Driving with No Brakes : How a bunch of hooligans built the best travel company in the World

Driving With No Brakes is a fascinating, inspirational book about how two courageous leaders built a remarkable company that can thrive in change and succeed in an unpredictable world. The book offers important lessons for any business leader trying to create value in the 21st century.

In Driving With No Brakes, Alan and Harriet Lewis, owners of Grand Circle Corporation, reflect on the company's successes and failures and highlight important business strategies that have propelled it to be held by many as the world's best travel company. Through the lens of Grand Circle, they demonstrate how they were able to achieve sustained business success amidst the tumultuous and highly competitive travel industry by fostering a values-based organization that embraces risk while maintaining focus on people and social mission.

In 1986, shortly after Alan and Harriet Lewis bought Grand Circle Travel, a competitor remarked that there was no way a bunch of hooligans from Boston could run a worldwide travel business. At the time, Grand Circle was a travel company with one office, $27M in sales, and was losing more than $2 million a year. Twenty-five years later, Grand Circle has grown nearly 20% per year into a highly profitable company with annual sales in excess of $600 million. The company owns or charters 60 ships, operates 80 trips in 100 countries, and employs 2,300 people in more than 30 offices worldwide. With social mission tightly woven into Grand Circle's business strategy, the company has donated or pledged more than $50 million USD to educational, humanitarian, and cultural organizations worldwide since 1992.

Grand Circle is beloved by its customers (American travelers), more than 125,000 of whom travel with Grand Circle Travel and its affiliate, Overseas Adventure Travel, each year. The company has served more than 1.5 million travelers over the years and prospered through more than 300 crises, including the 9-11 attacks, the rise of online competitors, and ongoing global political, economic and environmental challenges. Despite it all, Grand Circle continues to increase its profitability and grow at a rate of nearly 20 percent per year.

It has been a wild ride, and there were times when Alan and Harriet were literally driving with no brakes. This book tells the story of Grand Circle and of a remarkable couple's dream to build a company that would help change people's lives and of the long, hard, and fun-filled journey they took to get there.

Read what our travelers are saying about Driving With No Brakes:

This is the business person's Three Cups of Tea.

Be prepared for a rip-roaring page turner. Alan and Harriet Lewis have written a book that will inspire and surprise the reader. It is full of funny and revealing stories about how and why they built this company into a world-class success. I have been traveling with the company for years and until now had little idea of the impact that they make in the lives of the people in the countries we visit.

After well over a dozen wonderful trips with Grand Circle companies, we finally discovered the secrets that made them so meaningful and informative. The Lewises have the vision and ability to really listen and learn from their associates and travelers, and then change and improve the operation. Their many stories of successes and failures make this an interesting read.

Alan Lewis is owner and chairman of Grand Circle Corporation, the largest U.S. direct market tour operator of international vacations for older Americans, and co-author of Driving With No Brakes: How a bunch of hooligans built the best travel company in the world (September, 2010). An entrepreneur, philanthropist and agent of change, Alan has a proven track record of creating both corporate profitability and growth and innovative philanthropic programs despite the challenges presented by a highly competitive industry operating in a chaotic world.

As owner and vice chair of Grand Circle Corporation, Harriet Lewis helps drive the company's mission to enhance the lives of its travelers, its global workforce and the communities to which it travels. A former teacher, she serves as chairman of Grand Circle Foundation, the organization's charitable arm, which has pledged or donated more than $50 million since 1992 and is dedicated to supporting 100 schools in 60 villages worldwide. Along with her husband Alan Lewis, she authored the forthcoming book, Driving With No Brakes: How a bunch of hooligans built the best travel company in the world (September, 2010).