Looking Back, Looking Forward:
In January of 2015, Travel Beyond celebrated our 40th anniversary in business. As we reflect upon the last 40 years, we are especially grateful for you, our incredibly loyal clients, our dedicated team members and our industry partners. On behalf of the entire Travel Beyond family, thank you for traveling with us for 40 years.
1975: Our Foundation
Founded in 1975 as TravelWays (after which our magazine is named), our first trips were group tours within Africa led by our founders, South African-born Audrey and Minnesota-born David Beal. In fact, we were the first U.S. company to plan leisure travel within southern Africa still in business today! In the early days, travel planning was a very different business. We composed itineraries on typewriters and developed trip photos from film. Airline tickets were issued and printed in-house at our many offices in Minnesota’s Twin Cities. South Africa was under Apartheid. Travelers dressed in business attire for flights, and smoking on airplanes was the norm.
2005: A New Generation
In 2005, after a ten-year career as a submarine officer in the United States Navy, Audrey and David’s youngest son Craig Beal took over the helm of the company, now called Travel Beyond. Craig and his wife Kay, Travel Beyond’s co-owner and controller, have spent the past ten years building the business into a leader in the luxury travel industry. This era included hiring our first employees outside of Minnesota while growing our business in the midst of an economic recession. Travel Beyond has become a nationally recognized, award-winning travel agency and tour operator by keeping focused on providing excellent travel planning service and building upon our expertise in an evolving marketplace.
2015: Travel Beyond Today
Today, Travel Beyond’s 27-person team is located in our Wayzata, Minnesota headquarters and homebased offices in California, Florida, Illinois, Nevada, Colorado, Missouri and South Africa. Our team has traveled extensively within (or even lived in!) southern and East Africa, South and Central America, India, the Caribbean, Australia, the Society Islands, France and Italy, to name a few. In addition, our consultants are experts in many different types of travel, from the world’s leading luxury cruise lines, river cruises and expedition cruises to iconic trains, private jets and yachts. Our consultants pride themselves on staying abreast of the latest trends, properties and destinations within the travel industry, continually building knowledge.
Beyond 2015: Where We’re Going
Whether we meet clients over a cup of coffee in our Wayzata office or via international Skype calls, the pride and passion of Travel Beyond will continue to be rooted in planning unique and memorable trips for our clients for years to come. As we look to the future of our company and industry, we will continue to focus on providing excellent customer service and maintaining our position in the market as “most knowledgeable” within our core areas of expertise. Additionally, we will continue to expand our knowledge of new and emerging destinations and unique travel experiences across the globe. In 2015 and beyond, our consultants will spend thousands of hours traveling to ensure our knowledge is current and first-hand. We are eager to share this knowledge through trip reports, photos and videos on our website (TravelBeyond.com), here on our blog, in our monthly e-newsletter, in TripAdvisor forums and in future issues of TravelWays Magazine. Most importantly, we look forward to exceeding each client’s expectations in 2015 and years to come.