BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

She Went From Planning Group Trips In Her Dorm To Managing Global Tailor-Made Travel

This article is more than 4 years old.

What was your college job that paid your bills and helped get you through school? Maybe you scooped ice cream at the Ben & Jerry’s near campus, picked up shifts as a barback on weekends or worked as a nanny to get some extra cash. You likely didn’t start your own tour company on campus, arranging a weeklong getaway for your fellow students from the comfort of your dorm room.

That is, unless you’re Jacqui Lewis.

Jacqui is one of those people destined to be an entrepreneur. She came from a family that was “big on love but short on cash”—and by the time she started college to study Leisure Studies, Travel and Hospitality, both her mother and sister had died and the family home was in foreclosure. 

“When you grow up in a situation where one of your goals is to just get above the poverty level and out of your own neighborhood, you start looking further than where you live,” Jacqui said. “Then you start to realize that there's so many things out there that you would love to do, but you just don't have the means to do them.” 

With her position in student government at Penn State, one of the ways she raised money was with things like ski trips or spring break trips. When the school felt there was too much liability involved with travel, Jacqui branched off and started her own company off campus called Sun Coast Vacations. 

“It afforded me the opportunity to actually be able to do those things like travel, which was great,” she explained. “The main driver in that for me was, initially, just to be able to afford to be in school and to pay tuition, but the bonus was being able to experience things that were sort of outside my borders growing up, which was incredible.”

After school, Jacqui remained in the Philadelphia area working on her tour company. She partnered with an agency focused on western US tours, allowing them to expand geographically and giving Jacqui the funding to really get her business off the ground. Jacqui was then fortunate enough to sell Sun Coast Vacations and land a job at TUI Travel working as Portfolio Managing Director, overseeing a group of businesses in the leisure education portfolio. 

But in 2011, she needed to take a step back from the hustle she’d been a part of her whole life. Jacqui adopted two kids, she traveled with them and, most importantly, she took the time to regroup and enjoy being a mother. She wasn’t sure if or in what capacity she might want to go back to work, or if she wanted to start her own company instead.

“I guess who I was as an entrepreneur and then moving into the public sector, I just didn't feel like I was able to be as entrepreneurial as I wanted to be,” Jacqui explained. “And I was not truly managing an individual business, I was managing the managing directors. So I decided I should probably take some time off. I’d been working pretty hard since my teenage years and it was time to just breathe a little.”

About two years into her break in 2013, she got a call from the Chairman of the Board and the CEO of Audley Travel who she had worked with before through TUI. They met for lunch, explaining their concept of “tailor-made travel,” and Jacqui immediately felt intrigued. “At the time, we had private itineraries, but you couldn't truly curate the itinerary the way you wanted it. Most of what people were dealing with was a preset itinerary where you can change a few things, but by and large it was the way it was and you didn't really have a choice in the matter. So this notion that you should be able to curate anything you want the way you want, based on your preferences was crazy.”

Jacqui’s break was over, and she joined the team at Audley Travel as Managing Director & President of the US Entity. 

She describes “tailor-made travel” as having a good friend in the destination you’re going to. Guests connect with Audley, let them know what they’re interested in—like architecture, food or history—and they then get a custom itinerary for their trip. It offers travelers the benefit of a unique trip without the laborious task of planning each detail out themselves, plus during their planning and trip they have a single point of contact who manages everything to give the experience a more personal touch. 

Jacqui has found the perfect balance with Audley Travel: a company that fulfills her entrepreneurial desires and pushes the boundaries of travel tours. She acknowledges, too, that Audley’s success is just as much due to her hard-working attitude as it is for her team. “Having the right people in place and operating as a very high-functioning team is really important for me,” Jacqui added. “I would say I manage from the top out as opposed to the top down, so it’s a collaborative approach. Everyone feels empowered to take part in that process, which is really important. No one gets anywhere alone.”

Theresa Christine is a freelance travel writer based in Los Angeles, CA. You can follow along with her adventures by subscribing to her newsletter Delve here.