Page 18 - Entrepreneur-November 2018

Travel Industry

For as long as he

could remember ,

Nick Moyneur had fantasized about launching a company. But by
2014, at the age of 31, he saw no clear way to do it. Moyneur had just

concluded six years in the Navy, and he felt disoriented without the
regimented military direction he’d been used to. He was also now

married, with two young children to care for, and betting the house
on an unproven business idea was a nonstarter. “I was going over

ideas for a couple of years, and my wife kept shooting them down,”
he says. “It was too much risk for her.” And, he admits, she was right.

At a loss for what to do next, actually a viable business? says. “I wanted to do diving the IF YOU THOUGHT travel agents
Moyneur took to Google. He Moyneur wasn’t sure, but he at right way.” were obsolete, you were right,
began searching terms like least knew something about the Just before joining the Navy, to an extent. When sites like
“business opportunities for industry. His wife had worked he married his wife, Julie, in Travelocity and Expedia
veterans,” which eventually led for travel agencies for years, and 2008. His first post after train- arrived in the mid-’90s,
him to VetFran, an organization much of their lives had already ing was in Hawaii, where he customers no longer needed
that ranks veteran-friendly been centered around traveling. was assigned to Pearl Harbor’s their local brick-and-mortar
franchise companies. One of Years earlier, he’d taken Mobile Diving and Salvage agencies. And once airlines
those companies, Dream Vaca- a scuba-diving instructor’s Unit One. Julie took work as a had a direct line to consumers,
tions, was running a contest certification course while an travel agent while he deployed they stopped offering the
called Operation Vetrepreneur, undergrad at the University of to Vietnam, Singapore, Japan, commissions agents had long
exclusively for U.S. military vet- Missouri. After graduating, he South Korea, and the Philip- relied on. “The internet killed
erans: Moyneur could present decamped to an island off the pines, carrying out underseas the old-fashioned travel
a résumé, a business plan, and coast of Honduras to spend government missions. agent,” says Dave Hershberger,
a video application. If he won, three months as a dive instruc- Julie liked her job as a travel chair of the American Society
he’d receive one of five free fran- tor. Afterward he took a bus to agent and knew there was of Travel Advisors (ASTA).
chise agreements along with Costa Rica, met up with a pal opportunity there. So when “It just took them all out of
training, corporate support, and from dive school, and drove a Moyneur told her about the business.”
marketing materials—which Toyota Tacoma up through Cen- contest to win a Dream Vaca- Of the agents that survived,
is to say, a debt-free ticket to tral America and all 1,400 miles tions franchise, she finally saw a many found refuge in the
owning a travel agency. of Mexico. Once back home in business that didn’t terrify her. exploding cruise industry.
But wait—weren’t travel St. Louis, Moyneur launched With his wife’s blessing, While customers approached
agencies left for dead, no longer into a full year of intense, rigid Moyneur applied for the con- airline tickets as a basic com-
needed once people could book training to become a U.S. Navy test. Everything has led to this modity, they looked at ship
flights and hotels and tours diver. “I’d wake up at 4:30 am moment, he thought. This is travel as an experience, and
online themselves? Was this every morning to work out,” he my future. first-time cruise-goers needed

88 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / November 2018