A new COO at Perillo Tours, Keith Baron, is helping CEO Steve Perillo shake things up a bit at the venerable tour operator company. As Perillo tells Recommend, the family wanted to bring in “someone from the outside; first time in its 80-year history. We wanted to bring a fresh breeze into the company.”
That said, 2023 is going to be the best year in a long time for Perillo Tours, with 2024 looking even more robust, so bringing Baron into the fold is more about allowing for new ideas and new perspectives.
Baron notes that one of the things that attracted him to the company it its ties to Italy. “Everybody wants to go to Italy,” Baron says. “And demand for Italy, like nowhere else, stays strong, right? The opportunity that I see with the company is just exceptional.” He adds, too, that they’re anticipating “really exceptional revenues and profits for this year and next.”
Baron himself brings a hefty resume to Perillo Tours, having worked in senior leadership roles at some of the top tour operators within the industry. Says Baron, “Steve came to me and said, look, you’ve got this background and this history leading big brands, very successful companies, and so we had some chats and I was very receptive because I believe in Perillo Tours. This is a company that has had a legacy of exceptional delivery in-country [Italy] for decades.
“Steve asked me to come on board and effectively lead the long-term growth strategy for the organization. So, we’re excited to do that. We’ve had very good conversations and we’ve been building plans. To be fair, it’s only been about a month, but we are very aligned and we both feel quite good about the potential for the future.”
Perillo Building for Continued Growth in 2024 & Beyond
Perillo Tours, notes both Baron and Perillo, is a company “that delivers, on a very consistent basis, very high-quality products that our guests are very, very happy about. And we do that while delivering exceptional value. That’s very appealing.”
“These are very high-quality products delivered with incredible value,” notes Baron. “And the intent isn’t to move away from that. What we want to do is we want to build upon what we’ve done already. And that is effectively beyond Italy, growing Europe and the Europe portfolio.”
That said, it’s important to note that Italy is Perillo Tours’ “bread and butter,” serving as the largest continuous operation in Italy of any U.S. tour operator. “We’ve taken over a million people to Italy since 1945,” adds Perillo.
So, the executives want to make sure they enable the continuity of the operator’s stronghold in Italy and look at ways to leverage what they already do and already know through a process of continuous innovation. “We’re going to adopt this mindset of continuous innovation,” says Baron. “What I mean by that is saying, let’s look at the things that we deliver and let’s make them as good as they can possibly be while we innovate on a very regular planned basis. We don’t know in advance what we’re going to innovate, of course. But, on at least a very annual basis, we’re going to be innovating every product that exists.”
That means, he adds, bringing new things in and finding things that are pretty challenging for individuals to do on their own. “We’re going to be delivering things that our competitors are not able to do. We’re going to have innovation every year no matter what. Even if it’s the smallest thing.
“We don’t want to be in a place where we’re pulling things off of a DMC shelf somewhere. We are going to be creators and innovators, and that is what we’re going to do in Italy.
“And not just in Italy. We’ll do it beyond Italy, but I don’t think we’re quite there yet in the conversation,” Baron says.
Perillo Tours’ second European tour focus will be Greece, where they already offer itineraries, with Perillo noting that “Keith thinks that the model for Italy and Greece—we’re in Spain also and that’s growing—can be applied to other European destinations.” That said, they didn’t mention which European countries they’d be focusing on beyond those three, with more news expected to come out in 2024.
“What we need to do,” says Baron, “is deliver consistent experiences. Even if what you do, and what you eat, and what you see might be different. It’s the way we deliver it—the choreography of the experience.
“Avoiding the crowds, so you go at this time instead of the [usual] time]. All of that, which is built in, must be consistent, because that’s what our guests expect.”
Additionally, Baron says that the tour operator is looking at a faith-based portfolio, with hopes of launching it in early 2024.
The Growth of the FIT Product
Perillo Tours was founded on group tours, but as Baron notes, “there’s this whole segment of the community, the world, the country, that prefers independent travel. And travel advisors service a lot of FITs. Who better to deliver that than Perillo Tours, who are experts in delivering Italy. And if you can do it for 40 people, you can certainly do it for four people, right?”
He stresses that it’s about delivering these trips in a very bespoke way. And when it comes to being able to deliver that, Baron says the “biggest challenge is inventory. What we have in terms of inventory, though, is that we hold many, many, many hundreds of relationships. So, while we all want our preferred hotel, or our preferred option, preferred location, we have a series of backups that are generally available. What I can tell you is, at least to this point, we’re not turning people away. We find solutions to those challenges, but by and large, if guests are still coming to us for 2024, we’re able to fill their interest.”
Baron adds, too, that they will be educating travel advisors on Perillo Tours’ FIT component as well as new product coming out in 2024, but how that will happen is still in the planning stages. Possibilities include going out in person and through digital channels. “Effectively, we’re going to build a ‘Love the Travel Advisor’ model,” says Baron.
What’s New in Italy
Perillo Tours is introducing three new guided Italy tours next year; each of the new tours, ranging from nine to 12 days, highlights a different region. The 11-day Green Heart of Italy, running April to October, explores the region of Umbria, while the 9-day Renaissance Tour 2024, available March through October, visits Rome, Florence and Chianti’s picturesque hillsides and medieval towns. The 12-day Best of Southern Italy, running through March to October, takes travelers to the regions of Campania and Puglia.
In 2024, Perillo Tours will offer 10 itineraries to Italy ranging from 15 days exploring Rome, Sorrento, Florence, Venice, and Milan, to nine days in Rome and the Amalfi Coast.
For more information, visit perillotours.com/TourBooking/login-register-travel.html.
