In 1933, 30 years after the Wright Brothers completed the first airplane flight, Boeing produced its first commercial aircraft, the 247. That same year, Jack Dengler of Rancho Mirage, Calif., started a travel business.
Dengler was a Navy man who had traveled the world and wanted to share the joy of travel with others. He and his wife, Helen, started to put together packages that would enable students to take bicycle tours of Ireland, Germany and England. They named the new enterprise Student International Travel Association (SITA). It was a radical vision for the 1930s, when the U.S. was deeply mired in The Great Depression. At that time, international travel was a pleasure reserved only for the rich, or the very adventurous.
Though Boeing had achieved a successful takeoff with its 247, a passenger airline industry was still almost unimaginable in the 1930s. A large portion of the population was struggling just to acquire basic shelter and sustenance. Thus, SITA’s customers crossed the Atlantic by ship.
By the time those first customers graduated from school and joined the working world, they had learned to love travel, so Dengler began offering programs for adults. He also expanded the company’s geographic palette. In the postwar 1940s and 1950s, SITA began selling packages to South Africa and India, becoming one of first companies to offer what are still considered exotic destinations. The company built a travel infrastructure that would provide firm grounding in these destinations decades later as they started to move toward the mainstream of the travel industry.
Dengler pioneered other destination markets. At one time SITA was a leader in charter packages to the Philippines and also enjoyed a period as a leader in travel to Hawaii. When Pan American Airlines offered around-the-world service that headed east across the Atlantic and returned from the west over the Pacific, SITA created destination packages to go with the flights. Customers could create itineraries with stops in Europe, India, Africa, China, Japan and Hawaii.
By the late 1950s, SITA had 22 branches worldwide. In the early 1960s, the Denglers sold the company to Diner-Fugazy, the travel division of Diners Club, the creator of the first charge card. In 1982, SITA North America was acquired by its present owners, Roger Mahal and Mok Singh.
Mahal was born in Lyallpur, India, which is now named Faisalabad and part of Pakistan. In 1947, during the political and social upheaval that split India into two countries, Mahal’s family moved from Lyallpur to Punjab, “the land of the five rivers,” on the Indian side of the newly drawn border. He studied engineering at Punjab University, then moved to Guildford, England, and earned a Master’s degree from the University of Surrey.
Trained with the analytical, problem-solving skills of engineering, in 1971 Mahal moved to the U.S., qualified for his engineering license in Missouri and began pursuing a career as an engineer. While he was in Kansas City, he met Mok Singh and struck up a friendship that would endure for many years. Ten years after becoming friends, they would go into business together.
Singh was also from India. Born in Shimla, he graduated from St. Stephen’s College in Delhi and emigrated to the U.S. He earned a degree in travel administration and management from Columbia College of Missouri and went to work at Wilson Travel in Kansas City. It was while he was working for Wilson that he met Mahal.
After three years at Wilson Travel, Singh relocated to Los Angeles and took a job with Chicago-based Patson Travel as director of sales. He worked his way up to vice president of sales and marketing, and in 1981 decided to go out on his own. He called on Mahal to go into partnership. Mahal was then working as chief engineer for a Houston-based petrochemical company, but with his multicountry life experience and education, he felt he wanted to move from engineering to something more expansive.
Engineering was, in its way, good training for the logistical problems of the travel industry -- “It makes you very analytical,” says Mahal -- but it did not satisfy all of his aspirations. “I always took great pleasure in traveling and interacting with people,” he said. “Though engineering was gratifying in its own way, I felt my desire to interact and move about was being neglected. So when this opportunity came along, even though it seemed somewhat of a gamble, it was an adventure I was willing to embark upon.”
In 1981, Singh and Mahal started Travel Promotions Inc. in Los Angeles. It was a tour operator, an air consolidator and a general sales agent for a number of airlines. And when SITA became available in 1982, they jumped on the opportunity.
The purchase turned out to be a wise move. The company represented a long, solid tradition in the travel industry, and it retained an institutional memory that was a great asset to its new owners. “When I came to the company and would go visit travel agents, people had a very good impression about it,” says Mahal. “SITA had earned a great name for service, integrity and the packages they were offering. I still run into some old time travel agents who used to work with SITA in the ’50s and ’60s.”
The company has worked hard to maintain the standards of its traditions, and to build on them. “When we took over SITA, we concentrated on the tour products we have now,” says Mahal, “including India, Africa, Asia and China. Then we added Australia and New Zealand, South America, Greece and European river cruising. We’ve also been representing some exotic trains; luxury trains of the world; such as the Palace on Wheels; a few other trains in India; and some trains in Africa, such as the Blue Train and Rovos Rail.”
A trademark sideline for SITA is its solar eclipse tours. “Virtually every year we have a solar eclipse somewhere, usually in exotic locations,” says Max Ali, director of operations. “We’ve operated eclipse tours to India, Mongolia, Uganda and Zambia. We’re having one in China near the Mongolia border this year. It will take place just before the Olympics. In 2009 we’ll have one of the longest eclipses of the last century, 11 minutes, over the Sea of Japan.”
Celebrating its 75th anniversary, the Student International Travel Association has shrunk its name but grown far beyond its roots as a supplier of travel to students in the 1930s. Now SITA World Travel, it still draws on the tradition of three quarters of a century.
SITA has six offices in the U.S. and Canada: Los Angeles, New York, Houston, Chicago, Toronto and Vancouver. Mahal, the chairman and CEO, watches over the tour and package side of the operation. Singh, the president, takes care of the aviation division, working as the general sales agent for more than a dozen airlines. The company has its own IT division, which develops software for the company
Under its present ownership, SITA is pushing 30 years, and its senior staff carries years of experience. Ali has been with the company 16 years. Susan Neva, the manager of Africa and the South Pacific, 13 years; Pete Sohi, the manager of the Asia and South America division, 11 years; and Laudie Hanou, vice president of the tours division, five years.
“Our staff at SITA maintains very consistent service,” says Hanou. “Our specialists have been with SITA 10, 15, 18 years. They have a lot of experience. They are very loyal and knowledgeable. We work hard to maintain work that is consistent with that tradition. We make sure everything we do, from speaking to agents to providing proposals, conducting seminars and producing brochures, is well done and well received.”
SITA operates five or six fams a year to educate agents about its products in exotic destinations. “It generates a lot of business,” says Ali. “It’s a fun trip for them, and they come back able to sell the destination much better. They get excited about the destination and what we do, how we do it.”
The company is investing a lot of resources into its software and automation, according to Mahal. “Of interest to travel agents, we’re revamping our website,” he said. “We’re going to have a booking engine on the site through which agents will be able to log in and create their own customized itineraries. It should be operational by October.”
The independent, custom-travel side of the business is growing faster than the escorted side. “The ratio is now about 60/40 independent to escorted travel now,” says Mahal. “The baby boomers tend to travel more independently, with their families, children and grandchildren.
“At this stage we are very excited about the future,” he adds. “Even with the economy down, we’re still seeing growth over last year.”
Increasingly SITA, is finding growth in its high-end business and is adjusting its product line accordingly. “We specialize in luxury and deluxe product,” says Hanou. “We do have first-class product, but we’re seeing the greatest growth in luxury.”
For more information, call 800-421-5643 or visit www.sitatours.com.