This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio.
It's been a big week.
Where are I guess maybe a couple of weeks where we've talked a lot about travel and hospitality. We had Booking Holdings and Expedia. They reported earnings last week, posting double digit increases in gross bookings in the first quarter or so, Matt, showing that there's strong demand for travel despite high rates of inflation in a cloudy economic outlook.
So people are traveling.
Yeah, absolutely, especially good you had the last year you had the revenge travel. Correct, But it seems that there's really short supply still in terms of planes out there, hotel room they'll.
Fully booked it off an overbook exactly.
So I think everybody is eager to get at it and it's but it's more expensive ye then you would expect after this long And it's also difficult to get spots, like you said, in the plane, in a hotel room, you know, wherever you're going. Well, I guess some places are easy, but wherever I'm going, it's not so easy to get USA space.
Well, it's even our guest has to say about that because Perilo Tours, their family owned travel company. They've specialized in travel to Italy for about eighty years or almost eighty years. Steve Perulo is a third generation owner president of Perilo Tours and he joins us on Zoom from Woodcliffe Lake.
New Jersey. Steve, it is nice to have you here Bloomberg Business Week.
What are you seeing when it comes to travel demand? Talk to us a little bit about it, Hi, Carol.
Everyone in the travel business this year feels like they're a marketing genius and we're sold it out. We've never been sold out by May fifteenth before. We're not marketing geniuses. We have three years of pent up demand happening in one year. And if I had known, I would have because we priced and arranged these tours a year before, so we did this last year. I would have increased the prices and said I kept the prices to the
same as last year. And so we sold out instantly, Greece instantly, Spain gone, Oh, why there's still some room. We still have some tour space. And for some towns, especially in Italy, the only way you'll get into a hotel is by using hotel rooms that were reserved by
tour operators. They have tours and packages, so you could go independently as well, But if you want to get into a Malfie or downtown Florence or Tuscany, it's gonna be tough on your own if you don't go through a travel agent or a tour operator.
So what's the problem. Is it just that there's so much demand or is there also less supply. We've had a lot of businesses that shut down during the pandemic and not all of them have opened back up. Is that true as well? In Italy and Greece and Spain.
A little more last year, Matt This year, they got their act together and the workers came back. What they're doing, as any hotel owners should do, is they're raising their rates, they're cutting out the middleman and they're they're they're getting the money they needed from the last two years that they lost, and they should do everything they can. And that's hurting us, it's hurting everyone really, But you know
what's happening. There's going to be a recession probably later this year, and things going to calm down and life will get back to normal.
So wait, so you're you're booked up, correct.
For the most part.
Yeah, it's crazy.
So last year this time, Steve, were you booked up?
No, last year we nineteen was the year to be, twenty was zero, twenty one was zero, and twenty two was about seventy five of a normal year, and this year one hundred and twenty five percent of a normal year.
Steve, let me ask you about Venice specifically.
We were just shown some footage and it was some of the flooding that we have certainly seen in Venice over the last few years.
I'm just I'm just no, no, I mean, Venice is just it's often flooded. I know, I was. I've probably been there five or six times in the last three years, and at least half the time it's flooded. It's fine
you walk up on these risers. But the coolest thing to me about going to Venice post pandemic is that they stopped the giant cruise ships coming in and it really made the whole experience more pleasant for me because there are far fewer tourists there are the cruise ships back or is Venice still you know again, a really pleasant place to go and it really kind of it feels out of the way when there's no giant cruise ships there, and you can find a little hole in
the wall restaurant and you feel like you're kind of on your own. You've discovered it by yourself.
Yeah, Matt, the cruise ships are still coming. They're not allowed to dock. They came into the Grand Canal. Imagine these giants, six thousand passenger cruise ships coming down the Grand Canal like splashing water all over the place. So they moved them to a whole different area by the Leado to park there and move the people. So the people on the cruise ships are still they're they're coming back with a venge of these But you know, Venice is trying to figure out a way to like charge
admission to the town, which they might have to do eventually. Right.
I'm glad I saw it for those brief few months.
Pricing here in New York City. It's coming, so you do it, congestion pricing in Venice, Steve, what is it that travelers are looking for right now?
They're looking forward to get back out there.
But I mean when they go on a trip, what do they want? What are they looking at? Do they not care? Because they've just they just want to be out there or what specifically.
It depends on the market. You know, we have a tour market as an older market. It's a it's a baby boomer and a gen X market, and they and that that market has evolved over the last twenty years into a much more sophisticated market that hasn't changed. So they want to see, you know, the greatest hits of the world, as I do.
The Paleo in Siena, the big horse race. There are you sold out for that? You still got a spot for Steve? What's that? July and June?
I can get you two bleacher seats if you want them. I can get you two seats.
What are the hottest events? You know, you've got stuff like that, very old school, and then you've got you know, Formula one kind of the newer modern stuff that's also amazing to see at Manza in Italy? What are the hottest events for you guys?
And well, we don't yell in hot events because that's no way to make money. There's the hotels are gouging, everyone's you know, clutched it around the event. There's a big golf tournament in Rome and September there's a La Manza and there's a bunch of things happening.
But Montepulciano we go there for a wine festival.
That's the that's the center of Kiyanti region. Me Monte, it's really really good. We also go to San Jiminiano, which is another If you can get to Tuscany in your lifetime, you have died and gone to heaven and there's some space. We can still get you space. You got to go through somebody who has the space now because you can't get it on the open market.
Hey, you talk about you know, your tours tend to be you know, skew older. I mean, what do you do to though ultimately attract a younger generation.
You would alter the product the product. But in the travel business, if you want to make money, as my father taught me, you deal in groups, and older people like to travel in groups. Groups are fun, they become a family. It's not for young people necessarily.
And so you do have active adventure tours though.
Oh we have customized Italy, completely customized, so you can do anything you want. We can send you on bicycle tours or kayaki tours, all that stuff. This is what we do for individuals. But as far as money making, you know, in the in the travel business, you want to get groups together, you want to get cruise ships together, you want to get individual traveler ring and says, no way. People do that for the love of travel and the making travel rangers. But to make money, you know, a
la carte like that. It's it's it's not a it's no way to to get rich. That's what my father taught me.
What do you like in Spain? Steve? The Alhambra is one thing that I was lucky enough to go to a couple of times and it blew my mind. I love Andalusia, but obviously people like to go to the running of the bowls up north in Pamplona. What do you like in Spain?
I love the horses, the Andalusian horses and being around them and riding them. I love the olive oil in Spain, that's the number one, you know. Gris gets their olive oil from Spain and Italy gets from Spain and then they process it. It's unbelievable. And the food and the paye and the flamenco, and this is what we offer on our trips as well.
The flamenco. You got to see in Sevilla.
Hey, just got thirty seconds left. I mean you guys though, do things all around the world.
Is it still Italy where everybody is that the bulk of your business still? And just got about twenty five seconds.
I got lucky with my family business going to Italy. It's the number one destination for Americans. It's been like that for years, it is currently this year. It's almost too much. It's almost too much.
Where do you go?
Hey?
Where ten seconds? Where do you go when you want to break?
Uh? Stay home? No, everyone likes Positano a Malfi, that area having on earth if you want to have a yeah, Lee Moncello and Mozadella. Oh my god, perfect fude.
Steve is hungry too. We're all hungry.
We all got to just go there, Steve, thank you so much.
A great summer.
Steve Perulo, President of Perulo Tours with us on Zoom in New Jersey.