Arnie Weissmann, editor in chief, Travel Weekly: Danny, you grew up in a travel industry family. What lessons stayed with you, in terms of both what you learned to do and not to do?
Danny Meyer, CEO, Union Square Hospitality Group: My parents lived the first two years of their marriage in the Alsace region of France, where [my father] was stationed as a counterintelligence officer in the U.S. Army. Not much was happening between Germany and France at the time, so for them, it was like an extended, two-year honeymoon. They spent their time traveling to local inns and getting to know the innkeepers, which, at that time, belonged to a loose organization called Relais di Campagna. There was another group, also: Chateau de France. They later combined and became Relais & Chateaux.
When my parents came back to the United States, he opened up a travel agency, and his specialty was sending Americans on driving trips through the French countryside, stopping at all these inns, and he became the first U.S. agent for Relais di Campagna. Some of the innkeepers’ sons and daughters came to live in our home in St. Louis and would sit at the table with us every night and then work in my dad’s office, translating material.
He became president of the American Society of Travel Agents and had a good connection with Travel Weekly. When I was 6 years old, I took my first-ever solo flight, from St. Louis to Chicago, to visit my grandparents. In those days, Delta used a paper placemat before putting down your food. I wrote on the placemat, “Dear Mom and Dad, the food on Delta was tasty, but the stewardess yakked too much.” I had spelled the word “but” “B-O-T.” I gave it to my parents, and my dad somehow had it published on the cover of Travel Weekly.
Weissmann: I had no idea.
Meyer: My father created tour groups for airline employees and their families — anyone recognized by IATA. He would aggregate all these discounts and create these unbelievably low-priced, four-day tours in Rome, Sorrento, Capri, Paris, Copenhagen, London. As my brother, sister and I each turned 20, we got to pick a country to go spend the summer and be a tour guide. And I, of course, picked Italy. So, at the age of 20, I was a tour guide in Rome, working for my dad. And I loved it. I’d be the guy who picked up the group and stayed with them for the whole tour.
What did I learn? What I learned then, which serves me today, is that, for whatever reason, however someone felt when they started the tour, I wanted them to feel a bit better when they ended the tour.
And whoever the crankiest person was, I was damn well going to make them the happiest person by day four or five. And to this day, I like doing that!