Gray Line New York's new programs eye Chinese market

C: What do you think of luxury travel, especially for some individual VIP?

M: Well, Gray Line does have products for private tours and private transfers for the luxury market. For example, we can provide an airport meet and greet service where someone who is mandarin speaking will greet the VIP guests as they arrive in New York, and we will provide SUV or Sedan to transfer them to their hotels. Many of our VIP guests have been to New York before, so they are not looking for the standard first time experience and we are able to take them sights in, take them shopping, take them to private art galleries to escort them on special museum tours or whatever their interests are. So we find this luxury market to be a growing market and certainly one favored by many Chinese visitors.

C: Would you like to recommend some must-buy items of Gray Line, the most popular products?

M: Yes, that is really very easy. The 48-hour hop-on and hop-off double-decker bus. We call it all loops tour which mean four tour routes in one that is our No.1 product. However, we have two new products that are growing in popularity. The first one is called Free Style New York and this is a 72-hour ticket and an opportunity to select three different attractions or meals or other tours that are part of this package. So again it ties in with our belief that visitors should make their own experiences in New York. So I would recommend that product. The next one that is new for us is growing in popularity is a sightseeing boat. We have a boat that is owned by our company a fleet of boats called city sightseeing cruises. It’s cobranded with Gray Line. And this company offers 90 minutes cruises of New York Harbor and Hudson River. And so for those people who are interested in being out on the water and getting good closesteps of the Statue of Liberty and getting great views of the New York skyline, this is a product we would strongly recommend.

C: For the tourism promotion sometimes many companies will invite some celebrities or stars to promote their products. How about Gray Line?

M: Gray Line actually has a program which we called Ride of Fame. This program honors New Yorkers or celebrities who have contributed to New York. So on our Ride of Fame we have celebrities like Donald Trump and we have some music celebrities which I don’t know if you know Cyndi Lauper, or from the south America Mark Anthony, and we have had sports securities connected the New York Yankees, the hockey team in New York. So we do have our own version of this and we have couple of more schedules for this year. Well they are not spokespeople for us we do honor them as New Yorkers for what they contribute to New York.

C: In different fields?

M: In different fields exactly. And we had Rachael Ray, you probably don’t know, but she is a chef in a show in the United States. She is one of them. And we try to get every aspect of our culture to participate.

C: What is your insight about the relationship between travel and your life?

M: I have had a good fortune to visit 76 countries in my life. Only some of those are for business and the rest on my own. Travel is my work but from the time when I was a child I always wanted to see more places. As a child I read books in stories about other countries, other cultures. From that as I grew up I started to travel. I first travelled in my own country and then I stared travelling outside, I live travel, I breathe travel, and I can’t imagine a time not to travel.

C: Travel is your life.

M: It is. I’m ready for the next trip.