WOW! Travel Club

WOW! Travel Club is not your typical travel company.

Here’s our “secret sauce”:

Not everyone can be a WOWee. We don’t market to the masses. Instead, we attract like-minded people (curious, adventurous, respectful), and get referrals from loyal WOW alumni. If you know the difference between a traveler and a tourist – you might be a good fit.

We’re not an empire, and never will be. We are privately-owned, boutique, and personal. We don’t offer dozens of trips, but carefully curate each journey with heart and soul. Which is not to say that we haven’t used our head to negotiate and organize every detail to perfection. Plus, we’re with you all the way – never passing our travelers off to an outside contractor.

We’ll put our “travel chops” up there with all the big names in the industry. Our legacy brand (The CTP Group) was founded nearly 45 years ago to provide extraordinary group travel for companies seeking to reward their top performers. We’ve been around the world and back again; from Patagonia to Puglia, Cambodia to Cuba, Galapagos to Galway – and almost everywhere in between.

The WOW! Travel Club was a natural evolution from that expertise. Ownership passed from Marilyn to her Operations Guru, Gabriel Haigazian, in 2020 – assuring that the legacy of customer care, connections, and creativity will not change.

WOW! appeals to people who appreciate what we most love about travel:

The thrill of discovery: an untrampled destination, a unique mode of transport, a family of artisans, and…
The magic of experiences: kayaking the Zambezi with a world-famous explorer, browsing through an iconic museum after closing time, petting an orphaned baby elephant, snorkeling with a whale shark, and…
The satisfaction of giving: meeting a Vietnamese mother who started a business with an $80 micro-loan so she could send her kids to school, playing tag with a classroom of 10-year-old Cuban kids, and…
The learning from immersion: sleeping in a traditional riad in Marrakech, harvesting olives in Puglia, driving a Russian tank in Prague, sipping tea in a Berber home, and…
The surprises (can’t divulge the many ways we “wow” you!), and…
The wonder that happens when we wander with an open mind and open heart.

We believe that travel is a powerful force for good – benefiting you as the traveler as well as the people and places we visit. We strive to leave a positive impact wherever we go by hiring local suppliers, supporting non-profits, and sharing a percentage of company revenues as part of our mission. Everything we do is built on three principles – Connection, Travel, and Purpose.

Based on our high percentage of repeat travelers and their many referrals, we must be doing something right!

If this resonates with you, we’re a match! Woohoo! Here’s your ticket to the wondrous world of WOW! travel.

About Gabriel

It’s a good thing I have bad eyesight. Otherwise I’d be an airline pilot – traveling all over the planet at 37,000 ft. in the cockpit of a Boeing 747-800. Instead, I travel all over the world in camel carts, rickshaws, vintage cars, helicopters, Vespas … and, yes, lots of airplanes.

My first job was as a travel agent at May Company Travel. Next I worked for Maritz, one of the world’s largest incentive travel companies. And then I was The Operations Expert for 20+ years at the best travel company – The CTP Group – which I now own!

I love a challenge – and there’s no shortage of challenges in this industry. I love to unravel the complications of how to get from point to point. I love developing relationships with suppliers who can work miracles for us. My team, including Marilyn, are passionate about serving our customers and delighting them with happy surprises. We’ve survived COVID and are eager to once again show the world to our loyal WOWees.

I’m often asked to name my favorite destination – which is typically the last place I’ve visited. My “country count” stands at 88 (as of July 2021).

And, call me crazy (as many do), but I absolutely love airports and airplanes. A favorite weekend activity is aircraft-spotting at the In-N-Out Burger on Lincoln Boulevard adjacent to LAX!

About Marilyn

As a child growing up in the Midwest, I often looked up at the vapor trails slicing across the sky and wondered: Where were they going? What was it like? and, Would I ever fly on one of those planes?

After college, I seized an opportunity to travel to Asia which turned into an 8-month solo backpacking adventure. It was a life-defining experience which opened my eyes and my heart to our great, big, wondrous world.

…Which led to my dream career – crafting exceptional group travel programs for corporations and associations. But, as passionate and proud as I was about these luxurious journeys, I yearned to create the kind of immersive, experiential travel that had touched my soul and transformed my world view so many years before.

The WOW! Travel Club concept came to me as a dream in 2004. My vision was clear: I would design journeys to extraordinary destinations along less-traveled pathways. My decades of travel experience would be used to develop cutting-edge itineraries that would be unique, unforgettable, and fun. And I would attract curious, respectful, and open-minded travelers.

Although I’m officially no longer the owner, I’m still delivering the dream with a slightly amended vision: I will use the proceeds from WOW! Founder’s Trips to fund travel scholarships for students to study abroad.

So, everyone who travels with me on a Founder’s Trip will be gifting wondrous travel opportunities to a new generation!