As this year marks the 100-year anniversary of Tauck, I’ve been reflecting on that history, and it really is a remarkable American story.
The company has been hosting my columns on its website for 10 years, but I was a fan of Tauck decades before, based on the work it does, and its unique contributions to the travel industry and to American life.
It all traces back to the origin story: a bank employee fired for spilling coins in an elevator shaft invented a better coin tray, hit the road to sell it to banks, discovered the joys of the open road, then built a company to share that experience.
The story has been told often, and I won’t attempt to rehash it here, except to say that the whole story of the company is embodied in that origin. It’s an example of how the cornerstone elements of any enterprise remain a part of its character forever.
Most of the basic components of what Tauck has become, a vast intercontinental tour operation with hundreds of tours and cruises operating on any given day, can be seen in their nascent form in that beginning.
The original newspaper ad that young Arthur Tauck ran in 1925 could still be seen as the model of the service Tauck would turn into a global operation.
All I want is a congenial party. Ten minutes after leaving Newark, we shall be just one happy party, properly chaperoned, out for a real good time.
The company has come a long way from this, but it’s still a fairly good description of the essence of a Tauck trip.
It’s always fascinating to speculate whether a given success story would have happened if any of the basic elements had been different from what they were.
What if the bank employee had not spilled coins and gotten fired? But then, how many people in that situation would turn around and invent a coin tray, and then take it on the road? It had to be that person. There are many elements in that story, but I can name one that I believe was essential, and that is New England.
Though Arthur Tauck Sr. was based in New Jersey, the territory he staked out to sell his coin trays, and that awakened in him to the joys of travel, was New England. Eventually, the company moved to Connecticut and made New England its home.
I’m not sure he could have started his company out west where the spaces between the towns can be vast. It seems like it had to be New England.
This was not an idea cooked up in a drawing room. It happened on the road. You…
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