When Maria Tilton joined Cruise Planners/American Express, she came with an interesting résumé. After high school, she went to cosmetology school and worked as a hairdresser for 11 years. Then she answered an ad from a local home builder and ended up running a construction site for 13 years. Not the sort of credentials that usually lead someone to the travel industry.
“I had no travel agent experience,” Tilton admits. “The only experience I had was traveling myself.” But she had done a lot of traveling. She and her husband, Jason, fell in love with cruising on their honeymoon trip to the Caribbean in 1996. Fifteen cruises and some 52 countries later, Tilton’s dream was to share the travel bug with others through a business of her own. So when the economy slowed down–and her construction job along with it–she saw her chance to finally make that dream come true.
How quickly did you go from deciding to join Cruise Planners to opening your business? Read on…