Cruise lines Viking and Holland America and the Four Seasons hotel chain are co-sponsoring a new off-Broadway comedy about a pair of travel agents.
‘Craving for Travel’ is the brainchild of Jim Strong, who owns a $40 million-a-year luxury travel company in Dallas and wrote two self-published books with the same name as the play.
The show is open to the public but a number of performances have been bought out by travel-related businesses.
A recent preview audience was filled with travel agents and hotel employees who laughed in recognition at the characters’ familiar predicaments – like a last-minute request for rooms at a top resort over Christmas, and a stranded traveller’s plea for help after booking his own disastrous trip to China online, Travel Agents Central in the US reported.
Director and co-writer Andy Sandberg said he was “a little suspicious” when Strong first approached him, until he realised he “wasn’t looking to do an infomercial”.
He wanted to do a legitimate theatre piece while doing something that boosted the profile of his industry and fighting the impression out there that travel agents are a dying breed with the rise of mass market online travel.
Sandberg and co-writer Greg Edwards interviewed 30 to 40 people in the travel industry, gathering stories for the play that include an elderly couple planning a last grand trip and someone with a “delusional request” to take the USS Intrepid – a World War II aircraft carrier now used as a museum – for a private joyride.
Actors Michele Ragusa and Thom Sesma portray some 30 characters, starting with a pair of rival (and formerly married) travel agents, sometimes on the phone with each other, sometimes on the phone with needy customers, but always managing to meet impossible demands.