VACATIONS
TAKING FLIGHT: Two of Collette’s new hires: Fatima Karantonis, marketing consumer-intelligence analyst, and Jordan Loiselle, IT help-desk-support specialist, taking part in a training session run by company Director of Training Anna Tejada, standing. / COURTESY COLLETTE VACATIONS

(Updated, March 18, 11:05 a.m.)

(Editor’s Note: This is the fifth in an occasional series of stories that will feature the companies and industries creating jobs in the region.)

By Rebecca Keister
keister@pbn.com
On a recent Friday afternoon John Galvin, chief financial officer of Pawtucket-based Collette Vacations, sat in his office and pondered a very difficult decision: Should his next Collette-sponsored trip be to Switzerland, South Africa or Peru?
“That’s kind of my current bucket list of what I’m debating. I’ve been very fortunate that we’ve been able to go to a lot of places over the years,” Galvin said. “It’s fun to see the world and have someone else pay for it.”
The travel reward Galvin was pondering, to mark his 20th anniversary as chief financial officer, recognizes a Collette employee’s hard work, dedication and loyalty. It is given at major anniversaries starting with an employee’s 15th year (Galvin took his wife and children on a 10-day Hawaiian holiday for his 15-year trip).
“In the spirit of why people [stay here], I think the travel is one of the draws that brings people and keeps them here,” he said. “I think it’s also the values of the business and the owners.”
Galvin would go on to relate many more reasons Collette, which was founded in 1918 and ranks as the oldest major tour operator in the United States, is able to boast many employees who have been awarded milestone trips.
The third-generation, family-run company, which also has offices in Mississauga, Ontario, Surrey, British Columbia, and Uxbridge, England, also is boasting another achievement.
Since the economy took a downturn five years ago, Collette Vacations not only has survived but thrived within an industry that largely was one of the first to suffer financial woes.
Overall, the company has seen a 51 percent increase in its Rhode Island employment since December 2009. There now are 342 workers filling the Pawtucket office, and there are 28 openings the company wants to fill this year. Counting its other offices, the company has 38 openings to fill and has seen a 15 percent company-employment increase since December 2011.
The nuts and bolts of how the travel firm has been able to weather the financial storm is broken down into having the right clients, the right employees, the right service and the right partnerships, says the company.
Collette caters to an older clientele who have, and have had during the recession, disposable income or hard-earned savings with which to travel. The client base is expected to grow with the continued retirement waves of the baby boomer generation.
Most revenue comes from outside Rhode Island, across the United States, as well as from the United Kingdom and Canada.
“A lot of our clients wait a lifetime to experience our tour product. We create and deliver travel dreams,” said Jeni Wilson, vice president of human resources.
Wilson started with Collette as payroll administrator while an MBA student at Bryant University 19 years ago. She has been in her current role for five years.
“I’ve just developed and grown underneath the direction of the executives,” Wilson said. “[Collette] wants to make this a great place to work. Employment is a relationship.”
As such, the company invests heavily in its employees well beyond the travel perks, which are plentiful and related to career enhancement.
The theory is that in order to properly sell the product, employees have to know the product. That means all are afforded times to take part in familiarization trips and some ride-along tours that allow employees to act as a customer.
That’s a lead-by-example beginning with company President Daniel Sullivan, who took over the family business in the mid-1990s and who spends many weeks throughout the year on tour. Galvin also has spent time acting as tour guide.
Employees also may take Collette vacations at a discounted rate.
Collette offers tuition reimbursement for degree-track and certification programs or for stand-alone courses or seminars that are related to the business and focused on skill enhancement. Krystina Clarke, manager of transportation and documents, started working at Collette as an evening receptionist in 1994 in order to help pay for her Providence College tuition. She went back to PC in 2006 with tuition reimbursement to earn her MBA.
“It was another great advantage to a company where I quickly learned I could move up,” Clarke said. “The company values education. We have great mentors. It’s a family environment and the company truly cares for the employees and the community.”
Galvin said an executive open-door policy starts with Sullivan and trickles down to create an atmosphere in which every employee feels they can talk to superiors and where people are happy to come into work.
“That’s dictated to a great extent by the Sullivan family, but we all embrace it. The travel business by nature is a casual environment, but we take the business very seriously,” Galvin said. “We sell a good time so we can’t really employ [unhappy] people.”
Collette strives to keep them that way. Though just 1 percent to 2 percent of the company revenue comes from within Rhode Island, giving back to the community is important, and Collette offers employees paid time with which to volunteer.
An annual communications day takes employees who have hit the five- or 10-year milestone off-site for a morning celebration. Every October the headquarters is home to a Halloween decorating contest that Wilson said is “highly competitive” and during which local elementary school students are invited to trick or treat.
Collette recently broke ground on a 4,620-square-foot wellness center, a project two years in the making that ties into the company’s health care platform that promotes resources for health eating and weight loss.
The project was conceived after 85 percent of surveyed employees said they would utilize a company wellness center. “I think it’s a great place to work or honestly I wouldn’t have been here for 15 years,” said Tracey Conlon, vice president of product & operations. “We truly are a family. People are happy to come in and the days fly by. I’ve [never] had concerns about expressing that I didn’t know something. You feel you can add value.”
Conlon is soon taking her mother on a Scandinavian cruise with her 15-year travel reward. She began with Collette while finishing her MBA at Babson College. She’s used tuition reimbursement for project-management classes at Bryant and Bentley College. Collette last year sponsored her participation in Leadership Rhode Island.
“The ability to grow and learn and new challenges [are] what have kept me here,” Conlon said.
Most of the Pawtucket openings are in the company’s marketing and call-center areas.
New initiatives in product development have spurred the need, Wilson said, for additional folks to market them and to handle an increased in-bound call volume.
There also are IT opportunities and a few positions within database development.
“Most of the employment interest is from Rhode Island [residents]. We really look for a great attitude, great work ethic, a willingness to work hard and grow and be committed to the business,” Wilson said.
Galvin said Collette has invested heavily in company infrastructure, IT and training. It also has been focused on forming partnerships with such industry giants as AAA, Marriott and the Royal Horticultural Society in Britain that Galvin said have added value to Collette’s products and distribution capabilities.
“The basic values and principles of how [the company] is run haven’t changed [since it was founded],” Galvin said. “The focus on customer service has been very beneficial. Collette is charitable and committed to giving back to the community. People who are attracted to the industry are fundamentally happy and pleasant. You can’t be an executive in the organization and not embrace that.” •

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