From time immemorial, human beings have traveled. Hunting trips, pilgrimages to holy places, voyages to discover unknown continents... However, "A Travel for Travel's Sake" is a relatively new phenomenon. It is even more recent that traveling formed its own industry and began to be recognized as "travel industry" or "tourism." Travel industry being "young and fresh," there are a variety of business forms.
IACE (International Association for Cultural Exchange) Travel was established in New York to offer low-priced air tickets for Japanese people living in the Unites States to go home. At the time of our inauguration, airline tickets were costly even in the United States; thus "homecoming" was a luxury which not many Japanese people living in the States could afford. This was the beginning of our business as a travel agent; we started to offer discount air tickets by means of chartered flights. For the last thirty-four years since then, we have served our customers with a motto "Travel arrangement with customer satisfaction.
"Quality of products" is indispensable to customer satisfaction. I believe that the quality of our products is not that of the airline tickets or tour packages we offer, but the quality of our employees. It is when our customers are satisfied with our employees' service that they decide to buy our travel products. In this sense, our employees are our resources.
We consider corporations to be a stage, in which the employees are actors, stagehands and all the other visible and invisible staff members. When each employee plays his or her own role, in cooperation with other employees, we can satisfy our customers. We are performing a play titled "travel industry" on the stage called the "United States." We will keep up with our efforts to serve our customers-Japanese and non-Japanese alike-better, and to contribute to promoting global cultural exchanges.
