Our annual Tour Manager event took place in Rome, my favorite city. Over 100 tour managers descended on this beautiful place and we spent a day discussing the 2024 season and our 2025 vision.

Our main themes were Global Travel, Sustainability and AI. Many tour managers were unfamiliar with Rome, so it was a chance for them to do some sightseeing, stroll the piazzas, refresh some history, and potentially prepare for trips down the road. Rome was all a sparkle, with its Christmas decorations giving London a run for its money. The nativity scene at St Peter‘s and the extraordinary Fendi building decorated like a Christmas parcel were highlights. The lights along the Via del Corso and the Spanish steps were spectacular and still, there were the chestnut sellers on the corner to remind us all of a time past. Christ Rams Market scene in the Piazza Navona is always fabulous. As Rome prepares for the Giubioleo in 2025, the monuments are slowly being uncovered after restoration. 

Tour Managers are the last and most extraordinary part of our sales and marketing machine, whether they are practicing their profession in central or South America, Japan, Africa, or Europe they bring the pieces together that ensure that our groups, our group leaders will return refer and repeat for years to come. They are the secret ingredient to ACIS. They are extraordinary. They speak more languages than we could all even think about and they love what they do.  80% of them do not work for us full-time. They have a whole pot of professions, incredible, interesting, and innovative. In addition, they take some time out to do this for a few weeks.

Some practice the art full-time. We are very lucky. Without the good hands and incredible care these guys bring to the job, we would be missing such a huge part of what we do. They transfer knowledge, they create an atmosphere of curiosity to encourage students to take chances, and to move outside of their comfort zone. Most importantly, they help to make the world a better place by creating an atmosphere of tolerance and adventure for tomorrow’s leaders.

The Tour Managers have 9 to 10 days to turn on a fountain of knowledge and curiosity. It’s one of the most exciting meetings that we do all year. Every year we move it around. Last year Lisbon this year Rome, the year before Barcelona and next year, who knows but one thing is for sure: this team of more than 100, helps transform our quality product into a magical experience that creates a thirst for thirst for travel. Nearly all of the students who travel on an ACIS trip will do a semester abroad. Most of them will speak or learn to speak a foreign language. Over this week, the students and their incredible teachers are witnessing an opportunity of a new adventure that they will look back on in years to come as a catalyst for something quite profound

Thank you to all of these remarkable people, as we face the new challenges of travel, move through the myriad of AI possibilities, and seek to make our country and our company evolve into a responsible travel provider amidst the challenges of global warming and sustainability. We have an exciting road ahead. As we move our product globally to take people to places new and exciting. We are looking forward to another fantastic year of Travel. Travel Changes Lives.

And so, it was. Uzbekistan. A country miles and miles away, with centuries of history and capitals that blow away the imagination. The Silk Road. Genghis Khan and Imir Timur.  Deserts and mountains and a civilization that has lived through a kaleidoscope of change. Cities that were on the natural trading routes for centuries. Samarkand, Tashkent and Bukhara. And here we were. In this magic kingdom of 36 million people that had defied the winds of time and escaped the tourist route.

We had arrived through a non-stop flight to Istanbul.  Ironically, the end of the Silk Road.  It was a short 4 and a half hours to Uzbekistan’s capital city, Tashkent. 

First impressions. Modern, overcast and chaotic and in rebuild mode. Post Soviet hangover, New Music Hall, open squares and beautifully designed and open spaces.  The omni present statue of Imur te Mur sits outside the hotel Uzbekistan.  A former Soviet hotel that has been spruced up to provide a light show in the evening.  The main open square by the arts and music center carries an extraordinary statue to commemorate the earthquake in Tashkent in 1966. It depicts a family shielding themselves as the earth opens up beneath them.  We went to the Khast Imam complex. 

The marketplace is one of the oldest in Tashkent. Linked to a myriad of canals and an old City that boasts bazaars and a different pace of life. We did sightseeing on foot and connected across the city using the amazing Metro which reminded me of the Moscow metro.  Hammer and sickle tiles had been dutifully erased!  Our delightful guide walked us and metroed us through this city and it was quite delightful.  It reminded me in the evening of Baqu with skyscrapers and light shows scattered around.  A good place to start.

We decided to base ourselves in St Remy, a beautiful town, not far from Aix en Provence that sits in the heart of Provence itself. For some bizarre reason, I had never been to Provence, so this was an opportunity to discover some of the heartland of this incredible place. We took in the big places like Arles and Avignon and Aix and the small areas that sit along the Luberon village path.

They are strung out like a necklace through the Alpille landscape. The highlight for me was probably a visit to a museum of antiquities in Arles on the other side of the river from the town itself and home to a 30 m , barge that had survived in the silt of the rhone river for 2000 years.  There were incredible mosaics and statues, and all the paraphernalia that you would associate with the first Province outside of Rome! Provence is home to lots of firsts. A papal first in Avignon where many popes resided for nearly 100 years.

The charming half bridge of nursery rhyme fame. My first French song!! And then there was just the wonder of all of the things around and about that the Romans came  to put down and I’m always reminded of the life of Brian and the Monty Python guys when somebody shouts out “what have you done for us lately“ and then somebody points out that the Romans not only built civilization, but they provided pretty much all of the stuff that we would take for granted in modern day life.  My favorite village was Roussilon, the stunning red ochre village with narrow streets that must’ve been used on a movie set somewhere in some film. Quite spectacular and the water wheel village of Isle de Sorgues where there were markets, not to mention the vineyards, the food and the people who were absolutely delightful and forgave my terrible French at every interaction.

The drive to Nice gave us an opportunity to stop and see the extraordinary Matisse Chapel in Venice before reacquainting myself with Nice and the buzz of the old town and the promenade along the cobblestone beach. You should try to visit all these places. These please are easy to get to, just a fast train ride to Avignon or Marseilles from Paris on the TGV and if you are lucky enough go see or stay in St Remy where Van Gogh  checked himself into the hospital there for a year. It’s a tranquil place and VG painted many of his finest works there.

Those of you traveling out there, the National Gallery in London has one of the largest and most sensational collections of VG to ever feature under one roof. It’s an exhibition that runs from now all the way through the end of January. Breathtaking. There’s a reason these guys came down to Provence. The light. The consistent flora and the sheer size of the Roman influence. And the mighty Rhône zig zagging down to the Camargue.