UnTours has always been a mom and pop shop, and we pride ourselves on our by-the-seat-of-our-pants successes over the years. It is a proud part of our founder Hal Taussig’s approach to life, travel, and business. As we’ve tightened up our operations and gone professional, we have never lost our sense of wonder or fun.
As the author of this post, I take full blame and responsibility for all that is included, omitted, or forgotten in this unofficial, off-the-cuff, incomplete, tongue-in-cheek history of a fun but complex family business. So with that caveat, here are some of our best and proudest moments at UnTours, in rough chronological order.
Highs in the 70s and 80s
1. The first UnTourists join Hal in Switzerland in 1975, following in the footsteps of Hal’s sabbatical stay at various apartments in Europe. The first UnTour is born. Staying in an apartment is a radical choice at the time, when fully escorted bus tours are the norm and things like finding an apartment or learning to use the Swiss rail system seem impossible to the average traveler.
2. Hal has no advertising budget but his charm and tireless persistence pay off in PR. Travel editor Jerry Hulse publishes a piece on UnTours in the Los Angeles Times. The free publicity helps launch UnTours and builds a base of West Coast clientele that has multiplied over the years.
3. After launching the business from their kitchen table, Hal and Norma rent their first office space in the 80s, the upper floor of a charming Victorian home on the sleepy end on the business district in Media, a half a mile from their home. They hire staff to fill it and run their growing business.
4. UnTours moves beyond Switzerland and opens new programs in northern Europe. Family members staff programs in Switzerland, Germany, and Austria as well as the British Isles, working overseas to help our guests for part of each year.
5. UnTours starts its community building, acknowledging and welcoming back loyal repeat customers. We coin the term “alumni” and offer special programs to foster their support. Our business grows largely through word of mouth. We reach out to alumni with increasingly sophisticated publications, including guidebooks we write for each destination, catalogs and other very early forms of content marketing about the travel passion we share.
6. As the political face of Eastern Europe begins to change, UnTours moves east, to Prague and Budapest. These cities combine with Vienna to offer what is briefly called the “Glasnost UnTour” and then the “Hapsburg UnTour.”
The Booming 90s
7. Travel legend Arthur Frommer takes an interest in Hal and UnTours, and he features UnTours regularly and helps us grow. In a TV appearance on Oprah, he calls UnTours one of the ten best travel bargains. Our fax machine almost breaks from all the inquiries we receive.
8. After success in northern Europe, UnTours moves south and offers Provence. It is jokingly called “the UnTour de France” around the office. It becomes one of our most successful programs, the first of three UnTours in France, and our first UnTour that requires driving.
9. In the mid 90s. inspired by a New York Times article about farm stays in Italy, Hal heads to Tuscany to pioneer the first of over a half dozen new programs in Italy. When his colleagues follow up and map out the logistics on the ground, they wonder how rural Italian driving will be for our UnTourists. Fortunately, it proves not to be a problem.
10. Hal and Norma found the UnTours Foundation. Overwhelmed by their own success, they decide to continue living simply as they have done over less successful years, and they establish the Idyll Foundation, which offer low-interest loans to create jobs and opportunities that lift people out of poverty, in poor communities locally and all over the world.
11. Hal and Norma retire from the operations of the business. Their plans to pass the torch involve sharing control with others. When Hal’s nephew Brian takes over, Hal remains engaged in the business, meeting weekly with Brian to advise him. Into his 80s, Hal continues to ride his bike to work to meet with Brian and help Elizabeth run the UnTours Foundation.
12. UnTours adds a toll-free number, at the time a rather alarming idea. Concerned staff asked if we could really afford it. What if someone wanted to hold? (We have always been penny pinchers, and there were serious concerns about this.)
13. UnTours sets up its website. The Idyllchat listserv follows, our first attempt at online community building, and it continues today. In the next decade we go on to add the UnTours Cafe, e email newsletters and a broad social media presence follows, on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest.
Y2K and Onward
14. UnTours is named the most generous company in America by JFK Jr. and the Paul Newman Foundation. Hal and family dress up and head to New York for the party (1999). More awards follow, including the Spirit of Philadelphia Award and a Philadelphia Sustainability Lifetime Achievement Award.
15. The 9/11 terrorist attacks devastate a nation. When US airspace is closed, a number of UnTourists are stranded in Europe. UnTours apartment hosts invite guests to stay longer and UnTours subsidizes stays. Guests still talk about how moved they were by the generosity and solidarity they felt with UnTours hosts in Europe.
16. UnTours destinations expand in France, Spain, Greece, and elsewhere in Europe. UnTours experiments with non-European destinations, including Vietnam (back in the 90s), Buenos Aires, Quebec City, and independent apartment rentals in the US, through the Right Vacation Rental.
17. Hal’s socially responsible business model inspires the B Corp movement, and UnTours becomes a founding B Corporation. B stands for Benefit, and Benefit Corporations must prove their commitment to people and planet as well as profit.
18. The UnTours office goes solar with the installation of solar panels on the vast roof of its current office building. It’s an 18.8 kW solar installation! We start worm composting and buy carbon offsets to mitigate the impact of employee commutes and travel.
19. UnTours branches out to sell cruises through the Marketplace website, which grows and grows into our Ventures website. We include a Cuba trip among our options, ahead of the normalization of relations. UnTours also adds Private Access Journeys, customized itineraries with high level support and luxury accommodations.
20. After a very long couple of years with the ups and downs that one can only experience in a small family-owned business, the longtime crew gather to toast 40. Many of us have grown up here, over the last 20+ years. Cheers, and thank you for your support over these years!
Please share your own UnTours moments with us.