06/05/2021
Aside from being the President of Weill Associates, Geoffrey Weill is, first and foremost, a published writer, photographer and passionate traveler. Having visited over 100 countries he quickly turned his passion into a career by opening WEILL, a public relations company specializing in travel and tourism.
Earlier this year, in February, Geoffrey published his first book, All Abroad, a memoir about a man’s hunger for travel, and his love for journey around the world.
Geoffrey Weill has been working with Inkaterra for almost 20 years and we couldn’t be prouder and happier to reveal and share the news with our community of travelers.
What first drew you to the travel and tourism industry?
From a very early age (six) I was obsessed with travel, trains, planes and, particularly, hotels. So that when certain career possibilities were either nixed by my parents, or unrealistic, I entered a business that was for me “playtime” rather than “work.” I’ve been lucky to be able to transform a passion and a hobby into a successful career.
How did you first hear about Inkaterra?
To be frank, I am not entirely sure – it was 18 years ago. I think somebody recommended us to Nacho, who met me in New York, and it went from there.
When did you start working with Inkaterra?
In February 2004. My wife and I flew to Lima, met Joe and Denise, and I think it fair to say it was a pretty mutual love affair from Day #1. The four of us flew to Reserva Amazonica, we loved it, and then we traveled on to Machu Picchu. On our first morning at Inkaterra Machu Picchu Pueblo Hotel, my wife rose at 4AM to take the train to do a short Inca Trail hike and to meet me at Machu Picchu at noon. Joe took me for a walk through the grounds and high into the hills above the hotel, when I tripped and broke my ankle. It was a never-to-be-forgotten introduction to a new client and I think what followed converted a business relationship into friendship.
When did you start Weill Associates?
June 1, 1995.
What does travel mean to you?
In a word, everything. It is an overriding passion, interest and obsession. My interest has always been more in the modes and circumstances of the actual traveling, and less in the actual touring. My passion combines the joys of the journey with feeling at home on six continents.
Could you give us a summary of what your book “All Aboard” is about?
What inspired you to write your book?
I think 6 and 7 are combined, so I will answer them together. The book is about a young boy who grew up in a somewhat claustrophobic and neurotic atmosphere, born five years after WW2 in a London very much still scarred by the Blitz. The boy was born into an unusually interesting family with one lineage dating to 1381 in Germany, another to the 1100’s in Spain, another to the 1750’s in Morocco, another to the 19th century in Ireland…and whose peregrinations around the world contained endless and curious stories of traveling.
He was also born into a family dynamic that was complicated, difficult, full of emotional turmoil and dangers, and into a system of privilege that was poisoned with antisemitism. And it’s about how that boy sought dreams of travel as a psychological escape, and eventually a physical “escape” from the confinement of England to the enormity of New York. It concentrates on the first 23 years of his life, with idiosyncratic leaps into the future: his relationships, his travels, his work, his experiences.
The book is also a collection of ephemera about how international travel developed; about how the invention of photography and the group tour were coincidental but timed identically; about how travel is sold and marketed and how much of the aura of travel is about “having been somewhere” more than it is about the actual expectation and the actual going.
Will there be other books in the future?
Yes. One is already in process. A historical novel, based on two great uncles who never met, one from my father’s, one from my mother’s sides. Both their lives were checkered with good and bad fortune, both their destinies were guided by sex, and both died tragically: one of a then-incurable illness, and the other was murdered.
What piece of advice would you give travelers of today?
Not to wait. To travel. Cheaply if you can’t afford more, extravagantly if that is possible. But to go. In my book I talk a lot of the “Golden Age of Travel,” that supposedly glamorous period from 1910 to 1939. I argue that travel was always fabulous, or it was always vile. And so it is to this day. I describe nostalgia as a waste of time – because if you were wealthy enough to cross the Atlantic in First Class on the Queen Mary, of course it was wonderful. But if you could only travel in fourth class on a crummy train, it wasn’t golden, but it was still magical. My point is that dwelling on the Good Old Days is pointless, because in reality, they were only marginally good. They were just old.
To each person, travel means something different. To some it means a beach and relaxation. To some it means learning and discovery. The lucky ones are able to combine the two. In a very personal sense in terms of “today,” my message is “wear a mask, wash your hands, and GO.” I have crossed the Atlantic six times since the pandemic began, have traveled, discovered, enjoyed, been enthused and enthralled, and I have stayed safe. Now that I am vaccinated, I will be returning to travel as often and as far and wide as before 2020.
In the 1878 words of Robert Louis Stevenson, “For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.”
How do you see the future of travel?
In the short term, I believe that once the “frequent travelers” are sufficiently vaccinated, their travel will bounce back with startling speed. But it will be changed by the pandemic. Business travel will suffer the most, because a year of lockdown has taught us all that the necessity of flying to Los Angeles to sit in a conference room and watch a power-point presentation is utterly unnecessary.
Conversely, while “virtual travel” via video has kept the desire of travel alive and thriving, it has happily not replaced the real thing. The minute that people understand it is safe to travel, and countries open up, vacation travel will surge back. They have also had a year to decide what and where is important to them: sightseeing, food, history, learning, sustainability and the environment. A year of not traveling has helped clean the air, and there will be some reluctance by the educated, the intelligent, the curious, and the responsible, to rebuild a clogged and carbon-filled planet. I am hopeful that the pandemic has underscored the lesson previously appreciated by only the intellectually curious few, that the planet and our existence on it is enormously fragile, and we must protect it.
In the long term, travel will be back to normal by 2024 or early 2025. Human nature is human nature and there will be desire to “live” again. We must not forget that after the horrors of World War I, and then the Spanish ‘Flu of 1918-1920 that killed 50 million people, there came all the wonders and the excesses of the Roaring Twenties, that collapsed with Wall Street.
The short term and truly encouraging pause in “overtourism” will, as the 2020’s progress, regrettably, be just that: a pause: except in a few unique cases, where a fixation with preserving the environment is stronger than the desire to roll in the dollars, pounds, Euros and rubles of the masses.
What do you believe it takes for a hospitality brand to succeed/survive today?
Some brands are going to be in trouble, and as bizarre as it may sound, I believe there is going to be a general reluctance by the traveling public to stay in hotels where the windows do not open, or to cruise in ship cabins that do not have balconies. The fact that Covid-19 is airborne is going to sink into people’s consciousness and all those skyscraper hotels with sealed windows, and the thousands of cheap Holiday Inns, etc., whose windows don’t open, are going to be, I suspect, in trouble for a year or so, until people forget…which, of course, they eventually will.
The brands that will prosper instantly, and will continue to do so, are the specialty brands, the ones with unique “angles.” Inkaterra is such a brand. Its weltanschauung, its determination to protect the environment, will stand it in good stead as a leader in the new normal. We will return to a “normal” where good service, good quality, value for money will win business.
We will also experience, in the next 24-36 months, particularly by Americans, an even higher than normal reliance on the big brands who they consider have always kept them safe, whether it was the Hiltons of the 1950’s or the Four Seasons of the 2010’s. But the cognoscenti, will be back to the luxe safaris, the environmentally aware resorts and camps, and the elite resorts of the super-rich.
What are some unique characteristics you think Inkaterra possesses in the environmental and socio-cultural aspects?
As stated in the previous paragraph, the cognoscenti, will be back to the luxe safaris, the environmentally aware resorts and camps, and the elite resorts of the super-rich. Inkaterra’s unique combination of chic, taste, quality and class, interwoven with its carbon neutrality and environmental commitment, will stand it in good stead to be a renowned leader for the wealthy but responsible traveler as the 2020’s become the 2030’s.
