It’s been a great year for Collette. The tour operator’s sales so far are up 26 percent over last year and 2013 was a record year, finishing at 12 percent up over 2012.

According to Dan Sullivan Jr., Collette’s rebranding from Collette Vacations to simply Collette with the tagline “Guided by Travel” has been well received by its customers and travel agent partners. The company dropped “Vacations” from its brand, which had replaced the word “Tours” in 2001 — the company’s name for most of its existence since it was founded in 1918 by Jack Collette as Collette Travel Service.

Kristine Chochrek, Collette’s vice president of marketing and advertising, calls the change a “new evolution” that is reflected in the new company logo, which is simple with bold lower-case letters that represents a “more modern, friendly, updated style.”

The new brand maintains continuity with the old by keeping the familiar color green in its logo.

“Collette has a long-standing history,” said Chochrek. “We kept with the green. We’ve always identified with green. And we’re keeping the globe as an important aspect identifying that we’re a travel company.” The word “vacations” was dropped, Chochrek said, because it did not seem to fit the product. What Collette provides is much more than just a vacation.

“What we’re really selling is a total experience of what travel means to people in life,” she said. “The experiences people have on our tours go beyond just a vacation. There’s a social aspect — who they are traveling with, the connections they make. That was the goal in evolving the brand.”

In explaining its products to consumers, Chochrek said that the company has changed its language. “In talking about the tour, we’re shifting away from the term ‘escorted tour.’ We like ‘guided travel’ to showcase the added value that you get. It’s also a spin on what we do at Collette. Everyone throughout the entire company has such passion for what we do. So we’re guided by travel.”

New Website

To go along with its new brand, Collette also unveiled a new website at www.gocollette.com. The site was redesigned “to provide a more dramatic and immersive online experience for agent partners and their guests,” according to a company statement.

The new format delivers more information on the tours in a more user-friendly format with enhanced graphic content and videos. It also has more detailed information on itineraries; an enhanced search function, providing the means to search by Collette’s different tour brands, such as Family, Explorations and Royal Horticultural Society Garden Holidays; and an upgraded booking engine that gives agents a way to help clients build their tours step by step.

The new videos provide a measure of flash and vividness that goes beyond the impact of the printed word or even photography to give users the feeling of a destination that engenders enthusiasm and the desire to travel there and experience it.

The Oldest Tour Operator

Whether you call it “travel,” “tours,” “vacations” or just Collette, Collette is the oldest surviving tour operator in America. Jack Collette started out by offering transportation services and regional tours in the Greyhound Terminal in Boston’s Park Square.

The company’s first offering beyond the region was a 21-day trip to Florida that cost $61.50. Collette soon added $50 Cherry Blossom specials to Washington, D.C.

Dan Sullivan joined the company in 1945 after returning from World War II, during which he served in the Army’s Counter Intelligence Division under Gen. George Patton. He worked his way up in the company for 15 years and then in 1962 persuaded the 70-year-old Jack Collette to sell the business to him.

In 1990 Sullivan handed over the reins to his son Dan Sullivan Jr., who has continued to expand the company by leaps and bounds. Collette is constantly on the move, offering new kinds of tours, new destinations, new partnerships and new brands.

“You have to keep reinventing yourself as a company,” says Sullivan, “putting out product that resonates with your customers, and reaching out to help your sales partners get more customers.”

While Collette’s marketing and product development maintains its center-stage position in a constantly changing and evolving production, it’s the work on the ground that really drives the company’s bottom-line growth. Collette’s field operations are long established and powerful.

“By having 75 sales people, we are able to work with our partners to help them attract customers,” says Sullivan. “We work with them to provide consumer nights, webinars and so forth.”

A New Series of City Stays

In 2015 Collette will launch a new program of city stays.

“It’s something agents have been asking for,” says Sullivan. “It will be independent packages but more robust than usual, with more inclusions than just a half-day city tour. If you have six or seven days, there will be plenty of free time, but we will also offer some structured activities, like dinner at the Eiffel Tower. There will be about five structured activities in seven days.”

The product meets the requests of travel agents who want to book independent travel, but rather than putting a package together one piece at a time, they can plug into Collette’s established tour infrastructure and experience in destination management, as well as its buying power, and get an instant package at a lower price than they could get by themselves.

Expanded Waiver Policy

For 2014 Collette has changed its waiver policy to protect agent commissions on a medical emergency.

“One of the things agents have been asking for is that when clients buy the waiver policy, if they have to cancel we refund everything but the waiver up to the day of travel,” says Sullivan. “But now, under the new policy, we can also protect agents’ commission on a medical emergency.” And when clients cancel with the waiver, they get cash back, not just a travel voucher.

Digging Deeper into Panama

A tour of Panama designed to take travelers beyond the Panama Canal is another new program this year for Collette. The tour, “Discover Panama,” will take travelers across Panama to reveal a surprisingly wide range of varied landscapes in the Central American country, including mountains, rainforests, tropical gardens, UNESCO World Heritage Sites and beaches. The nine-day itinerary is built on four themes — nature, local culture, recreation and wellness, and history. It includes a three-night stay at the Gamboa Rainforest Resort for nature walks and canoe trips; a stay in the volcanic mountain region of Anton Valley, at the Los Mandarinos Hotel, for cultural encounters with local villagers and handicraft merchants; a stay at the JW Marriott Panama Golf & Beach Resort in Buenaventura for beach, spa and golf experiences; and a visit to Panama City for exploring places of historical interest, such as the UNESCO World Heritage sites of Cathedral Tower and Casco Antiguo, and the city’s Old Quarter.

The tour is priced from $1,699 per person, double occupancy, land only. It has departures available from May 2014 through April 2015.

Wheel of Fortune Partnership

Collette has become the latest tour operator to form a partnership with a major media enterprise with its new partnership with the popular TV show “Wheel of Fortune.” It is actually a deepening of a relationship forged over many years in which Collette tours are offered as prizes on the game show. The partnership has helped to heighten the visibility of the Collette brand.

In March Collette furthered its partnership with “Wheel of Fortune” to present a “European Vacation Week” promotion giving contestants opportunities to win tours to such destinations as Venice, Paris and Barcelona. During the week, a special set for the show prominently featured the Collette logo.

New approach to D.C. tour

Typical of Collette’s constant tinkering with its product, it recently revamped one of its most popular programs, its family vacation program in Washington, D.C. Collette dropped the legs to Gettysburg, Philadelphia, Amish Country and Colonial Williamsburg to focus the entire experience on Washington.

In its previous incarnation, Collette’s “American Spirit Family Discovery” was an eight-day program that included two nights in Philadelphia, one in Gettysburg, two in Williamsburg and two in Washington. But Collette discovered from client feedback that the D.C. portion was the favorite part of the trip. So it revamped the program entirely, making it a seven-day trip based solely in the national capital.

The new itinerary creates a hub-and-spoke structure that lets participants settle into a hotel room for the entire trip and make daily jaunts around the area for sightseeing and activities. It is a style of travel that is increasingly preferred to the traditional “panoramic” style of touring.

Changing the itinerary to a hub-and-spoke pattern eliminated many hours on the road. Gettysburg, 85 miles northwest of Washington, is about a two-hour drive. Williamsburg, roughly 170 miles south, is around a three-hour drive.

Collette still includes Gettysburg and Williamsburg on its “Classic D.C.” tour, part of its regular series of traditional-style tours.