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About Grand Circle

A fast-moving global enterprise committed to changing people’s lives, Grand Circle Corporation specializes in vacations of international discovery for Americans age 50 and older. The company has served more than 1.5 million travelers since 1958. Grand Circle is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, and has more than 2,300 employees in more than 30 regional offices worldwide.

Grand Circle chairs Alan and Harriet Lewis acquired Grand Circle Travel in 1985, and since then have worked to create a dynamic, fast-growing, award-winning company that has never lost sight of its commitment to

  • offering high-impact experiences to its travelers;
  • creating a stimulating workplace for its employees;
  • focusing on financial growth for its stakeholders; and
  • building strong local communities through philanthropy and volunteerism.

Every Grand Circle vacation is geared, paced, and priced to meet the needs and interests of experienced travelers. And every Grand Circle vacation features exclusive educational and cultural activities that connect travelers to the local people and their history, culture, and environment. To give travelers the freedom to choose the vacation that suits their style, Grand Circle offers three brands:

  • Grand Circle Travel, the 52-year-old leader in worldwide discovery for seasoned travelers
  • Overseas Adventure Travel, the 32-year-old provider of small group discovery on the road less traveled
  • Grand Circle Small Ship Cruises®, the 12-year-old leader in international small ship vacations

Grand Circle Travel

Launched in 1958 to serve American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) members, today Grand Circle Travel offers its unique international vacations to all older Americans. Key to Grand Circle’s popularity are the pillars upon which every vacation is built: comprehensive value, leisurely pacing, varied choice, and cultural discovery. Grand Circle travelers enjoy four vacation options: Escorted Tours, extended-stay vacations, River Cruises, and small ship ocean cruises offered through Grand Circle Small Ship Cruises. Grand Circle’s trips take them as far as the Great Wall of China and as near as the Canadian Rockies. Italy, Spain, Egypt, and Australia rank among Grand Circle travelers’ favorite vacation spots. Grand Circle prides itself on its professional Program Directors, all of whom are residents of Grand Circle’s travel destinations, and on its signature Discovery Series. These exclusive cultural and educational events range from visits to local homes and schools; classes in language, cooking, and art; discussions about history, nature, politics, and culture; and more.

Overseas Adventure Travel

With its small-scale travel philosophy and up-close, cultural encounters, 32-year-old Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT) attracts the active, experienced traveler interested in exploring destinations off the beaten path. Typical formats include wildlife safaris, rain forest trips, remote-area cultural explorations, and small ship voyages offered through Grand Circle Small Ship Cruises. OAT travelers venture to Botswana, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, India, Burma, Vietnam, the Galápagos, and other exotic locales.

OAT features small groups, unique lodgings, local modes of transportation, face-to-face cultural interactions, soft adventure activities, and expert trip leadership. For eight years, readers of Travel + Leisure magazine have named OAT one of the world’s top 15 tour operators and safari outfitters, and in 2007, they rated it the #2 best value tour operator in the world.

Grand Circle Small Ship Cruises

Grand Circle’s award-winning fleet of 60 small ships operates throughout Europe, Africa, Asia, and South America and serves our Grand Circle Travel and OAT brands. The fleet is comprised of more than a dozen river ships, three four-plus star 50-passenger ocean ships, and exclusively chartered yachts and motor cruisers.

Grand Circle’s fleet has been widely recognized for its high-quality experiences and excellent value. For the past five years, Condé Nast Traveler readers have named Grand Circle Small Ship Cruises to the magazine’s prestigious Gold List of top cruise lines, and for the past six years, they’ve rated it one of the “World’s Best Small-Ship Cruise Lines.” They’ve also cited ten of our small ships among the best individual small ships in the world for the past six years. Readers of Travel + Leisure have also named the fleet among the world’s best for the past several years. At the 2008 World Travel Awards, Grand Circle was named the “World’s Leading River Cruise Operator.”

Grand Circle Foundation

Grand Circle Foundation is a nonprofit organization that supports the preservation of cultural traditions and treasures and invests in the future through the education of young people worldwide. Established in 1992, the Foundation has donated or pledged more than $47 million to organizations and schools in the U.S. and abroad, including more than 100 schools in 60 villages worldwide. The Foundation’s Honorary Board of Directors includes Lech Walesa, Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Solidarity leader, and former president of Poland; Robert Muller, former assistant secretary-general of the United Nations; Barbara Washburn, the first woman to summit Alaska’s Mount McKinley; and Lady June Hilary, philanthropist, adventurer, and wife of the late Sir Edmund Hilary, one of the Foundation’s founding board members.

The Foundation also sponsors the Community Service Team, an employee-run task force that supports employee volunteerism and philanthropy. In 2009, the team coordinated more than 40 volunteer service events in Boston and in ten countries where Grand Circle has local offices. Altogether, the Community Service Team has donated an estimated 60,000 hours of volunteer service since its inception, and last year, 96 percent of employees participated in at least one event.

For its efforts, the Foundation has received numerous tributes. In 2006, the Committee to Encourage Corporate Philanthropy—founded by Paul Newman of Newman’s Own and Ken Derr, formerly of Chevron Corp.— awarded Grand Circle its Excellence Award for CEO innovation and leadership. That same year, Chairman Alan Lewis received the New England “Social Entrepreneur of the Year” Award, which recognized Grand Circle’s innovative philanthropy programs and donations in New England and around the world. In September 2009, the Boston Business Journal’s Corporate Philanthropy Summit included Grand Circle among the top 50 most charitable companies in Greater Boston.

In 2005, the Boston Business Journal named Grand Circle one of the “Best Places to Work” in the category of “Top 20 Large Companies.” And in 2006, the Great Place to Work Institute, Inc. and the Society for Human Resource Management named Grand Circle one of the “25 Best Medium-Sized Companies to Work for in America.”

Grand Circle Corporation is a privately held enterprise headed by Alan and Harriet Lewis.