LogosTour – 30 years of passion for travel

This year, the Polish Teachers’ Union’s Travel Office, LogosTour, is celebrating 30^th anniversary of its operation. We are a mature, stable and reliable company. We are the leader in the exotic tourism area, we keep winning different prizes and rewards and we still develop, introducing new items to our offer, extending the chain of our offices and agencies. In terms of human relationships, we would call such a 30-year jubilee a “pearl wedding anniversary”, which shall make us reflect about and recall the beginnings of our unique connection with travelling.

The birth of the passion

At the beginning of the 80s, a group of enthusiasts wished to make travelling and exploring the world available for the teachers associated in the Polish Teachers’ Union. In those times, that idea was really courageous and inspiring, but a little bit crazy as well. Foreign travel required a lot of effort and accomplishing complicated formalities. You needed to have a visa to most countries and not many people were given passports. Also, our experience in tourism was quite poor. However, our hunger for knowledge and eagerness to explore other cultures were so great that we managed to overcome all the difficulties. It was only thanks to the hard work, determination and passion of the LogosTour’s workers that the first organized groups of tourists could travel to such countries as the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia or Hungary. A lot of people, then, were given a chance to cross the Polish border for the first time in their life and, in this way, they got infected with the passion and love for exploring the world, which we are so proud to have been fostering and developing until today.

New lands on the horizon

The mid-80s brought further changes and opportunities which we fully took advantage of, organizing, as the first travel office in Poland, tours to Egypt and Israel. In 1986, the first group of our tourists visited China. Next lands, explored together with LogosTour, were India, Nepal, Thailand and Australia. Soon afterwards, the RSA, Peru and Mexico. In the first year of our activity, we organized tours abroad for about 600 people. Today, we can boast of a group of over 1 million tourists, who took part in our tours, and 150 routs on 7 continents. In the years 2008 and 2009, we took more tourists to Japan than any other travel company in the whole Europe. We are also a leading tour operator for tours to Peru where we have taken over 2300 Poles for the last 5 years. LogosTour has been constantly finding new, fascinating lands on the horizon for 30 years. Our customers, employees, tour guides and friends keep suggesting new destinations they would like to explore. Dance a tango in Buenos? Wear a straw hat in Vietnam? Go to a photo safari in the heart of Africa? Experience a ride in a dog-drawn cart in Lapland? We can make all your dreams come true! We both get inspiration from our previous travels and look for new, still undiscovered lands. We are unceasingly developing our offer to be able to propose new and fascinating sightseeing programs to our Customers every year.

Full ahead

For 30 years of our activity, we have gained respect and reputation among our Customers and business partners. We are proud of our mutual successes, yet we do not rest on the laurels. We are like a ship on a sea, sometimes enjoying beautiful, sunny weather and some other time facing storms on the tourism market. This makes us take constant care of the quality of our services and the attractiveness of our offer. All the time, we are improving and creating tourist novelties. We wish to help our Customers fulfil their even most sophisticated travelling dreams, therefore our offer includes, for example, a tour to Antarctica or around the USA. Moreover, we are not forgetting about our chain’s development. Having a dozen or so agencies in Poland, last year, we opened new offices – in Białystok and Gliwice. We also cooperate with a few hundred agents in the whole country. We have taken care of our identity and image. All our units are gradually getting an elegant design, in a somewhat colonial style, associated with exciting tours and exotic countries. We have also redecorated our three-star hotel, Logos, in Kraków. Its design has changed, the menu in the restaurant has become more attractive and new offers and numerous promotions have been introduced such as “Romantic weekend for two”, “Kraków for a senior” or “For Families with Children”. The most recent undertaking is an ambitious project of a complete rebuilding and modernization of a hotel, Zenpol, situated in Zakopane. We want to turn it into a modern and exclusive facility fulfilling the expectations of the most demanding guests. Like a five-masted ship in open sea, we feel best when we have the wind in the sails and our staff and Customers can be given a command “Full ahead!”.                                         

Responsible business

For a long time, we have been aware that running tourism business in a responsible way does not only mean taking care of Customers, attending to them and guaranteeing them safety during holidays. We know that responsibility in business also consists in environment protection and sightseeing in the way that will not destroy delicate cultures in distant corners of the world and that will preserve valuable monuments of architecture and wonders of nature for the next generations.

That is why, we willingly engage in numerous social actions. We supported the WWF campaign “Souvenir that does not hurt” by educating our Customers that it is better to bring back a beautiful photo from a trip than, for example, a product made of the skin or bones of protected animals. In cooperation with Jasiek Mela’s Foundation “Beyond Horizons”, we organized a charity auction of souvenirs, the income of which was used for buying an artificial leg for a charge of the Foundation, a young mother of three children. We also participated in a campaign of the Polish Humanitarian Action (PAH) and the Polish Chamber of Tourism called “Holidays of Your Life – Let Us Help Starving Africa”. Any human tragedies, even the most distant, do not leave us indifferent. Moreover, we act in trade and business organizations – we are one of the founders of the Polish Chamber of Tourism and a member of the Business Centre Club. We believe that sharing our ideas and experiences with other entrepreneurs, we help to develop truly responsible business practices.          

Rewards for us and our Customers

Our great engagement and hard work to keep the highest service quality have been noticed and rewarded with numerous prizes for LogosTour. They belong both to us and our Customers, without whom we could not achieve such a success. We have received six times “Gazelle of Business” – a prize of “Puls Biznesu” showing a buoyant development of the company. Five times, we have been given the title of the Tourism Leader. Among our trophies, we also have the Crystal Globe of the Polish Chamber of Tourism, the title of an Ambassador of the Polish Economy from the Business Centre Club as well as the decoration of the European Integration Committee. In a contest of the Tourist News “the Rose of Columbus”, we have received two rewards for the best catalogues, “Summer 2011” and “Tours to 7 continents with LogosTour 2010”. We were also given a Laurel of Customer for “Discovery 2010”, which was introducing Tours for a Connoisseur. However, the most valuable reward for us is the trust and loyalty of our Customers. Both those who, as Polish tourism pioneers, travelled with us in 1981 and these who are still planning to join us to visit different countries on 7 continents.