INTRAV

The B-or-B year opened with Barney reminded of something obvious he had forgotten. He took a top sales agent out in Paris one night — the Follies, a few bars — and stayed out until four in the morning. The next day, the man, who earned $500,000 a year, was up by eight in the morning for a $6 sightseeing tour with strangers. It bothered Barney all day. This guy makes $500,000 a year, and he's on vacation, he writes. He should have slept until noon and had a private car take him on a personalized sightseeing tour.

That one missed night of sleep became a thesis. Wealthy people were buying the same tours as middle-class tourists because nobody had offered them anything else. Barney decided to build a company that offered them something else: first-class charter travel for special-interest groups — flown and hosted at a level the ordinary tour operator couldn't match.

He gave the business a new, catchier name. From now on it would be known as INTRAV.

The Orient Adventure

Barney's Far East charter, which he called the Orient Adventure, became one of the company's early signatures. He chartered a junk in Hong Kong, painted it with a sign reading Welcome, INTRAV Orient Adventure, and had it sail past arriving passengers the first time they crossed Victoria Harbor. In Kyoto, the mayor gave him keys to the city in recognition of the tourist traffic INTRAV was sending. It was his first pair of municipal keys. It would not be his last.

INTRAV's model became recursive: more specialized groups meant more charters, which meant better prices, which drew more groups. Ivan-league alumni. Dental associations. Golf clubs. Bar associations. Small museums. Each group wanted its own hook, its own theme, its own expert-led lectures — and Barney's team built them one by one, then scaled the logistics underneath them.