Nick Mancino’s Spirited Journey

Veteran religious tour operator Nick Mancino celebrates 47 years serving faith-based groups. Learn his secret to a long career and trends he sees in the religious market in this edition of Take 5.

Leisure Group Travel: How did you get involved in the travel industry?

Nick Mancino: I went to my guidance counselor and said I needed to get a full-time job. I asked her what did she recommend?

She told me since I speak Italian and some Spanish, I should be in some kind of service field. I had no ideas what she meant. She talked about the travel industry, and so I said, “Oh, that sounds interesting.” I took a course with Meridian Travel School and they arranged for an interview with a company called Wholesale Tours, which specialized in church groups. That was my first job.

LGT: What did you do at Wholesale Tours?

NM: I started out with them as a clerk in the old days. I put their files together, put their reservation together. I commanded the funds, the checks that were received and kept a passenger list. That was my job for a good year. And then I got moved into the operations department. Within a year of that, I became the supervisor of the charters and cruise department, then they moved me into operations manager for the whole company.

Wholesale Tours was the only company that did travel for churches and the Christian market. It was a large company that chartered flights from New York to Cyprus. There, they would pick up a ship that would go from Cyprus to Beirut to Haifa to Ashdod to Alexandria.

Article source: http://leisuregrouptravel.com/nick-mancinos-spirited-journey/