Debra Asberry
Founder
Hi, I'm Debra Asberry.
I'm still asked by women to share the story of how Women Traveling Together® (WTT) came to be. I'll just cover the high points.
DATE WITH DESTINY
In early 1997, I had a chance conversation with a woman who shared with me her frustration trying to find a travel companion. Her words reminded me of my own struggles to find someone to go rafting with me. That conversation would become the seed that eventually grew into Women Traveling Together
At the time I published a regional magazine in the Washington, DC/Baltimore area. No one – and I mean no one – in my family or circle of friends thought starting a women's tour company was a good idea. After all, I had a successful business that I would have to walk away from to devote the kind of time needed to get a tour company off the ground.
To clear my head of the well-meaning opinions of others, I flew across the country to La Jolla, California to attend a Tony Robbins' Date with Destiny event in the summer of 1997. The picture you see here was taken while I was at Date with Destiny. I was 39 years old. Even before I returned home, I knew Women Traveling Together was going to be my destiny
FROM IDEA TO COMPANY
To be honest, I knew little about the industry when I decided to start Women Traveling Together. A friend who owned a local travel agency taught me the basics of organizing group travel, but everything was based on serving couples and families. I wanted to understand what women needed and expected from a group travel experience. Over seven months I interviewed women primarily in their 50s and 60s, married, widowed, single and divorced, and from all walks of life, to establish the guiding principles of WTT
Women Traveling Together did not stay a one-woman operation for long. I have been fortunate to be surrounded by many talented women (and a few men) who have helped me make WTT what it is today.
The first person I recruited was my father – Ray Cannon – who built the initial customer database program for WTT. My father provided programming support for many years until his passing in 2015.
Since that time the system has been moved onto the Internet, giving WTT staff the ability to work remotely when needed. Our client services application is very much behind the scenes, but it gives us the capabilities of companies many times our size to create tours efficiently, manage reservations quickly, and make client data accessible online through our secure "MyWTT" portal.
My mother – Hazel Cannon – came to work for WTT as the first employee in 1998 and just recently retired. So many of you have interacted with Hazel over the years and know her as the friendly voice on the other end of the line, be it phone or email. The many tasks Hazel was responsible for when WTT was a smaller company have now been split up among several staff members in our Annapolis, Maryland office. Our office staff has grown from my mother to over a dozen who craft our tours and provide personalized support to our travelers. It's a great group of women, a fun work environment and we enjoy the work we do.
The Sacred Way,
Beijing, China
The Matterhorn,
Switzerland
Pre-Aztec Complex,
Mexico
Crater Lake National Park,
Oregon
I hired WTT's first Tour Leader in 2001 when I could no longer run a business and lead an ever-growing number of tours by myself. Today we have more than 40 Tour Leaders who are the face of WTT on each tour. Their job is to handle the logistics of the tour, but more importantly, to build group cohesion and to help each traveler get the most out of her vacation.
Nowadays my job is less about designing and leading tours and more about providing the vision and direction for the future. Someday my journey will diverge from Women Traveling Together. I have the utmost confidence WTT will continue to thrive without me. But it will always stay true to its original purpose - to support women traveling solo so that together each of us can realize our individual travel dreams.
