Experience, flexibility keep her Travel Vision soaring
HER passion for travelling helped her grow the business which started as a freelance job for her.
Twenty-one years later, Travel Vision, Inc. is not only a successful business venture but also an active player in the tourism industry engaged in promoting Cebu as a top destination in the world.
Jenny Franco used to work as a freelance travel agent for two of Cebu’s pioneer travel agencies before she decided to open her own business in 1991.
“I worked for Intertravel for two years and another two years for Marsman Tours as a freelance sales representative and learned the business through experience,” Franco said.
In 1991 Franco then opened Travel Vision, Inc. in Red Cross Building in Osmeña Boulevard with four staffers.
Franco first focused on the domestic market in her early years of operation.
She said Cebu’s tourism industry then was already booming. It took off in the early 80s when stakeholders promoted Cebu as an island in the Pacific.
“I should say that the experience I had prior has helped a lot coupled with my natural love for travel and natural instinct for quality service being a traveler myself,” said Franco.
Since she traveled a lot, she always made it a point to observe the best practices of a travel agent in every country she visited and adopt these practices in her business.
“After the domestic market, I then slowly started tapping the foreign market in Asia, North America and Europe,” said Franco.
She observed and studied the market in Japan, Singapore and European countries to prepare her business when they would eventually come to Cebu.
She said that in the business one had to be flexible as a bamboo and sturdy when one had to be.
“The kind of tourists coming are different and we have to be flexible and offer them the best. We also have to evolve in terms of operations like outsourcing some services and using the latest technologies,” said Franco.
Franco said since she started, her core staff remained at four full-time personnel.
She, however, outsourced tour guides and transport services as a way to grow her business and to make her business operations efficient.
Franco, who is the president of the National Association of Independent Travel Agencies in the Philippines for the Visayas, said she had been working with other stakeholders to help grow the industry.
Their latest project under the Cebu Health and Wellness Council is to promote Cebu as a health and wellness destination.
“Right now we have created packages that includes physical examinations as well as tours in art galleries or different countryside destinations that will evoke a fun and healthy medical vacation,” said Franco.
Franco said she and the other tourism stakeholders remained optimistic of Cebu being a unique destination.
She said Cebu could compete globally.
In 2000, Franco moved to her new office with ample parking space for her customers in Escario Building near the Cebu Parklane International Hotel,
As her way of paying it forward, Franco said she’s pushing for community-based tourism in the countryside municipalities of Cebu.
“I think that is a good strategy to help people in these areas earn a livelihood as well as make them realize the importance of protecting their natural treasures,” said Franco./Reporter Aileen Garcia-Yap
