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    Important remarks by Ad Latjes regarding this book
    The text below is written by me during the first half of 1990, published in July 1990 and UNCHANGED published on the Internet in August 2003.
    Of course I would now have written minor things differently but I kept the text UNCHANGED because this book has become a document of the time it was written: months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, during the rise of new, interesting technologies and long before anyone had heard about the Internet....!!
    Many people mentioned below now have a different function, are working for another company or even passed away...
    I truly hope you enjoy reading this book and I am sure it will make you smile or laugh regularly
    Costa Rica, August 2003
      The World of Ad Latjes
      written by Ad Latjes in 1990 en published in July 1990

      CONTENTS
      1. The history 1971 - 1990
      2. Who is Ad Latjes
      3. The rise of new technologies
      4. Opinions
      5. European Travel Network
      6. Travel Impressions

       The History 1971 - 1990
      WHO IS AD LATJES?
      Friend and foe give their opinion.
      THE RISE OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES
      OPINIONS
      EUROPEAN TRAVEL NETWORK (ETN)
      TRAVEL IMPRESSIONS
    

This book is dedicated to...

I dedicate this book to my mother and to Ruud Storm, without whom “Ad Latjes Travel Agent” 
and “Malibu Travel” would never have been,

and to Clasien, Nicole, Lilian and Henriette, with whom I have had the privilege of 
sharing good and bad times,

and to Agnes, Annemarie, Annemiek, Annet, Bianca, Birgit, Danielle, Edith, Ellen, Evelien, 
Gaby, Hannie, Hedy, Ilonka, Jessica, Karin, Kathleen, Liesbeth, Linda, Marian, Marijke, 
Maud, Maya, Mirelle, Nancy, Neeltje, Nicoline, Patricia, Petra, Rianne, Saskia and Wanda, 
who have worked for me over the years, whom I have seen blossom from “little ladies” to 
young, self-conscious women. Women who always gave 100% to their work and without whom I 
would never have accomplished what I did.

and to all who, without mentioning them individually, know they are very dear to me anyway.


This book was typeset, laid out and prepared for printing in one day on the most modern 
Electronic Publishing System by Advertising Agency Ron Koreman in Best, The Netherlands, 
telephone +31 4998 98672.

Everything in this book may be copied without the editor’s permission: 
Malibu Travel, Damrak 30, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Malibu Travel, European Travel Network and Ad Latjes are registered trademarks.


Preface

My name is A.A.J. Latjes.   You probably know me better as Ad Latjes. Some of you presume
to know me so well as not to allow me any lee way. True, I have probably contributed to my 
reputation myself, yet the disastrous role certain external factors have played to that 
end may not be underestimated.

What happened exactly? How deep was the pit? Who helped me in it, and who helped me 
to climb out? Where am I now? The idea to clarify these matters has been on my mind for 
quite some time. First of all, to enlighten unfortunate clients of the 1981 era. 
Furthermore, to guard myself against my enemies and to honour my friends.

Yet, I was always “too busy”. Suddenly, like so many events which occur suddenly in 
a mysterious way, the moment was there to sit myself down behind my computer 
and start writing.

It has become an autobiographical story, larded with a series of turbulent events, 
interwoven with travel impressions, notes on the use of advanced techniques of 
modern business and my opinions on international cooperation, HRM and PR. 
Moreover, a journalist friend has interviewed quite a few members of the public on 
their opinion of Ad Latjes, which means you’ll hear things from a third party too.

And thus, my long time desire to render an account of events has been realised.

I offer you, reader, this book in all honesty, hoping to deepen and enrich our 
mutual relationship.

Amsterdam, July 1990


THE HISTORY 1971 - 1990

An unexpected beginning

I have always thought of June as being the loveliest month of the year.
Spring has finished its annual union with summer and the trip to the sun can begin. 
That June day in 1968 was the loveliest I had experienced in my eighteen year old life. 
I had won, and I will tell you of whom and of what.

I was pretty sure to have passed my final high school exams, and yet I felt a vague, 
not totally unpleasant tingling unrest while I was waiting in the hall of “Saint Louis” 
in Oudenbosch for the results together with my parents on this warm, jubilant June day.

It was even better than expected. After the cacophony of nervous voices and the 
following stately quiet of the graduation ceremony, I proved to have collected 
reasonably good marks, especially for maths, science and chemistry, to my own amazement.

I couldn’t prevent my mother kissing me on both cheeks. My father gave me a manly 
handshake and said, hiding his joy as well as possible: “Despite the advice of going to 
Tilburg to study economics, I would like you to consider the Technical University in 
Eindhoven with such good grades in science.” He was referring to the test I had taken 
which indicated better chances in economics than engineering. 
The idea, however, attracted me. Born a Leo in the year of the Tiger, 
I would rather live lazily in Tilburg than working hard in Eindhoven. 
Indeed, it proved to be an easy-going life until my final exams in Economics.

A year after I was born it didn’t look like things would go easy for me. 
We lived in Amsterdam where my father worked for the Dutch Postal Service. 
It was on a hot, almost tropical day, that I was vaccinated against smallpox. 
Nowadays, this would be out of the question, because a combination of high 
temperature and this vaccine may lead to cerebral damage in one in the so-many 
thousand children. I was one of these children.
Twice I was close to death and even received, in a good Roman Catholic manner, 
the confirmation sacrament prematurely. I made it, though the unfortunate event 
resulted in tedious epileptic symptoms. Now, almost 40 years later, it hardly 
bothers me anymore although I do take pills twice daily. And once in a while 
little stars appear in front of my eyes. When that happens, I lie down for a 
while which is enough for the condition to subside.

Things were different during my childhood. At intervals, I would black out and 
hit the deck, causing confusion and fear among the shopping public of Valkenswaard, 
where our family had moved to. There was even a point during elementary school when 
I was to be sent to Sterksel which had, what was called, a special home for the 
epileptic, yet the general public knew it as the “cuckoo’s nest”. 
My mother, the proud daughter of a farmer, would not hear of it and chose hesitantly 
for the alternative: the all-boys boarding school “Saint Louis” in Oudenbosch.


Tough School

In 1961 I found myself in the Roman Catholic bastion. Like every boy there, I was 
homesick a lot. A problem you had to solve individually. It was a pretty tough 
environment where you had to acquire independency (emotionally too) in order to 
survive and where adaption was the slogan. It wasn’t easy. I wasn’t as meek as 
the brothers wanted me to be. Red and black cards were my share. 
I didn’t receive a single gold card for good behaviour during those 7 years at St Louis, 
although I went to church a lot, too much as I remember too well. 
It wasn’t until the end of my Oudenbosch period that I realised how my unintentional 
resistance had reconciled itself with the school’s atmosphere and my individual 
attitude had developed into a social compassion.

Something else had happened. My epileptic symptoms had decreased and my learning 
process had improved. Study results got better each year and come graduation time, 
they were at their peak. It had taken some time: from crazy little Ad to future 
college student and from mother’s baby to independent young man. But I had succeeded 
and on that beautiful June day in 1968 I experienced what winning was.

In hind sight, I am grateful for Saint Louis. Not necessarily for a period of 7 years, 
but a few years with peers in the same situation is always a good exercise in social 
development. Most young men experience this during compulsory military service, but I 
obviously, due to my medical history, didn’t meet the requirements to join the army. 
Besides, I have a very bad left eye. It still only functions for about 15%. 
This may also have been an effect of this blasted vaccination.

And thus, I was ready to enter college in Tilburg. As said, studying was relatively 
easy-going and I was happy to be able to give a reasonable amount of attention to 
other things than statistics and the secrets of banking.

I started organising summer jobs abroad for fellow students and I’m still wondering 
why I chose that as a spare time activity:
the occupation I owe and blame my further career to. I still don’t know the answer 
to that question. Probably because no one else did. When a vacuum like that offers 
itself, I tend to jump at it. Maybe in order to help others who are otherwise left 
without information. Maybe to tickle myself. It’s what I love to do: adventure. 
The need to get to the bottom of something, find the hidden seed, nurture it and see 
it grow into a large healthy tree.


A.Peefa

So, hesitant and clumsy at first, but more able and efficient later on, I tended to 
the travel needs of Tilburg fellow students. There was demand and supply. 
What else could a student in economics with a lot of time on his hands want, except 
to bring those two fundamental requirements together. The exact starting point is 
hidden in the mist of forgetfulness, but at some point I was able to give someone 
the address of a kibbutz where foreign volunteers were welcome. I had come across 
that address by accident. After that, my interest in mediating for summer jobs had 
been ignited and I helped friends who wanted to pick grapes in France or tomatoes 
in Canada find the necessary contacts.

Nowadays, a job agency advertises with the slogan: “she sought, I found” featuring 
a female law student wanting to earn a little extra money and a slick lady of the 
job agency finding her a part-time job at a law firm. 
That’s how my job was like 20 years ago. Well, almost, because my clients were 
mostly boys (there weren’t many girl students yet in Tilburg) who wanted a summer 
job and, moreover, I was putting more money in than getting out of it in the beginning. 
But I loved it.

For hours on end I sat in my little rental room writing to embassies, foreign traffic 
bureaus and travel organisations to get useful addresses which I would give, 
free of charge, to fellow students as no one thought of paying. 
Especially freshman Tilburg economics students were to learn yet that, except for 
the sun rise, nothing comes free in this world. But it didn’t worry me. 
Maybe this was caused by that boarding school where helping one another was a law 
of nature. Maybe it was caused by the rich Roman Catholic way of life which had put 
its mark on me and which promises a golden future to everyone who lives a charitable life.

At the time, I held this belief sacredly. Not only the needs of my travel loving yet 
poor fellow students were my concern, but so was the rest of the world population. 
When someone in a country far away had served justice with a spectacular deed, 
I would let all national newspapers know how much I appreciated that through a letter 
to the editor. I wrote dozens, all of them under the complicated alias “A. Peefa”. 
The “A”  for Ad, the “Pe” for “P”, the “ef” for “F” and the “a” for “A”.
PFA was short for Peace For All. And in cases where someone had exceptionally excelled 
for Peace and Justice, I would throw in a personal letter as well.

By addressing only noble statesmen personally, I was able to keep my correspondence 
manageable. Yet, my hobby costed me quite some energy, writing paper and expensive 
postage. To my amazement I often received correct and sometimes very personal replies. 
I remember letters from Abba Ebban, the Israeli minister of Foreign Affairs and 
American senator Edward Kennedy, replying to the ideas in my letters. 
It was the late sixties: revolutionary years for A. Peefa.

Later on, the whole world seemed to start cocooning, contemplating no one but themselves. 
Ideals were refrigated: commerce sent out it’s seducing messages.


Ice cream vendor

My free-for-all travel business expanded. It was exciting to track down foreign 
addresses and catalogue them. But, while around me fellow students were happily 
backpacking, I was administrating in Tilburg. This didn’t change until 1971. 
As I wanted to check my addresses, I left for Israel in January 1971. 
For six weeks I roamed the country and visited the different “kibboetzim”. 
At the end of my first backpacking trip abroad, I encountered an American couple in 
Eilat, who consequently invited me to their house in San Francisco. 
Naturally, it wasn’t really an invitation to be followed up, yet in my ignorance I 
rang their doorbell in September of the same year after having picked tomatoes in 
Canada for a week.

My stay in Frisco didn’t last that long (I wasn’t that naive), but long enough to 
recover from a sunstroke which I had picked up in Toronto. In better shape I 
continued my journey, which led from Los Angeles to Las Vegas to Long Beach where 
I met, again quite by accident, a very wealthy ice cream vendor. 
He owned I don’t know how many ice cream stalls which needed to be manned by young, 
active ice cream salesmen. Obviously, he couldn’t find them himself, as he asked me 
to gather 40 young, active Dutch students for the summer of 1972. 
After all, I was “a travel agent for students”.

Indeed, that’s how I had introduced myself, not hindered by any modesty and 
certainly not realising I was definitely pushing my fate into the direction of 
“ticketman”. My meeting with this American entrepeneur namely, would, as became 
clear later on, mark the moment when my “free-for-all” mediating job in Tilburg 
would get a new and lucrative dimension. With a speed too which I hope to meet 
during the telling of this story.

What was the case? The 40 Dutch guys who were to sell ice cream at Disneyland, 
on the beach, close to baseball stadions and other busy West Coast locations, 
would make a lot of money – a thousand guilders a week – but the trip there cost 
a lot of money too then: just about 3 weeks worth of ice cream sales. 
And I knew I couldn’t sell that in Tilburg. If I wanted to gather 40 potential 
candidates, I needed to find a cheap flight. And I did.

Forced by these circumstances, I discovered the route to cheap flights and was 
able to offer my fellow-students discount tickets to LA, but also to other 
American destinations and world wide. I have continued this route and am still 
travelling on it. As far as I know, those Brabant boys never got to their ice 
cream stalls.    There was no need anymore.


Selling tickets by accident

The first step towards the yet unknown void in the low budget market was 
difficult but Lady Fortuna helped a hand. Directly on my return from the US I 
contacted a travel agency for emigrants and their families which organised 
charter flights abroad for its members. A trip to New York, for example, costed 
only 400 guilders, a ticket to Los Angeles 900. 
Still an enormous sum to needy scholarships students, but significantly cheaper 
than the official price. With the travel agent’s consent I overwhelmed the college 
buildings with large posters advertising the low fares.   Most reactions came from 
people who didn’t have emigrated family members abroad, but they were automatically 
categorized thus after six months of membership. Which is something of course, I 
should have mentioned on the posters: “bookings six months in advance”.

In my social environment it proved an impossible situation. Daily, I spoke to 
someone saying “great offer, travelling to the States and cheap too, but those 
six months are ridiculous. Can’t you get me on a plane next week, or next month? 
Or during the summer holidays?” And that’s exactly what I couldn’t do. 
The travel agency was good, but in its typically Dutch way very strict and to the 
rules. I was desperate for a solution. And that’s where my stroke of luck came in. 
In January 1972 I read an advertisement in the International Herald Tribune about a 
number of London travel agencies offering cheap flights world wide. Had I not read 
that paper, I wouldn’t have known. And had I not been on this short holiday trip to 
Lausanne, Switzerland where there were no Dutch newspapers available, I hadn’t 
bought the Tribune. That shows you what holiday can do for you.

I saw my opportunity for trade, my mother for a break, and together we travelled to 
London by boat and train in March 1972 to visit those six travel agencies which I 
had marked in the Tribune for their lowest rates to the U.S. I was still specifically 
interested in the U.S. because of that corpulent ice cream king in Long Beach with 
his 40 job offers.

In London I tumbled from one amazement to the other.   Everything was possible! 
Travel discounts impossible to Dutch standards.   Emigrant flights too, including 
membership cards. Salesmen kept those cards in their back pockets by the dozen, 
making them look old and used. A dated stamp, a signature and the next day you could 
take a cheap flight to visit your “family” in Australia. 
They had long forgotten the Dutch proper way to do things.

But I hadn’t, and I left those half illegal membership trips well alone. 
There was enough on offer on the legal market at the time caused by the introduction 
of the Jumbo jet like the Boeing 747. Giant planes, common nowadays, with hundreds 
of seats which airlines had to sell. The way to do this was to offer tickets abroad 
at bottom prices: 50 to 70% under the officially published fares. 
Their slogan: “rather half an egg than an empty shell.” 
In short, because of the gigantic and rather sudden capacity boom and the international 
airlines’ response, a specific market for cheap airfares was created in the early seventies.


Land of plenty

London was one of the central places for this opportunity and without realising the 
circumstances at the time, I had landed in the right place at the right time: the 
land of plenty in air travel. I could buy what I liked. North Africa, South Africa, 
the Far East. And all at 50% cost price or less.   The whole world opened up to a 21 year 
old student who had tumbled into this fairy tale setting.

Still a little numbed by all my new experiences, I made the necessary contacts. 
On my return home and fully recovered, I placed an ad on the front page of the “Telegraaf”, 
one of the largest Dutch national newspapers, offering Bangkok, Bombay and Johannesburg 
for bottom prices. I still remember the Johannesburg price: 1295 guilders. 
My net profit was 95 guilders on that, but the consumer’s was about 2500 guilders. 
That’s how much the difference was with the “normal” fares.

A reporter once asked me to explain how I had stepped out of the shadows of student 
amateurism into the sun of national publicity from one day to the next. 
The answer is simple. Once I had found the entrance to that dream world of cheap flight, 
I was eager to cash in on that information as I was still in need of financing my Tilburg 
travel-mediating agency. It was still operational in 1972.

I sent some fellow students to Canada to pick tomatoes in the summer of 1972. 
And so, I finally saw my chance to earn something back from the costs I had made.

The advertisement was a big hit. The regular Dutch travel world acted like they were 
brought to beggar’s conditions because of my actions. Yet foreign airline companies 
saw opportunities in my initiative. Kuwait Air, for example, called me to ask if I 
wanted to sell tickets for them from Amsterdam. I did. And encouraged by this phone 
call, I searched for other opportunities. Most airlines were reluctant but some weren’t, 
and to my surprise I raked together my own discount market in this manner.

I was in business. To the annoyance of my landlady in the Tobias Asserstreet in Tilburg 
where I had my digs on the second floor. Students would be waiting their turn for a 
cheap yet great trip on her stairs. That wasn’t the agreement, she said, and I had to 
leave. The case being that I had made a name for myself, outside the lecture halls at least, 
I was swept up in the student council. As a member of the subsidy commission I sat next to 
a guy concerned with student housing, and he could help me with a building which was 
nominated to be torn down at the time, yet still stands today. I rather liked the symbolics 
of this: dump prices sold from a dump.


Gideon's gang

I moved house and gradually increased my business hours to part of an afternoon, a whole 
afternoon and finally, a day. The sleepy young man from Valkenswaard had grown into a 
clear-minded travel agent in 1972, selling six hundred thousand worth of tickets and 
profiting on 1% nett. It was time to quit college. I dropped out in my senior year. 
I dived full-time into the travelling business. Rather than getting my title I became m
y own boss. I got help from a neighbour’s daughter and shortly afterwards, from Clasien, 
my wife-to-be.

Together we worked on the increasing incoming phone calls for we kept advertising. 
Whenever I could I went out to acquire knowledge about the market in which I was working 
but of which I really knew very little. Fortunately, only a few people worldwide – and 
as far as I know, no one in Holland – knew which secrets this young trade in discount 
tickets had in store and it was vital to close ranks with this Gideon’s gang from the beginning.

Who offers the cheapest airline ticket Where? That’s what it was all about for me and my 
foreign colleagues. This is the information we shared with each other. In this way a 
circle of relations was created slowly, a sort of intelligence agency on cheap travel, 
with the sole purpose of offering the customer the cheapest possible way to travel.

Every two weeks I traveled from Tilburg to Brussels and almost every month to London to 
visit airline companies, to reconnoitre the market and to buy tickets. 
Regularly, I did the same in Germany, Luxembourg and Paris, but I couldn’t get along 
with the French very well for some reason. Terrible people, businesslike. 
(My revenge at times is using the Dutch spelling in words like “bureau”).

It is therefore no surprise that my first conflict was with a French company, although 
it wasn’t caused by an “incompatibilité d’humeur” (French for hating each other’s guts) 
but by the core problem of the discount trade. In short, the story is as follows:

In London I bought the earlier mentioned trip London-Paris-Johannesburg at bottom price 
from the French company UTA. It was UTA’s intention for customers to board in London, 
but no one of my customers did. It was easier and cheaper to travel to Paris. 
Especially for my ex-fellow students wanting to travel to South Africa, because I could 
offer them a round trip to Paris from Holland for only 27 guilders which I had bought 
at large discount from a Belgian student organization. 

These guys would eagerly check in at UTA Paris with a ticket excluding the London-Paris part, 
which I had torn out. From the young travellers’ enthousiastic conversations and not by 
inspecting the ticket, it soon became clear in Paris that they had paid far less than the 
regular rate. Consequently, an angry phone call was made to the UTA office in Amsterdam, 
which knew nothing about it of course. 
The Paris manager then confronted by the problem is now the UTA man in Amsterdam. 
He still doesn’t greet me, after 18 years.


Scapegoat

It wasn’t long until KLM started to stir.    Although they themselves had 
started discount prices abroad as one of the first companies, they had to try and convince 
their full fare paying, Dutch passengers that a discount bird like Ad Latjes was of 
dubious character.   They even said in public: “You know, those cheap travel agencies which 
advertise on the front page of the newspaper. All unreliable!” They were prudent so as not 
to mention names, but it was obvious they meant me and my co-workers as we were the only 
ones in Holland advertising enormous discounts in different newspapers.

It didn’t bother me. It was part of the game, however hypocritical. 
At airlines’ receptions, I was the main subject of conversation, always in my absence as 
I never attended.    On one of these occasions, Sabena’s manager in Holland, for example, 
from whom I had just bought a couple of tickets Amsterdam-Brussel-Chicago, for only a 
thousand guilders, would deny that he was the seller.

I had probably bought them abroad, he lied.   I got labelled with their indecencies and I 
was sent into the proverbial desert as a scapegoat.   I didn’t mind the role. 
I only attended parties given by airline companies which openly declared being my 
business partner like Kuwait Airlines, Iraqi Air, Jordanian Alia and a few others. 
They acknowledged and respected my person and my work.   Many others in the market looked 
down their noses or denied me.   From jealousy, as more and more customers were pouring in.

In 1973, my company turned over 1.3 million guilders. And it boomed each consecutive year. 
I advertised under my own name in Holland and Belgium and moved from the dump to a rental 
house in Tilburg.    More girls came to work with us. All of them friends who didn’t want 
a male co-worker in their midst, afraid he would play boss in no time. 
Seven years after I had travelled to London as a novice with my mother to be shown the 
secrets of discount alchemy, I had become reasonably experienced in the clouded art. 
I sold 7.5 million guilders worth of tickets that year (1979) and I decided on taking 
two chances to be able to expand.

First of all I bought a building in the Telegraafstreet (Telegraaf also being the name 
of the newspaper I had first advertised in!) in Tilburg as we had outgrown our latest 
accommodation.    Secondly, I started advertising on Viditel in September 1979. 
The first to do so – and in a big way.    Everyone who had access to this means was able 
to receive eight thousand pages of travel information on their tv screen. 
Information which I had been preparing for months: prices, destinations, hotels, 
tourist tips, but also hundreds of Belgian jokes.   Very popular in those days and very 
different, which was also trendy.     A fine way of getting publicity.

Two different publications wrote large articles on the discount phenomena that year. 
The result of all this was that I doubled turn-over in 1980 to 15 million guilders!


Hype

I was 30 years of age. In Tilburg, twelve girls were selling tickets mainly by phone 
and in the Leidsestraat in Amsterdam there were three. This second office was opened 
in the summer of 1980. Clasien, who had become my wife in the mean time, managed this 
office and it was so busy that she had to help customers by the numbers system, the 
kind you see at the butcher’s or the post office. In Amsterdam too we only sold 
discount tickets outside Europe and in the Mediterranean area. 
A standard ticket was processed in ten minutes, a trip around the world took twice as 
long at the most, and still people had to wait in line for about an hour at times to 
buy a cheap flight ticket from Ad Latjes.

It had become a hype and sales an attraction it seemed, because often airline 
managers and other airline personnel would drop by during lunch break to see how 
fast we “processed” customers.   I bought a house on the canals in Amsterdam for Clasien 
and the staff, a floor in a new office building next to the railway station in Tilburg 
and a sports accommodation, also in Tilburg, as the building in the Telegraafstraat – 
which I kept – had become too small as well.


The end of a boy's dream

And then, things went awfully wrong.   No surprise, you will say, with all this real estate. 
But that wasn’t it. I should indeed have been more cautious and I should have financed 
the real estate – four buildings in all – more “burglar proof”, as my story will show, 
but the acquisition of them was responsible in more ways than one. The main reason was 
to create my own “piggy bank”, capital to be used in case anything went wrong with my 
travel agency because I couldn’t become a member of the ANVR-guarantee fund, the 
Dutch Association of Travel Agents.

This association wasn’t happy with me at all, to say the least. Travel agents were 
confronted daily by mutinous customers saying: “How is this possible? Ad Latjes sells 
for ……, and you ask twice as much for the same trip”. Which couldn’t to be explained, 
except for the stereotype referral to my allegedly unreliable way of business, an excuse 
which became weaker as my position on the ticket market became stronger and the army of 
satisfied Latjes-tourists grew. However, I could not become a member of the ANVR. 
Had I put down all guarantees on the table, I still wouldn’t have been accepted for 
psychological reasons. End of story. So, I had to create a financial buffer zone, 
my real estate.

From a pure business point of view, buying houses seemed at that moment a sensible 
thing to do. By buying, I felt I was not being impulsive and reckless but instead 
rather conservatively using my money.

The building next to the railway station was representative and brand new. 
We were the first tenants of a spacious office, but just as we were about to move in, 
a better opportunity presented itself: a sports hall with great space for our expanding 
company. I rented out the hall which went well. The building next to the railway station 
was immediately put up for sale. This didn’t go well, as a dip in the real estate market 
had set in. I didn’t sell it until my bankruptcy in the fall of 1981. 
However, this was no major set back yet. I still had control over the business. 
Part of the buildings were mortgaged. The rest was financed with private capital and 
with a bank loan of 400.000 guilders by the ABN bank in Tilburg.

The bank thought this construction as solid as I did myself, and our relation was fine 
both commercially and privately. That’s why I know the bank’s decision to cancel the 
account came from higher echelons, because that happened in March 1981.


Wrong

I had to pay back twenty or thirty thousand a week, sometimes more. The man at the bank 
in Tilburg just told me one day: “Next week, you only have credit up to 380.000 guilders”. 
And the week after that he would set another limit. I protested of course, but he 
wouldn’t hear of it. Again, I had the feeling he personally couldn’t influence the 
decision to limit my credit, but that was of no use to me. And from my economics study 
I remembered the conditions of a loan like this: withdrawable immediately. 
Formally, the man was conducting proper business. At that moment, even more than realising 
which financial disaster was awaiting me, I recognised my mistake clearly.

It wasn’t the four houses.   It wasn’t my rebel attitude in my difficult profession. 
It wasn’t the fact that I had had radio transmitters on my roof for three months, blaring 
music and advertisements. It wasn’t even the illegal tv-station with which I had 
transmitted all James Bond movies into Tilburg homes. It was the fact of not protecting 
my real estate and choosing a loan construction in the form of a current account instead 
of a long-standing one or a separate company construction. I could kill myself, for I 
realised I was finished. When you earn 300.000 nett a year, you can’t pay up 400.000 
in a few months. Which I told the banker. “This is no good. 
In this way I will be bankrupt in a short time.” His remark, probably to soften the impact, 
I will never forget: “Oh well, mister Latjes, so many go down nowadays. 
You will make no difference”.

I racked my brains going home. I couldn’t understand, and the bank couldn’t or wouldn’t 
explain. Why this sudden squeeze? I was one of their biggest customers. I had all my 
business there – some 16 million guilders worth of turnover – which would bring them 
around 100.000 guilders worth of costs, provision and interest. Two of their employees 
could be paid with that amount. I was the goose with the golden eggs. 
Why slaughter me? Something was up. It wasn’t until six months later that I discovered 
who had handled the butcher’s knife.

On the 16th October 1981, this ticketman was finished. It was a Friday. 
There was 40.000 left to be paid at the bank. I had to pay it with the last money left. 
Money which was paid by 400 customers, waiting for their tickets.


Paradox

I don’t remember how I got to Brussels. It could only have been through a miracle that 
I arrived in one piece at the airport of the Belgian capital, as I sat totally numbed 
behind the steering wheel of my Honda Civic. It was a mild, misty afternoon, that 
Friday in October, and I was probably surrounded by drivers in an early weekend mood, 
but if I could have detected that, I didn’t. I was too busy with myself. 
Crying, grey with misery and sick with exhaustion, I drove there and when I think 
back I can cry once more. I was running.

Not from lack of courage, I hope, but from pure helplessness. I had tried to reach 
Dr Batenburg a few times, the highest manager then at ABN, in a desperate attempt to 
postpone the execution, but I didn’t get any further than his secretary. 
She had quickly phoned to the bank in Breda and when I arrived there in the morning 
of the 16th of October, hoping to reach a settlement at the last moment, I was coolly 
shown to the door.

It was over, my beautiful, rebellious adventure, and I knew what was going to happen. 
Clients would be coming to collect their tickets which weren’t there. I didn’t want 
to see that from up close. They would want my head and I didn’t want to attend my 
own execution. Besides, I was in no position to explain them it wasn’t my fault I 
had ripped them off. That paradox was too much for me. I didn’t dare, I couldn’t.
 
Sad about my helplessness, sick about losing something so dear to me and at the same 
time scoulding myself for letting it come this far, I drove to my mother to borrow money. 
The first thing she said to me was: “Boy, you look awful!”. And she was right. 
Worrying had cost me about twenty pounds in the weeks before that and my face showed 
the topography of the loser.   We didn’t talk long. We quickly agreed there is no fighting 
the irony of destiny. I had bought houses in order not to go bust. I had gone bust 
because I had bought houses.


Village gossip

I received eight or ten thousand guilders from her, I can’t remember exactly, and I drove 
to Brussels with tears in my eyes to take the first plane to London. It was the beginning 
of a sad trip around the world which would last a month. An attempt, bound to fail, 
to flee the past. In a book by Gerrit Komrij I recently read: “Pity on the one who flees. 
He takes the oppression with him where ever he goes. Flight is no liberation.” 
Truely spoken, because where ever I went, the image of four hundred victimised people 
travelled with me. For me, the worst part of it was the idea that they didn’t know I 
hadn’t run off with their money.

The thought of the ruins which I had left accompanied me from Brussels to London, 
New York, Zurich, Bombay, Bangkok, Hawaii and Los Angeles.

Even the presence of my friend Nicole, who talked me to Switzerland in order to get me 
to return to Holland but whom I persuaded to accompany me on my further desperate travels 
in Zurich, couldn’t chase away the ghost of the “kladderadatsj”. This wonderful word, 
I am not even sure of its spelling, entered my brain somewhere along the way and stayed 
with me since. Probably because its childlike sound combined its disastrous contents in 
the same manner as the frivolous appearance of my joyless wanderings did.

Nicole. She supported me tremendously when I lost Clasien during the maddening stress in 
our company in 1981 and afterwards, when I seemed to lose my head. Nicole encouraged me, 
not in the least when we, after the bankruptcy was declared, flew back to Holland from 
California on a sunny Sunday. For coming home wasn’t easy. Fortunately, my parents and 
their four siblings welcomed me heartily, although they had had their share of abuse 
thrown at them. Because of me, our family name had been shamed considerably, something 
which hurt my father the most. The “Latjes” soon recovered though. My friends also seemed 
happy to see me again. One of them, who had suffered great financial loss from my bankruptcy, 
even helped me later on.

The problem was the village gossip. It had been more disastrous than in my worst nightmare. 
I had skipped town with more than a million in my pockets. I had secret bankaccounts everywhere, 
big cars and expensive villas. Tilburg hummed with gossip and the bad jokes (Santa Claus won’t 
come this year, he booked through Ad Latjes) as well as the horrible word plays on my name 
(Ad Gladjes, meaning Ad Slick) were every where.


Mangled twice

The truth was that I was totally down and out. I had no money, except for social security 
benefits. I had no real estate but a council flat. My only possession abroad, a wooden 
bungalow in Florida which I had bought in my good years, was divided among the creditors. 
I had lost my wife and Nicole too had disappeared from my life. I had no job, and last but 
not least, I had no reputation left as many people didn’t know what had really happened. 
The only thing I had plenty of was time. Enough to consider, time after time, what had 
gone wrong and, in a sporadic optimistic mood, how I could come back. 
How could I help the victimised customers?    Now what?

But before I could start on the future, I had to settle two private scores from the past 
first.   And how. Even the devil himself would have had trouble coming up with a 
screenplay like this.

One morning, at the end of November 1981, a Friday morning, both my personal bankruptcy 
(my business bankruptcy had already been declared) and my divorce from Clasien were 
pronounced! At 11.30 one case was scheduled at court, at 12.00 noon the next. 
Within the hour I was mangled twice. My misery was at its peak that day. 
It was a worthy counterpart of its old record, that of Friday 16th October 1981.


Revenge of a power monopolist

Quite some time after my bankruptcy, I finally found out who had indirectly been the 
cause of it and why the bank loan had been ended so abruptly. Different sources pointed 
into the direction of the KLM. Besides, the Dutch manager of our 
national airlines at the time has indicated so much in front of reporters. 
It doesn’t surprise me one bit, although I don’t exactly know which person gave what 
command. I’m presuming it was at top level, and KLM president Orlandini, 
being commissioner at ABN bank as well, must have personally insisted on finally 
financially liquidating that irritating Latjes-creature in the spring of 1981. 
The bank, bank to KLM too, kindly honoured this enforced signal by 
strangling me slowly using the ready noose: my bank account! This is not the first 
time I mention the ugly combination KLM/ABN bank and neither companies 
has ever denied my accusations. Even Orlandini would have protested if he hadn’t been involved.

KLM wanted to get rid of me. At the end of 1979 they had tried to buy me out. 
This happened during a trade convention in London. The European salesman for the national 
Peruvian airline invited me to diner at the Ritz. After some introductory chit-chat, he 
told me he was authorised to offer me five million dollars in order for me to end my 
discount business. I told him I didn’t think much of that and ever since it was total war 
between KLM and myself.

In January or February 1981, shortly before the bank told me they would limit my credit, 
I had another conflict with KLM. I was at a trade convention in Utrecht, 
talking to the manager Holland of British Airways in my own stand, when some one from 
KLM passed by. Next day, the Englishman received a call from KLM with this evil message: 
“do business with Latjes, and we will hang you from the highest tree in Amsterdam”.

This threat was nothing new as back in 1975 Singapore Airlines had also been threatened 
of having their landing rights revoked if they sold me tickets.
Sabena too, at that time, had regular visits from Royal Dutch Airline personnel at their 
office in Amsterdam, banging on the table, shouting not to sell to me. Every month I 
heard news like this from one airline or another who had been summoned at a reception or 
a meeting by KLM to leave me and my business well alone.


Practical joke

Back to Utrecht, to the trade show in 1981. I ran into the British Airways guy 
again and he relayed the story to me. I decided that it was time for a counter action 
on my part to show them I wasn’t impressed. In turn, I advertised Amsterdam-New York 
on the front page of The Telegraaf for 650 guilders. By KLM! 
Which was fifty guilders (around 25 US dollars) under the KLM advertised price. 
Every ticket thus costs me fifty guilders, which was worth it, as I was both suggesting 
that KLM was doing business with me and that they were selling me tickets 
at great discount. Financially I was losing on the deal, but psychologically I was making 
great profits, as KLM was swamped with annoying phone calls. And every 
time the story was: “for ten years now we hear that Latjes has to be boycotted, and now you 
are doing business with him yourselves.”

Naturally, the KLM spokesman explained the practical joke to them, but 
the louder he became, the less he was understood. My intention of beating them at their 
own game had succeeded. I was taken to court, but even that was to my advantage. 
Ok, I was not to abuse the KLM’name again, which I assented, but 
KLM got an even nastier piece to chew. “If Mr Latjes is so eager to sell 
under the standard price,” the judge said, “let him”. You could hear the KLM solicitor gnaw 
his teeth, because what the judge was really saying meant a bomb under the entire IATA-system:
 the international agreement by all organised airline companies to sell tickets at a set price. 
(It is only in their own respective countries that they keep this agreement, by the way. 
KLM ignores this golden rule like all her colleagues, but not in Holland. 
Here, the organisation is holier than the Pope, outside its national boundaries a cowboy 
like every other airline.)

Unfortunately, the verdict didn’t lead to a wedge in the market. It did cause a heightening 
of the guerrilla war between myself and the rest of the ticket world, with KLM as a sniper 
in the front lines. Being a lonely partisan at the cheap ticket front, all aggression was 
directed at me. Every customer who walked away from a travel agency because he found a 
cheaper ticket elsewhere, was my fault.

Even travel agencies’ own failures like laziness or sloppiness, were my faults. 
I was an outlaw and was blamed for everything.

About half a year ago even, a traveller with an incorrect ticket from Schiphol Airport 
to Spain received the comment: “bought this at Latjes, no doubt”, whereas I, and they 
know this perfectly well, don’t sell tickets to Spain at all.

Latjes was the flea in the fur coat of the ticket market and needed to be exterminated. 
And thus, “justice” was done. KLM’ revenge must have tasted sweet for not only had my 
business, my baby, been terminated, but my good name at the same time. 
“Latjes” had become synonym for treacherous fraud. The bad boy of aviation. 
Even now, after almost nine years, it still bothers me, let alone at a time when the 
wound was still fresh. I read and heard the most awful stories and I thought, with the
same shiver as the one you get when you remember a nightmare: this is about me! 
I caused this. Is this ever going to be put right?


Job

At times I wished I was dead, I felt that devastated.  Spiritually, I was balancing on 
a very fragile thread and materially I wasn’t doing much better. All I had were the 
clothes I wore. And a bed. The bailiff let me keep my bed. I remember how ridiculously 
happy I was with that. With the risk of being misunderstood, yet knowing I don’t mean 
this insensitively or heartlessly, I suspect I lost a lot more in the deal than most 
of the customers I abandoned. Of course, there were dramatic cases involved. 
People who had been saving up for years had seen the trip of a lifetime washed down 
the drain. They were miserable and I’ve tried all sorts of things later on to try and 
compensate for the loss. Others too for that matter. But most clients, who came to 
collect their tickets in vain, were mainly terribly mad, angry at me for ruining 
their holiday.

I have spoken to many of these people, scores of them really, afterwards and their 
story was mainly this: “at the time we spoke of you being an enormous bastard, but we 
somehow managed to get over the misery and we believe you when you say you didn’t run 
off with our money.”

But I, …. I had not only nothing left, I had lost everything I had ever had. 
Biblical Job Latjes. But Job, I knew, had scrambled to his feet, so why couldn’t Latjes? 
And slowly, very slowly, I crawled out of the dip. Slowly too, my will to live returned. 
In fact, I wanted to return to the ticket world.

People I knew declared me ripe for the looney bin when they heard about my plans. 
I couldn’t disagree with them totally, yet I had three good reasons to go ahead anyway. 
First of all, it was all I knew. Secondly, the snake pit of discount trade had its 
creative and exciting sides too. And thirdly, I discovered that no other travel agency 
had jumped into the abyss which I had left through my bankruptcy.

Apparently, I still was the only one in the Dutch ticket world who knew the way in the 
maze of discount tickets. My specialty – finding and selling the cheapest tickets to 
destinations far away – was not annexed by others, a shame to the rest of the ticket 
world, and I decided to pick up where I had had to let go.

In april 1982 I dared to show my face again in the ticket world. Shortly before that, 
just to mention it, I let my voice be heard by recording some existing tunes to 
carnival music. This had nothing to do with tourism or my problems. I just enjoyed it, 
but on discovering that I was the singer, one of the radio stations played it with 
the comment: “this was Ad Latjes and the Tickets, with the Choir of Duped Clients.” 
A joke which, finally, made me laugh, even if it was not wholeheartedly yet.

But enough. I showed my face again and fell down immediately. Twice! The man with 
whom I started a travel agency on the Pius square in Tilburg had too much money and 
behaved very arrogantly. This didn’t last long. And the man with whom I started 
Atlantis Travel on the Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal in Amsterdam in September 1982, 
didn’t have enough money and couldn’t pay the 25.000 guilders for the Chamber of Commerce. 
This didn’t last long either. This second false start even got me a fine of 12.000 guilders 
and two months probation for I had the official papers and the, illegally set up business, 
was in my name.


From market underdog to market leader

I had been too eager, too gullible and I started to doubt people in general and myself 
especially. Again I was back to square one and again I had been damaged – and I don’t 
even mean that fine which would stay with me for years. I seemed to have been 
disqualified indefinitely.

Not knowing where to turn to now, Fortune came my way. At times it walks past me, not 
noticing me, but suddenly it will give a knock on my door. This time Fortune was 
personified in Ruud Storm, a friend who had lost 200.000 guilders in my bankruptcy 
of 1981 and had stayed a friend anyway. I was over the moon with his explicit support 
and together we started Malibu Travel on the Damrak in Amsterdam on the 15th May 1984. 
When Storm loaned me the money he said: “If I lose it, I won’t hold it against you. 
I know you’ll do your best. In that case, we will have had bad luck together.”

I did do my best. Malibu is solid as a rock. Ruud has long since been repaid and we 
are better friends than ever. But the most beautiful thing of it is, that we don’t 
need any credit. We manage to uphold ourselves financially and we don’t have to fear 
any “bankrobbery”. 

Moreover, Malibu is an American company. An American law firm, which I consulted at 
the time, took care of that side within one week.

I don’t dodge the Dutch tax system with this construction, as I pay taxes and dues 
here just like the guy next door, but in this way I have armed myself against KLM.

The reason why I didn’t take the cunning game which they played together with the 
ABN bank at the time and which cost me dearly, to the courts is because in Holland 
it doesn’t pay to do so. With this American construction, should KLM play a dirty 
game once more, I would be able to sue them according to American law and claim 
millions of dollars worth of compensation.


Accra

This gives me an interesting card in hand, as I’m still quarrelling with Royal KLM 
at a regular base. And always about the same problem: the flight to Accra, capital 
of the African nation of Ghana. KLM prices the return flight Amsterdam-Accra in 
Holland at 4.300 guilders, yet offers the return flight London-Amsterdam-Ghana in 
England for 2.400 guilders! An interesting case of price discounting which I exploit 
with pleasure and with which I have made hundreds of Ghanese living in Holland 
happy since 1972. But instead of being thankful to me for filling their empty 
chairs for them – no Ghanese, after all, will fly to Amsterdam at a standard price 
with KLM when they can fly at bottom prices with Aeroflot, Balkan, Swissair or KLM, 
for that matter – they have been bothering me over the last two years. 
Passengers with a London bought ticket (by me) were to start their journey in London 
in their opinion, whereas I claimed they could get on the plane in Amsterdam as they 
had paid for their ticket and therefore had a valid KLM document.

It’s the core of our conflict, which, noticeably, is no issue for other African 
destinations or different routes by KLM at bottom prices. Just because lesser 
numbers of travellers are involved. An opportunism ably and royally handled by 
our national pride. In May 1988 they suddenly left five customers standing at 
Amsterdam airport, unless they were prepared to pay the full price from Amsterdam 
to Accra. I was able to help these people with another cheap trip 
(with another airline company), but from that day onwards KLM and I met in front 
of the judge on an almost regular basis.

It adds no value to expand on these legal quarrels in this publication, moreover 
as no winner resulted. At least not on a national level. I trust that the European 
lawyers who are since occupying themselves with the matter will finally agree to 
the matter in our favour. Practically, we have already won.

KLM has agreed to accept passengers with a ticket from London getting on in Amsterdam. 
“We don’t want passengers to get the short end of the stick because of our differences”, 
they say slightly hypocritically. Because on the other hand they only sell us limited 
discount tickets to Accra in London which means the customer who wants to fly quickly 
(because it’s a direct flight) and cheaply to Ghana is put at a disadvantage anyway.


Network

To our company this whole business is more a nuisance than anything else. 
The international low-budget market is wide enough to work in and as worldwide we 
don’t have any Dutch competition, KLM in 1990 is but a “multiple engined mosquito” 
to Malibu Travel, quoting ex-minister Luns here. The fact that we own a monopoly 
worldwide is no bravado on our part. Agreed, other travel agencies have accessed 
the market which was popularised by us partly by attracting specialised personnel, 
but as for know-how and organisation, the hegemony of our agency is still untouched.

When I’m buying tickets in Singapore, Dusseldorf, Los Angeles or other hot spots in 
the discount world, I never hear of other Dutch agents there. It’s because we have 
been rather successful over the years to keep the door closed. With “we” I mean the 
European Travel Network (ETN), an originally European but now intercontinentally 
exclusive consortium for dozens of free birds like myself, operating worldwide and 
discovering and picking up the cheapest grains in aviation.

As I’m writing this down, it sounds a little like freewheeling and at random, but 
reality is quite different. We contact 92 international airline companies daily and 
continually through a sophisticated (Dutch) computer programme. This programme finds 
out where in the world a certain route of a certain company is the cheapest, and then 
calculates quickly what these tickets (some 15.000!) would cost in the currency of 
the country concerned.

I started this network four years ago, and since then it has developed into an 
efficient and close charter of local professionals, guaranteeing the best product 
in their area. ETN now also sells a discount card for 60 guilders which enables 
customers to get a considerable discount on hotels, on tourist side trips and other 
tourist attractions at their destination. The card is a big success – 60 guilders 
are easily won back – and our agent in Miami predicts two thousands members by the 
end of this year in the U.S. alone.

Maybe now it has become clearer why we think, with pride, we are the market leader 
of the Dutch discount travel agencies in the area of the farthest trips for the 
lowest prices. Simply and more homely put, there is no one else in this country with 
such an advanteagous look on the whole world. Instead of leafing endlessly through 
long lists, my five co-workers and myself are able to establish that Alitalia at 
this moment offers the cheapest flight to Australia on the computer screen with one 
blink of an eye.   Depart from Amsterdam, change planes in Rome and fly to the other 
side of the world for only 2.140 guilders.

Another example. 26 airline companies are circling each other – price technically – 
on the route Amsterdam-Bangkok, searching for the flying holidaymaker.

Without our European Travel Network, it would be impossible to know immediately who 
dares to dive the deepest commercially (1250 guilders? 1500? 1800?) towards a return 
ticket which officially costs 4000 guilders. By the way, we don’t only use the latest 
technology for the customer. The potential traveller has six very advanced speaking 
computers at his disposal for specific information day and night. 
But I will explain that later.


Relativity

All’s well that ends well, but what have I, A.A.J. Latjes, learned from all this? 
A question I ask myself at times. Naïve student of 20 in 1970. Ticketman with 
15 million guilders turnover in 1980. Down and out bum for a while after that and, 
again man credited with four thousand customers, good for six million guilders in 1990.

Rise, fall and come back in almost twenty years. What has this turbulent chain of 
events done to me? The true answer is that I have changed. In business, but privately 
too, I have become calmer.

I have experienced all there is to experience in the travel world, the peaks and 
the abysses. This makes one see the relativity of things. I don’t have a restless 
ambition anymore for a head office with a hundred girls and fifty branches in the 
province. “I wish you a lot of staff” is a typical Amsterdam expression. 
I have come to understand the poison in that saying. My aspiration lies with a 
healthy, normal growth of my company. No branch offices anymore, they only lead to 
headaches, but a well-led central point where, in a few years, seven to eight girls 
perform a specialised service and where technology takes care of the rest.

I’m still a hard worker I think, but I find it more important nowadays to find 
time for myself, my wife Henriette and my seven year old daughter Wendy. 
Sit down for a nice dinner, a hike through the woods, a book or an hour of tv. 
I take the chance of enjoying life once in a while. 
I always was “too busy” for that before.

In that sense the negative events have given me many positive points. 
The mysterious circle of life has given me back the joy of June, best time of 
the year in my opinion, which I stated at the beginning of my epic. 
My sincere hope is that it may stay summer for a long time.


Who is Ad Latjes?

          Friend and foe give their opinion.


Customer (male):

         “That’s what I call service!”

“I regularly travel for pleasure which means you have to be price conscious 
or you simply don’t travel. You go shopping, as I call it. At one point I got 
to Ad Latjes, can’t remember how, probably through the newspaper. 
More importantly, I never left. I’m very pleased and I advise every one to book 
through him. I’ve had many reactions like “oh boy, Ad Latjes, are you sure?”. 
But I tell everyone to go ahead and after their return they are all converted 
and have become fanatical Latjes-fans. One time even, one of the girls at the 
desk gave me my ticket and forgot to take my payment. That’s what I call service!”


Customer (female):

          “He could use a new carpet.”

“It was a strange experience when I first came here six years ago. They only 
had half the space they have now and Ad’s wife, or girl-friend, I don’t know 
which, had a child with her. In a pen. When I finally got used to that, I kind 
of liked the idea.
I found Latjes through the newspaper. The name sort of attracted me: Malibu. 
It sounded romantic and the office was nice and close to the Central Station, 
as I lived close to The Hague and couldn’t get through on the telephone. 
That’s a point of attention: there are always many people in line on the phone. 
Better take the train.
It wasn’t till later that I found out who Latjes was, but I didn’t care. 
I’m rather socially developed and have been pestered myself at times. 
More reason for me to get my tickets here. Furthermore, I think he could use 
a new carpet.”


Mother Latjes:

          “If you don’t stand above it, you will go under in it.”

“I believe Ad gets the travelling spirit from me, as I’ve always claimed 
to my children “when you are all grown up, Mummy is going to travel!
  Foreign people and cultures, it has always fascinated me. I had been married 
for almost 25 years before I finally got the opportunities to travel, but I enjoyed 
myself ever since. I have written seven books on the travels I made since then. 
Stories on Israel, North and South America, Africa, India, Nepal, Indonesia, 
the Fiji islands and more. We always travelled together, Ad and I. 
My husband wasn’t the type. We ventured into the backlands with a rental car 
and we enjoyed the craziest adventures. Sometimes, when Ad was too tired or 
didn’t feel like it, I went by myself. I have now bought myself a computer 
to write. This is less time consuming, a big advantage, as I have so many 
more things to do: crafts, photography, gardening, my day is always a few 
hours short.

I’m happy for Ad that his luck has changed once more. He built his business 
from the base and when it went down, I felt terribly sorry for him. 
But I’ve always told him: “Don’t let it get you down, son. As long as you are 
a good human being in a society where you can mean something to other people, 
everything will be alright in the end.” In those days, the telephone wouldn’t 
stop ringing. The press came after the story too, but sometimes incorrect 
information got into the papers. I would revolt at them and take up my pen. 
Being hunted by the press was Ad’s own fault, as he gave them opportunity to 
speculate, but you don’t just write that someone is dishonest.

I offered the Tilburg paper to publicise my books and with the proceedings form 
a fund for the victimised customers. They were enthusiastic about it, but as a 
series, and that would take too much time they thought. People would have forgotten 
about it. Had they known that events would take as long as they did, they would have 
taken the offer for sure.

My husband felt worse about the bankruptcy than I did, but I think he couldn’t take 
his distance. And if you don’t stand above it, you will go under in it. I knew Ad, 
and that was enough for me. The rest will be alright, I thought then. 
And that’s what happened.
I’m already looking forward to our next trip: Moscow.”


C.G. Hundepool, managing director and chief editor “Zakenreis” magazine:

          “KLM cannot be caught!”

“The previous KLM managing director Holland once angrily exclaimed in my presence 
that he would do anything to get Latjes.   At the time, Ad had just moved into his 
Amsterdam office, right next door to that of KLM.   He was terribly upset that Latjes, 
of all people, an annoyance of the worst kind, had become his neighbour. Later on, 
when I heard about the financial problems which were tied to the real estate, I told 
Latjes, that it could very well be that the one thing was tied in to the other. 
It is only a presumption, but when you look into my heart, I’m convinced that it was.

I’ve been in this business for 35 years now and in my experience KLM does not get 
caught, yet it is the most obvious explanation.

Ad is one of the most intelligent guys in the travel business and he knows how to 
use the holes in the net. After all, he was the one to discover that you could buy 
tickets cheaply abroad.   KLM reacted with jabs of a needle, until they could haul 
in the rope.

Jobs were offered to him, by Arke for example, and he could have been part of the 
top-10 tour operators if he had wanted to.   But he prefers to be exactly on the
opposite side where he takes all the flak.    I can still see him at the Amsterdam 
Hilton, demonstrating a computerised booking system in the hallway. He was refused 
admission to the room where he was supposed to give his demonstration.”


KLM spokesman:

          “That would be very indecent of us.”

“I cannot imagine that anyone within KLM feels the need to give an opinion on 
someone who conducts business the way Mr Latjes does. KLM’ opinion has been 
clearly and officially been given through the court cases which Mr Latjes has 
found it necessary to pursue. You may well imagine that we abstain therefore 
from any comment on the man. It would be very indecent of us to do so.”


Ronald Raadsheer, sales manager Benelux for Singapore Airlines:

          “Latjes has become more cautious.”

“Ad Latjes is a travel entrepreneur. He instigates many initiatives to make 
travelling easier and cheaper for the consumer. He uses the possibilities available, 
and that is admirable. On the other hand there are things to his disadvantage, 
namely the bankruptcy in the past. I suspect he went too far in following his 
ideals at the time, taking on too much and incapable to keep the overall view.

However, I believe his reputation has been considerably improved. He has become 
more cautious and personally, I can only be positive about him although I don’t 
know him very well and don’t conduct business with him directly.”


Brother drs Peter Latjes, editor Holland and parliament for the “Katholiek Nieuwsblad”:

          “Ad is tremendously popular with many people”

“Many times, when introduced, I’ve heard the comment: “Gosh, Ad Latjes, family?”
“Yes”, I answer wholeheartedly, “he’s my oldest brother”. I’m very fond of him. 
We connect well and we are in touch a lot. The events around him plagued me a lot 
at the time, yet personally I had no problem with his bankruptcy for the simple reason 
that he didn’t kill anyone or knowingly robbed anyone of their money. He did nothing 
illegal and nothing which didn’t stroke with my own view on life.

I followed the case closely at the time and have drawn my own, clear conclusion. 
I don’t mind saying it out loud and I even hope that I’ll be sued for it. 
Look, my brother’s bank ABN suddenly closed their credit with him because Batenburg, 
then ABN managing director and commissioner with KLM, had heard from his friend Orlandini, 
then KLM managing director and commissioner with ABN, that Latjes was such a nuisance 
for KLM. So they hung Ad. This is what I distilled from the facts. I said the same on 
different occasions, in the paper and on radio, but no one has ever denied it. 
I just know it’s the way it went.

I’ve known Ad at his height and during his misery, but he has a tendency to value 
money only as a means, not a goal, just like me. This helped him through the difficult 
episodes of his life. He often has too much faith, because he puts a lot of confidence 
in people which is caused by his own honesty. In communicating with people he is often 
self-centered, although he can be very charming, boy-like even. This charm makes him 
tremendously popular with a lot of people. He has many friends who have supported him 
through thick and thin, and after the council elections of Tilburg in 1982, which, by 
the way, he didn’t win, there were some 1200 personal votes.

On the other hand, his self-centeredness makes him a person who has trouble getting in 
touch with others and who has difficulty taking his surroundings into account. 
In his heart he has always been a socially compassionate man, yet his life, 20 years of 
tough business life, has offered little opportunity to expand on that.


American customer (female):

          “I’m impressed with the IT here.”

“I came from Central Station, walked across the Damrak and saw the advertisement: 
cheapest air fares. That’s the place to be, I thought. I’ve just come back from London 
and will go on to Germany, France and Spain. Then it’s on back to the States and re-think 
my plans.   Malibu service is fast and direct. And I know what I’m talking about because 
I really don’t do anything else but travel. 

I am a computer programmer by profession and I’m impressed with the equipment and 
software being used here. Call Bianca and she calls back…that’s new to me.”


Neighbouring Blokker:

          “No, I don’t my book tickets through him”.

“Latjes’ travel agency is not clearly discernible from the street, so people step into 
our shop by accident sometimes, but that doesn’t bother me. No, I don’t book my tickets 
through him. I’m careful. I rather go to a travel agency which is a member of the ANVR. 
Let me put it that way.”


Neighbouring Yugoslavian Bank:

          “Nice girls, good neighbours.”

“I don’t know Mr Latjes very well, but there is a pleasant relationship between his 
office and ours. Nice girls, good neighbours. I see customers go in and out at times, 
that’s all. Bye, bye.”


Attorney Sandra Boot:

          “My client tries everything and fears nothing.”

In December 1989 we filed a complaint with the European Commission.    That’s the 
authority which will have to judge our opinion of abuse of power by KLM, but first of 
all we are awaiting the Commission’s word whether they will accept the complaint or not. 
It has been registered, but nothing has been done with it yet. Should the EC not react, 
I will take it to the Court of Justice with a demand for an order for the Commission 
to undertake action. The national courts wouldn’t judge, as it would proclaim a verdict 
which will have enormous impact on the entire aviation world. So we await the European 
Commission’s reaction. To be honest, I’m not too confident on its outcome. 
The stakes are too high. The entire market would have to be reorganised. 
Rumour has it that the Commission is afraid to take a decision and would rather have 
someone else decide.

We are of the opinion that KLM is abusing her position.  Importing cheap German CD’s and 
selling them here is allowed in this country, but for tickets different standards are kept. 
This is only made possible through KLM’ powerful position.   Compare it, if you will, to a 
baker who says: “you can buy that cake if you like, but you have to eat it all at once.” 
If it’s the only baker around, cake-loving customers will have to accept those conditions. 
That’s exactly what’s happening in the aviation market.   Residents of The Netherlands who 
buy from my client buy cheap tickets from England, and KLM adds the condition “fine, but 
you have to fly to London first.” 
This is the ridiculous situation which we are denouncing.

I quite like Mr Latjes to battle this powerful giant.   He tries everything and fears nothing. 
He goes straight for the target, whether it’s the highest boss, or the girl behind the counter. 
I can appreciate that attitude.”


Friend in need Ruud Storm:

          “Ad likes to stick to his own plan”

“Latjes is the “enfant terrible” of the ticket world.   A Brabant boy chasing energetically 
after his young man’s dream. I think he is brilliant.  Most brilliant people can’t communicate, 
but he can.   What’s more, he is honest, really honest, and I believe he is very sensitive at 
the same time. He harbours this notion that he and people around him have been done injustice.

He is also stubborn like an ox. He continues a line of actions until the contrary has been 
proved. I think he shot as many missing arrows as he hit bull’s eye. He once saw this guy on 
tv who had a rocket launcher on his back and was shot in the air. That was it. He wanted to 
get one of the machines. Where could you buy it? That same afternoon he called the Pentagon, 
NASA and factories in France because apparently that’s where they were made. He never got 
hold of one, simply because they weren’t for sale, but the possessed attitude with which he 
chased after it was fascinating. I was there and witnessed him making phone calls all over 
the world for four, five hours. That’s Ad Latjes: a bull chasing a red rag. I think that’s 
the quality which makes him brilliant in the ticket world and which has caused him to be on 
an ascending route once more, including all unrealistic and dear side roads. 
Less positive qualities are his tendency not to ask anyone’s advice and his love to stick to 
his own plan.

He was a valued customer of our advertising agency in Alphen aan de Rijn.   Before he went 
bankrupt, he bought services worth one million guilders annually. When he went broke, he 
owed me a few thousand guilders. It almost caused our own bankruptcy – ironically, the 
ABN bank helped us through that! – yet I so believed in his integrity and inventiveness that 
I helped him set up Malibu Travel some years later anyway. He has become more cautious which 
is logical. He doesn’t want to go through that again. He now doesn’t spend his money until 
he’s got it.

Ad knows how to motivate and inspire his staff. He trains his girls himself and does so in 
a wonderful, somewhat surly manner. But that’s because he thinks faster than he talks and he 
believes others have the same capacity. Yet he is able to get his message across and that’s 
what I admire in him.


Supervisor Bianca (22):

          “I once got fifty roses”

“I’ve been at Malibu for almost four years now together with four other girls. I can only 
say that it’s an open and friendly working atmosphere there.
Conflicts are never left to rumble along and we can be honest with Ad too. He encourages that. 
He is clever and impulsive and asks the same from us.   At times he seems harsh to his staff, 
but there’s always a good reason. If you don’t agree with something you have to say so 
immediately.    It clears up the air. There has been a girl who ran out crying. She couldn’t 
take it.

He taught us to work well and quickly: give information at the desk, answer sixteen incoming 
telephone lines, call airline companies who are often busy – Turkish Airlines is a good example – 
and help customers to find their trip correctly and efficiently at the same time. 
It’s a responsibility which is my right by way of my diploma, but which you don’t always get 
at other travel agencies.

Customers apparently appreciate our work as they often bring us a present after their return. 
We also receive many cards and flowers. I once got fifty roses. And Ad promised us new carpeting 
and curtains. Enough reason for me to stay for a long time.”


Co-worker Linda (21):

          “I often receive remarks for working at Ad Latjes.”

“After highschool I worked in an American hotel and followed courses on aviation and tourism. 
About a year and a half ago, I started working here.   Travel is easy for us.  We receive two 
tickets a year individually, where ever your fancy takes you, so that’s a nice bonus.

I often receive remarks for working at Ad Latjes, but to me he is a good boss and I’m learning 
an awful lot from him.   Those negative reactions are from people who don’t know him or his 
company. Others are positive. Today even, I talked to a customer on the phone who had travelled 
with Ad in the old days and he said: “I want to try booking through you once more, as I’ve 
never had a nasty experience with you before.”   We have many loyal customers. 
Many come back again and again.

Once in a while somebody walks out.  Recently an older gentleman came in and, very friendly, 
I said: “Hello, please have a seat”. Just like that. If I had said “hi”…. With a lot of 
emphasis he said “Good afternoon!” Thinking he hadn’t heard me the first time, I said again 
“Hello Sir”. He then said: “That’s how you talk to your peers”, and walked out. 
I hadn’t expected that. I even called out after him “Good afternoon”, but he didn’t hear 
me anymore.


THE RISE OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES

Introduction

This was the second night in a row that sleep wouldn’t come. The night before it had taken 
hours of tossing and turning before he nodded off to sleep exhausted. He had been excited 
since Monday. Dresden friends had called him about the trip of his dreams. But before they 
had been able to tell him all, the line had gone dead. In vain, he had tried to get back 
in touch with them.   All his friends knew his desire to make a once in a lifetime trip to 
the United States.

Before the wall had crumbled, America seemed infinitely far away and unreachable even, 
and even now it seemed an unreal dream. What had his friends tried to tell him? 
Or had they played a joke on him?

Not to wake his wife, he creeped downstairs. Out of boredom his fingers roamed the keys 
of his remote control. Suddenly he veered up. There were ceefax pages on the English-spoken 
channel which they had available on cable since a few months. He often consulted the Western 
German ones for the news but he never got any further. He had never even watched Super Channel, 
mainly because his English was so bad.

The only English he knew, was what he had learned from a course on ZDF, a German tv station. 
But despite his lack of knowledge, a few words had attracted his attention. He consulted the 
pages on “air fares”, and page after page the most distant destinations were offered for the 
most incredible prices. They weren’t all in West German marks, but he had known all exchange 
rates of all hard Western currencies by heart for years now.

Fascinated, he looked at page after page. An increasing disbelief took over. He was ready to 
draw the prices out of the tv. It went that slowly for him…
All big cities paraded in front of his eyes. And then, Miami, for the absurd price of just 
750 Marks return ticket. He had set his mind on New York in the past, but why not Florida, 
where the weather was so much nicer than in the North East. In disbelief, he tossed all 
information around and around. As if hypnotised, his fingers chose the number which was on 
the screen. Twice he was disconnected as he forgot to dial the number for Holland.

At half past two in the morning, Linda gave him all information he wanted to know. 
In perfect German. He was so intrigued with her that he hardly realised, after dialling a 9 
on his phone and Linda started to answer his questions so openly, where he lived, where he 
wanted to travel and when.

When she asked for his creditcard number, he didn’t hesitate to give the card number from 
his cousin in Munich. His cousin had given it to him in case he ever wanted to come over 
to visit.

It wasn’t until two days later that he realised he hadn’t dreamed that night. Apparently, 
an unknown man had come especially from Berlin to hand him his ticket. He stared after the 
man, speechless, until he had vanished from his view. Was this the famous what the West 
Germans called service, which according to them didn’t exist in the Eastern part of the 
new republic?   He had never understood what they meant by it until now.

He realised he had tasted Western freedom and luxury for the first time in his life. 
And it’s deprivation for his fellow countrymen and himself caused by 40 years of terror 
by the communists. It wasn’t until this moment that he understood the reason why his cousin 
Stephan and many of his friends had fled to the West.

Why could a computer in the West provide more service and happiness than the people in the 
East? He hurried to get a passport and visa and without a doubt, he was the happiest man 
to fly to America on the 8th of March.



Freak

Although a car user is not commonly called a car freak, a computer user is called a 
computer freak. It probably has to do with the uneasiness with which many of us regard 
the computer. That’s why I never thought much of the name. I never took a computer course 
in my life, nor one on car mechanics. After all, I only need to learn to use the commands 
to be able to use the machine. I don’t need to know what makes it work.

My interest in computers was raised in the middle of the seventies because of the speed 
with which I could register prices with this new apparatus. And because a Leo is rather 
lazy than tired, my first Tandy computer was soon used for anything that I could think of, 
not hindered by any technical knowledge. The main part of this booklet is also created 
on the portable computer which I use daily in the train between Tilburg and Amsterdam.


Viditel

When, in 1979, the Dutch Telecom announced Viditel.   Immediately I understood how much 
easier it would be for me should Viditel indeed become a mass medium.  Informing people 
at all hours of the day, book and send tickets automatically.   And all this because of 
the cheap electronic emigrant worker called computer. An attractive outlook. 
So I became the first information supplier in the travel business.

Unfortunately, the Viditel project failed miserably and, in hindsight, it only costed me
a lot of money.   Because I had other worries at the time, I never got around to filing 
a complaint with the Dutch Telecom.   At the time, they were certainly guilty of a much 
too optimistic future expectation for the Viditel project, knowingly or unknowingly. 
The fact alone that it only had 30.000 members after 11 years in stead of the promised 
1 million, proves my point.

During the first six months of 1981 with 8000 pages of information, I was the most 
popular information supplier on Viditel, which is a meagre comforting thought. My image 
as Mr Viditel has no doubt greatly enhanced the overdose on publicity during my later fall.

At this moment, Malibu Travel has had its own Viditel host computer on which customers 
can call in to request free price lists.    Viditel probably still has a future as a 
communication medium, but certainly not as an information medium.


Radio and TV pirate

An overzealous social servant at the Ministry of Culture, Recreation and Social Services 
voiced his idea in 1981 that Viditel information suppliers should have broadcasting 
permits as well.   Probably reasoning that anything appearing on a tv screen was a  
tv program.

I was so mad at this, that I had a professional Canadian tv transmitter placed on the roof 
of my sports accommodation and a 24 hour non-stop radiostation on the roof of my office 
for 7000 guilders. The tv transmitter broadcasted a movie each night on the frequency 
of ZDF, the second German station.   Two timers regulated the whole process; one to warm 
up the transmitter and one to start the videorecorder 15 minutes later.  
The timers were set during the day.

During the broadcast of the film “Bridge on the River Kwai” I received a phone call 
from the police.   They had removed the transmitter and I had to come to lock the door again. 
The tv transmitter was taken down after 3 weeks and the radio sender after 3 months. 
This was probably caused by the ability of the Tilburg police to listen to the radio, 
and not watch tv.
Anyway, I never heard about a broadcasting permit for Viditel again.


Teletext

In March 1986 the doors were opened to a new mass medium.   Sky Channel announced the 
start of commercial teletext.   Contrary to Viditel, millions of viewers were guaranteed 
from the start. Although the price was sky high and Malibu Travel had to come up with 
the money on its own,    Skytext has been a successful investment from the beginning. 
Especially after I had bought my own terminal after a while and started creating and 
editing pages myself.   Even after four years it’s still a mighty feeling to be sending 
new pages from my home to the Sky computer in London.

The response was enormous.    Perhaps because from the start our ambition was to become 
a mail order company for all of Europe.    This dream never came true because of 
practical reasons.

As we were advertising nearest to God, supposing He lives above us, passengers soon 
assumed that we could establish miracles.     The strangest questions were asked and 
Malibu Travel made all the costs to try and answer them all.     After a while it became 
clear that I was making little or no money on that, despite the fact that we had started 
to ask a fee for sending price information abroad and booking fees for Holland.

My growing dissatisfaction on this situation coincided with the start of the International 
Discount Travel Association, which developed into the European Travel Network.

The plan was soon put together.   Similar travel agencies in Switzerland, Germany, Denmark 
and Great Britain were invited to rent teletext pages from Malibu Travel.    This was the 
more interesting as Sky Channel had raised its prices, but had spared me as their first 
and most loyal advertising client.

Because of the successful rental system I even had to buy more pages from them, and 
Malibu Travel was finally rid of an enormous cost.     At this moment, the 230 teletext 
pages are managed by European Travel Network, divided between four page numbers, namely 
Eurosport page 167, 168 and 169 and Super Channel page 167.     Moreover, advertising 
clients are added from Miami, Dubai, Singapore and California.

Because of the 75 million Europeans who have access to the teletext of Eurosport and 
Super Channel, our teletext pages form the largest Travel Section worldwide, with 
immediate reactions for every advertising participant.    
Which is only to be expanded in the future.

From June 1990, Malibu Travel also uses its teletext pages to send prices fast and 
cheap to its interested agents throughout Europe. With a special card they are able 
to receive the teletext pages on their pc. The information is transformed into a 
normal database which can be printed or easily searched. In this way, the complete 
price list of Malibu Travel is sent across within a minute.


Computers which speak and listen

          Night flees to the West and the Damrak is being cleaned. Junks and bums 
have left the hall ways and Central Station releases its first trainload of commuters. 
Tourists are on the terraces.   Amsterdam wakes up.....

          In the Malibu Travel office, the speaking computers hum softly. 
Once more, they have done an imperturbable night’s work, without a rest, without a 
break.    They don’t know any holidays nor union.   Year in, year out, they give the 
cheapest fares to many destinations outside Europe to everyone who wants to hear them. 
          Independently, impartially and tireless, day in, day out.

An incredible example of useful high tech.
Many viewers have had the need to reach us outside our normal office hours, Monday 
through Friday from 10 to half past five, caused by the teletext pages being in the 
air 24 hours per day on Eurosport and Super Channel. Because of the high Dutch wages, 
an extension of office hours by “live personnel” was out of the question. 
Until I came across software for the “speaking computer” quite accidentally during 
a trip to California in October 1987.

Using this relatively cheap standard software, all functions and possibilities of 
the telephone, computer and digital audiorecorder are integrated. A database of 
spoken text may be recorded in which callers can peruse at length by using the 
dialling numbers on their telephone. A spoken index gives the choices available. 
Kind of a spoken Viditel database.

A question may be asked in this way, the answer is recorded, and again a question 
asked. In this case, the answers are saved on a hard disc and have to be listened 
to and processed by live persons. Malibu Travel has used this possibility for years 
now to request a free price list and for the speaking booking computer.

For some time I also had a toll-free telephone number: 06-0167, coupled to 3 speaking 
computers on which customers could record their destination, name, address and city. 
They were Gorby 1, 2 and 3, a hommage to the former Secretary General of the Soviet 
Union, who had to note down everything too, just like the Malibu computers.

When I placed an advertisement with this telephone number in the biggest Dutch 
newspaper De Telegraaf (The Telegraph) on a Saturday, receiving some 750 phone calls 
within a couple of hours, I was cured. In Holland too Gorby was well loved it seemed. 
But people calling free of charge night and day for free information in our niche of 
the market is making the threshold too low. 
The 5 guilders every given information costed me didn’t not compare to the low profit 
per ticket for a discount travel agency.

It may very well be a great idea for other markets. It has always surprised me that 
others have not ventured there. The public is definitely ripe for it.

Gorbatsjov is no longer Secretary General, and Malibu Travel has baptised the Gorby’s 
to Bianca, Linda and Wanda, as a token of affection for the loveliest co-workers I ever had.
And everyone requesting information free of charge, now pays the normal telephone rate.

Since June 1990 Malibu uses an improved Canadian version of the “speaking computer” 
software. With this programme the computer “reads” the text to which it is led. 
All words which it may come across during the reading process have to be recorded once 
in the memory. After that, the green light is on. Malibu doesn’t have to record all 
prices again with every modification, only a copy of the new price list into the 
speaking computer.

So, no new recordings.   One typesetting of all possible words, one recording of all 
possible words, and the computer assembles full sentences at the same time the customer 
calls, straight from the database. Obviously, speech may be recorded in any language 
which makes this software also applicable for translating computers. The software reads 
databases and text documents.

Transformation from speech to text is still in the laboratory stage. The most developed 
computers in this area can understand 96% of the English spoken by the entire world 
population, so it won’t be long until it will be a reality.

Once this “listening” computer is a fact, it may be hooked up to airline computers and 
to speaking computers. It will then be possible to phone in bookings from home, without
a computer, hear the confirmation, or receive confirmation by fax, pay by computer and 
the tickets are sent out by mail.

The main objection to videotext systems, the need for a computer, is not applicable for 
these audiotext systems. A cautious estimate on future damage the 100% speech recognizing 
computer could cause is the job of 10 million Europeans. Whether the travel agencies will 
survive this is a big question, but undoubtedly Ad Latjes will. If nothing else, he’ll be 
a computer salesman!

Naturally, the speaking computer may phone a particular number in order to send a message 
recorded earlier without human intervention at any given day or time. This may be done 
within certain hours to thousands of different phone numbers, with different messages.

When the computer phones its message through, this may be repeated, a reply may be recorded, 
the reply may be repeated, deleted or complemented. And the computer can phone the message 
through immediately to its boss to give your message with date and time. No reply? 
No problem. This faithful electronic slave will try the given number again and again 16 
consecutive times at adjustable intervals with a 1 hour maximum.

Finally, a fully automatic “recorded messages” service can be made available through the 
speaking computer whereby members receive a code. In this way, members are able to 
communicate with each other by using their own code, the code of the addressee and 
recording a message. When the addressee later phones in to the computer by using his or 
her code, it immediately receives the message by phone.

In short, the speaking computer has unlimited possibilities and offers an immense expansion 
to the future service by Malibu Travel.


Free phone numbers

January 1985.   During the Dutch Telecom (KPN) New Years speech the announcement was 
made that, like in North America, free phone numbers would be introduced in 
Holland.    Also it would become possible to open toll-free phone numbers between 
different countries.

As the exchange rate at that moment was about 4 guilders to one dollar, a toll-free phone 
number from the USA to Amsterdam seemed a golden opportunity to me.   And thus, the first 
free 800-number from the US to Europe was opened (800-626 4280) on the 4th February 1985.

But what were interesting prices to advertise?
Many calculations and price comparisons later I had assembled a list of destinations 
which could work. One 1 column/inch advertisement in the New York Times at the price 
of US$ 236 was the test case. From the middle of February 1985 I was at the office many 
a Sunday as the travel sections of the American newspapers appear on Sunday. I received 
hundreds of phone calls. From Connecticut to California. From all nationalities and 
races that make up America’s population.

The most popular price was New York-Bombay with Air India which I sold US$ 300 dollars 
under the price of American travel agencies. Air India in Amsterdam supplied two tickets: 
one New York-London return, one Amsterdam-London-Bombay return. Amsterdam-Londen was 
torn from the latter ticket and never used.

In my experience, I talked to every Indian who emigrated to the US at the time. 
The only disadvantage was that Indians talk very slowly and I had to pay a telephone 
rate of 4,75 guilders per minute. But the profit of 800 guilders per ticket made up for 
a lot, although the dollar rate became less and less from the start of this endeavour, 
which meant I had to ask more dollars and the amount of bookings decreased accordingly. 
But especially after we started advertising in the Washington Post, the Miami Herald, 
the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times and many other newspapers with the slogan: 
“Book by satellite, pay by plastic”, things speeded up extremely.

The Dutch Postal Service kept accurate accounts on the whole project. In July 1985 they 
let me know that only 3% of all calls actually came through. This meant that 97 out of 
100 people who phoned our number in the States were not getting a connection because 
the lines were busy or because we didn’t answer the phone as the office was closed. 
The latter despite the fact that our advertisements mentioned to phone only between 
4am and 12noon Eastern Standard time, which makes it 6 hours later in Holland.

Advertisements were placed in American trade magazines and charter guides, but I soon 
retracted them. Tell an American passenger something and he will believe you immediately. 
Yet travel agencies think themselves experts and know themselves to know better. 
It therefore took a lot of time convincing them they weren’t experts in the discount area, 
a hard pill to swallow. Once in a while I could almost hear the ocean water because of 
the turmoil on the other side of the big pond. Sometimes I even thought the satellite 
was sorry to have started all this.

We often sent tickets by courier to Los Angeles. We, in turn, received tickets by courier 
from our agents in Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia or Europe. The world seemed to be one 
large village. American travel agents still mention our 800-number as a zenith of 
telemarketing. Selling a product directly to a consumer 5500 miles away on another 
continent. Can you imagine yourself buying a ticket from Amsterdam to Rio de Janeiro, 
directly at a travel agent in Bangkok, without the intervention of a Dutch agent?

To get a consumer next door to book at your office is no problem. To get one to book who 
lives 6 to 9 thousand kilometres further away is. Every ticket sold directly to a customer 
in America gave me a kick at the time. On the one hand it was an absurdity that they 
booked through us. On the other hand, it was proof of a strong advertisement, a reliable 
image and a good price. Customers responded as if it was all quite normal. 
Proof the more how a free phone number can lower the threshold.

Malibu Travel also had free phone numbers from Western Germany and England to Amsterdam 
in 1985.

But of all reasons to stop the free phone numbers, one stood out: “pollution”. 
Once people realised they were connected “live” from the US, England or Germany, 
they started phoning for anything but flights. About the weather in Europe, the train 
London-Paris, hotel rooms in Athens etc. And all at 4,75 per minute at our cost. 
For the US the low dollar rate added to the problem and by the end of 1985 all free 
phone numbers were discontinued because of their large popularity.
An experience which enriched us, yet impoverished us by 15.000 guilders.


Fax

In September 1980, I was given the honour, being the apple of the Dutch Postal Service’s 
eye, to do the official opening of their telefax service in my office in Tilburg. 
With a fax from Tilburg to our Amsterdam office the introduction of the fax in Holland 
officially became a fact. I had become the apple of their eye because of the pioneer role 
I had fulfilled in the Viditel project.

Ten years later the fax is an indispensable item in the Dutch offices. Malibu Travel has 
three machines at the moment: one for incoming traffic, one for outgoing and one fax card 
in the computer.

With the latter one the whole European Travel Network of 200 agents in 75 countries is
 run. Messages for certain groups of agents (incoming agents, ticketing agents, European, 
American etc.) are put in the computer. The computer dials the given fax numbers at the 
given time, to send the message. Usually at night as the rates are lower and better 
connections are available. Without this faxcomputer, communication between members would 
cost more time and would probably not be as extensive as it is now.

From the point of view that a human being needs to do nothing which a computer can do 
better and faster, the speaking computer has been coupled to the fax card nowadays. 
Customers may phone into the computer night and day, dial the destination on which they 
wish to be informed, the computer asks them how they want to receive the information: 
by phone or fax. If they choose the fax, the fax number needs to be given and they receive 
the price list fully automatically by fax.


Eurosport teletext page 169

I will hold it against no one, should you have started to wonder why, reading about 
useful new technologies, so little has been published on them. One reason could be 
sky high prices, yet nothing is farther from the truth. All software mentioned above 
costs less than 10.000 guilders, which means it’s available to many companies.

The low publicity rate on these technologies has other causes.
First of all, the world has more bright technicians than bright salesmen. 
Anything can be invented, but if selling the product gets little attention, it stops there. 
And because of the low prices sales aren’t that interesting.

Relatively little money is earned, yet the after sales are huge. And finally, manufacturers 
of computers, screens and key boards are not too happy with the fact that their products 
may be replaced by a simple telephone owned by almost everyone.

Contributing to the distribution of knowledge on new technologies, European Travel 
Network has collected all possible information on Eurosport teletext page 169. 
The most phantastic Round the World trips are presented one after the other by the 
most incredible technologies. The zenith in travel combined with the zenith in technology.


OPINIONS

Female staff

I happen to be in the lucky circumstance to have worked almost solely with female personnel 
for almost 20 years. And your conclusion may safely be that I like it extremely. It’s a 
great feeling to have only sweet young women around me all day, and to see them change in 
time from naive youngsters fresh out of school into perfect career women. It’s been costing 
me quite some overtime to show them the secrets of the international discount world.

Because of the simple organisational structure as in most travel agencies, there is 
little kicking downwards nor kissing behinds upwards. This enhances the working atmosphere. 
And despite evolving emancipation, customers still have more respect for a woman who knows 
what she’s talking about, than for a man with the same knowledge. And staff knowing their 
business is my main concern. At times not an easy task, trying to convince a sweet and 
beautiful woman that things should be done differently, but usually I’m successful.

Furthermore, I think women are more loyal than men. Especially in the month prior to the 
bankruptcy in 1981, I had a lot of support from “Latjes’ Sweethearts”. A man in the same 
position would probably have left, thinking of his career. Young women are probably able 
to be less worried over the future at a time like that, and give more human support. 
They were probably also conscious of the fact that they were working for a unique travel 
agency at the time.


Publicity, advertising and marketing

On its own, the source where one books a trip is unimportant. This is “low interest” for 
the main public, using one of marketing people’s expressions. This fact is the fate of 
all mediators and applies to for example, estate agents, insurance agents and travel agents. 
On different parties and social gatherings, one tells other guests about buying a house, 
about putting in an advertisement and about booking a trip. But through which agent one 
did this is hardly ever mentioned.

Unless one books a trip through Ad Latjes. This is always added. It was done in the early 
days, and in the year 1990 it still is.   I take this as a compliment and as proof for having 
ascended above the grey and colourless mass of travel agencies.
Why this happens is hard to explain and probably a result of multiple causes. First of all 
there is the consistent specialist approach: only cheap tickets in tourist class and only 
to destinations outside Europe and the Mediterranean area. 
Preferring knowing all about little, instead of a little about a lot. Moreover, in 1972 we 
were the first to use the price weapon in advertising.

Our advertisements have always been simple announcements with a list of the cheapest air 
fares to different destinations. The majority of the public started to realise that flying 
wasn’t limited to the elite. The established travel world needed to find ways to cheaper 
fares in order not to lose customers, especially when, in 1979, the discount fares were 
better known than the official IATA-rates. It is ironic that in 1981 the travel world was 
the loudest in calling me a fraud.    Whereas they themselves had charged hundreds of 
thousands of passengers too much for years. 
In 1990 too, tens of thousands of passengers will pay more for their tickets than strictly 
necessary because of the ignorance or amateurism of travel agencies.

Our strict discipline to stick to our principles: only cheap rates and simple 
advertisements with its reaction from the travel world and its increase of passengers, 
was good enough reason for the press to start writing articles on the phenomenon 
“discount air fares” in 1980. 
No businessman will pass up an opportunity for free and positive advertising, so I let 
this publicity willingly happen without ever seeking out reporters.

The highlight was a large article in the “Algemeen Dagblad” in 1981 which used terms 
like “wonderboy” and the “American Dream in Holland”. Words which look great in a nice 
story but were too far away from the hard day-to-day reality.    In those days it was 
unimaginable to write something negative about Ad Latjes, just like there was not a 
single positive article on me after the bankruptcy.   The disadvantage on the “hallelujah” 
stories was that the bankruptcy received superfluous publicity. 
But then, there is nothing more exciting than seeing a tall tree fall down in Holland…

Fortunately I found out early that publicity wins little more than some extra customers. 
Even after the beautiful article in the “Algemeen Dagblad” I still had to pay my way in 
the Tilburg bars. It wasn’t even worth a free drink.    On the other hand I needed to pay 
nothing extra when negative stories were written. 
In the year 1990 reporters may write what they like, as long as they don’t abuse the truth 
too much. What they write isn’t that important, as long as they write. 
Freedom of the press is too important to be restricted in any way.

Consequently, Malibu Travel profits from the earlier experiences in publicity and advertising. 
Malibu doesn’t shirk publicity to realise political changes in the aviation world and to add 
to the liberalisation of rates. Both court cases against KLM instigated enough publicity for 
the KLM shares to decrease in value up to 15% twice. And only publicity gave the Ghanese 
KLM passengers the means to board at Amsterdam instead of London. Sometimes publicity gets 
more done than a judge!

At the start Malibu Travel had difficult access to the Dutch market because of all former 
negative publicity.    This is why Malibu has always been more tuned to the European market 
than the Dutch market.    First through advertising in German, British and Swedish newspapers, 
later through teletext on European satellite tv-stations and through European satellite radio. 
In hindsight, this was a lucky turn of events as Malibu Travel cannot sell imported tickets 
to Dutch KLM passengers, the most profitable ones.    This forced focus on the European market 
has made Malibu Travel the most European travel agency in Holland and probably in all of 
Europe in 1990. 
Relatively speaking, no other travel agency has as many foreign customers and receives as 
many bookings from customers abroad.


Credit cards

Americans and other initiates will agree that the American banking system is not of this 
century.   People are still sending each other cheques at the other side of the big pond in 
the absence of a credit transfer system.    In those circumstances the introduction of the 
credit card was quite an invention at the end of the forties.    
In Europe, however, with its modern banking traffic, the credit card is an uninvited guest. 
Here’s to hoping the European banks will concentrate on the distribution of the Eurocheque 
card with individual code, so it may be used throughout Europe and worldwide. 
Personally, I have nothing against plastic cards, but I do hold a grudge against a card for 
which the receiving party has to pay 3 to 7 per cent to the credit card company.


Netherlands bankruptcy laws

The Dutch government gives itself the right to demand forty cents out of every guilder 
earned, yet it does not acknowledge its duty to help companies in (temporary) trouble. 
Individuals are supported in comparable situations through unemployment money and 
disability payments, but for companies there is no such system. 
Even in the United States, not best known for its social security systems, there is better 
legislation on bankruptcy than in Holland. U.S. companies in trouble get a chance to 
improve and reorganize for a certain time without creditors making this impossible. 
Holland should at least have regulations to this effect.

The amount of unemployment benefits after my bankruptcy in 1981 was many times more than 
the amount with which this bankruptcy could have been prevented. 
Assuming the fact that each member of staff receives about 6 months of unemployment benefits 
after bankruptcy, I would like to propose to use the amount necessary for unemployment benefits 
in aversion of the bankruptcy.    Naturally under the responsibility of a bankruptcy 
administrator and on the basis of a viable business plan. This should be a right, 
and not a favour.   Food for thought.


European Travel Network (ETN)

Introduction

Since 1972 I have imported tickets from abroad.   At the start, only from England, later 
from Belgium, the United States, Switzerland, Singapore and many other countries. 
My only contact with the different agents was on trade exhibitions, on the phone or when 
we happened to meet up during travels. 
There was no structure and we never got together all at once.
 
Others had noticed this too, so it was not surprising that during the largest travel 
exhibition in the world, the ITB in Berlin, in 1986 the idea started to organise a meeting 
to which we would invite all the agents we knew. 
“We” were a Swiss agent, a German one, one from California and myself.

And thus, Malibu Travel would organise the first meeting in Amsterdam. 
Everyone would supply names and addresses of agents to be invited. Some work.
First of all I had to invite most agents myself, as the others proved not to have the 
extensive network which they allegedly had. Everyone worldwide whom I had met during the 
past 15 years was invited.

Secondly, the majority of the people invited couldn’t believe I would succeed in getting 
all the discount boys worldwide around the table. Most were considered to be too 
individualistic and odd man out. I had to convince them one by one that they really 
should be there, and, no, they weren’t going to be the only ones in Amsterdam. 
“Is so and so coming?”
“Yeah, yeah, so and so is coming too. So you should be there too.” 
And so on. Numerous phone calls.

It took a lot of money to organise the first meeting, but the result was great. 
At the end of April 1986 some 45 people from 27 countries got together in Amsterdam to 
discuss discount rates around the world.    They came from Australia, Asia, Europe and 
America.    From the beginning the atmosphere was unique. Their frankness and manner of 
discussion could lead one to think that the boys had known each other for years. 
But nothing was further from the truth.    Most had never met before, but working in the 
same trade, selling discount tickets had apparently created an invisible band of trust. 
The prices we heard during the first meeting were a downright sensation and a revelation 
to most of us.
And from that first meeting every one was convinced that it wouldn’t be a one time event, 
that more should follow.

The seed of greed started to grow from that moment too. Because everyone realised the 
importance of such conferences, questions like ‘who are to attend the next meeting’, 
‘who determines whether my competitors are to be invited’ and ‘to how many people do we 
limit this conference’ were born. Understandable questions, points of discussion for 
certain, yet causing a lot of simmering unrest.

During our second meeting in Brighton, England in November 1986, I had had enough. 
With the support of my two co-organisors from Zurich and San Francisco, the attendees 
decided that the Zurich agent was to have the exclusive right to determine who could 
and who could not attend. A right which I didn’t even wished to give myself despite the 
fact that 60% of the attendees had been introduced to the meeting by me personally. 
The Brighton conference decided that the April 1987 conference was to be held in Singapore, 
and I decided to hold another meeting in Amsterdam in that same weekend with new agents 
together with the best from the first two meetings.

In January 1987 it appeared that most agents would attend the Amsterdam conference, 
partly caused by the fact that some new agents had not attended a conference before. 
Moreover, many hadn’t realised until after the Brighton conference what the effect of 
their votes had been, namely giving the veto right to one agent. From the small number 
of registrations the Singapore agent understood that his meeting would not be a success. 
And as he wasn’t happy with the decision taken at Brighton, he proposed to forget the 
Brighton failure, give everyone the right to invite new agents for Singapore and give 
no one a veto right. I could agree to those terms and I subsequently let all agents 
invited to the Amsterdam meeting know that the conference was moved to Singapore.


FÜhrer

The Swiss agent, renamed FÜhrer, was furious when he heard of this palace revolution. 
He immediately organised another meeting in Singapore, a week before ours and without 
the co-operation of our Singapore agent.

He sent invitations to most agents who would attend a week later.
Some spineless chaps couldn’t decide and went to both meetings. But they hadn’t reckoned 
with the FÜhrer. At nine o’clock on the Saturday morning everyone was asked who would 
attend next week’s meeting organised by “that Dutchman”. All attendees who held up their 
hand, about half of them, were asked to leave the room. The dummies had to wait a week 
before they could attend a discount rates conference.

During this meeting the ASFA, the Association of Special Fare Agencies, was officially 
founded.    Because of his age, the Singapore agent was elected as President of the 
association, I myself vice-president.    A task with which I was at peace.

After two more meetings in Dublin and Los Angeles, the meeting was to be held in London 
in November 1988. Until then points of discussion had been the exchange of cheap flight 
rates and a computer programme to efficiently communicate these rates among agents. 
By order of the ASFA, the South African agent had started to develop a programme, but 
after he had quit this development was continued by a Danish software company. 
These guys presented their new programme to the London conference. 
After a demonstration, everyone agreed that the programme was excellent.
 A 100% vote elected the programme to be officially used as the rate exchange programme 
of the ASFA.

On my insistence, a vote was cast on who would buy the programme. Only 40% voted for it. 
For a programme of only $ 500, which would serve its purpose extremely well. 
When I learned some months later that finally only 10% had paid for the programme, the 
situation was clear to me. One couldn’t win a war with agents like that. 
And discount is war, war against vested interests and war against conservative forces 
which intend to keep flying rates absurdly high.

As early as before the London conference a certain unrest had settled within me on the 
functioning of the ASFA. Meeting up with intelligent agents from so many different 
countries twice a year, should result in more than exchanging rates. Repeatedly I had 
suggested doing more together: joint advertising, introducing a travel card and 
approaching airline companies as one worldwide marketing organisation. These proposals 
always met a willing ear, but I wanted to go too fast, we couldn’t tackle everything 
at once.

After the London conference, things were clear to me. I had to do something different. 
To convince ASFA agents that we should use our strength better would consume too much 
energy and time. It would take years, and should my ideas prove successful, everyone 
would jump onto the moving train, profiting while I had been investing time and money 
with all risks involved. And besides, I had no control over ASFA as it was an 
association by English law.


Three times lucky

European Travel Network was born.
A foundation according to Dutch law which has the co-operation between European agents 
as a goal as well as organising different activities for its members.

Although name and colour are European, non-European agents were involved in its 
activities from the start. At every ETN-conference, American agents ask for the name 
to be changed into a more global name.    Perhaps the name doesn’t appeal to 
non-Europeans too much, but Europeans can identify with the name and the use of the 
stars and colours blue and yellow. After centuries of differences it’s time for 
Europeans to become more conscious of their European identity.   They could be a little 
more chauvinistic. Proud of their history and culture.

I’m always a little jealous of the Americans and how they show their pride of being 
American.   In places like Disneyworld (the movie America the Beautiful, the American 
pavilion in Epcot) and the Capitol in Washington I get goose bumps to see the American 
people showing their feelings and pride over the rights of the American people. 
Nothing to be afraid of as an outsider, but distinguished feelings of respect for 
their homeland and forefathers. It would become Europeans to celebrate their Europeanism 
in the same respectful manner.

Contrary to the American ETN-agents, the American consumer reacts enthusiastically 
on the European image of the “travel card” which allows members worldwide discount 
at hotels, incoming tour operators, shops etc. After recent publications on the 
European Travel Network in the American Consumer Travel Guide and several American 
travel publications, we received hundreds of applications. Rich Americans buy 
European cars, drink European wine and use European perfume.   Europe means quality, 
culture and history to the American. And to Americans who love plastic cards, the 
European travel card is an absolute must, despite its cost. Nice if it gives you some 
discount at the same time.

Besides conferences twice a year and issuing the travel card, ETN organises many other 
activities. The European ETN-agents advertise together on the teletext pages of 
Super Channel and Eurosport, in the new European weekly magazine The European and 
with the American ETN-agents in the International Herald Tribune. Moreover, a worldwide 
exchange of personnel has developed and incoming ETN-agents in different countries are 
making programmes to be sold through ETN-agents in Europe and America.

Beginning of 1991 the first recordings will take place of the new TV series “Round the w
orld in 30 minutes” which will be broadcast on cable networks in Europe and North 
America with a maximum reach of 100 million people. Furthermore, efforts are made to 
have all ETN-agents use the same air fare booking system, in order to realise lower 
prices and to communicate cheaper within the network. With a total ETN turnover of 
1 billion dollars it’s easier talking than as a loner.

What ETN will look like in 5 years is hard to predict. Probably not to be compared to 
the early start of this moment. Many agents have, rightly so, high strung expectations.

The euphoria around Europe 1992 still has to begin, so everything is possible.
A “think tank” of George Washington University in Washington DC, however, already has 
requested ETN’s opinion on the development and future of the independent travel agencies, 
to enable them to make up a report on the future developments in world tourism. 
A “report” to be officially offered to the United Nations and the European Community 
in 1991.   ETN has placed its first steps on the road to a leading role in the Europe 
after 1992. A European nation which will soon lead the world to a community with peace, 
welfare and justice for all.


TRAVEL IMPRESSIONS

Greyhound 1971

With understandable apprehension, I stepped onto the Greyhound bus in Los Angeles which 
would take me to New York at 6 o’clock on Thursday evening. For 72 hours this monster 
would be my home. Thundering along day and night, over mountains and prairies, past 
thousands of gas stations and through 23 states, 12 drivers would take me to the 
Big Apple. Sleeping was next to impossible, because there were no reclining seats, 
only very hard benches.
A trip like this teaches you that a sleepy feeling subsides after 100 huge yawns.


Israel 1975

When Clasien and I entered the King David Hotel, the general manager was waiting for 
us. He had reserved a beautiful suite for us with a view on the old city, an abundance 
of fresh flowers and a gorgeous bowl of fruit. Apparently the telex I had sent from 
Holland, announcing our arrival, had left a big impression here.

Walking into the eternal city of Jerusalem in the evening dusk is just about the most 
emotional travel moment a man can have. Writing this down 15 years later, it still 
gives me goose bumps. Talking about Jerusalem without becoming emotional is still 
impossible for me. There is no other place in the world where you can feel history 
breathing out of every wall as within the old city walls of Jerusalem. The stones in 
the road still echo Roman, Persian and other conquerors’ footsteps. You can still hear 
the masses scream “crucifixion” in the Via Dolorosa.

Jews pray night after night at the Wailing Wall, their only beacon during 2000 years of 
Diaspora. Just the fact that the Jewish people, out of longing for the city of Jerusalem, 
has been strengthened for thousands of years to strive for its own Jewish nation, makes 
this city incomparable to others. Sauntering through the old streets you experience the 
longing.

Access to the city of Jerusalem for foreign visitors is guaranteed in a better way by 
the democratic Israeli state than by most Arabic Muslim dictatorships.

It would be a big political blunder if Israel, in exchange for peace with Arabic 
dictators will give up control over Jerusalem.    
Dictators disappear eventually, but the city of Jerusalem will continue for ever.


Martinair 1989

The ocean reaches far behind the horizon beneath us. It’s 50 degrees below outside. 
We’ve passed the Shetland islands, Iceland and Greenland and when we enter Canadian 
air space the announcement is made that we need to make a stop in Montreal because of 
bursting toilets. The excuse being that the airplane was diverted the day before to 
Rotterdam, had been cleaned there and was then flown to Amsterdam. In Amsterdam the 
assumption was made that the toilet containers had been emptied in Rotterdam. 
Makes you wonder whether there was something called “checklist”. 
A spooky idea for something so simple. In hindsight you wonder if you should count 
yourself lucky that there was enough fuel on board.


Thailand and China 1987

My colleague’s office in Bangkok, a refugee Czech, was full of Asian folders. 
I had traveled there in July 1987 to relax after a stressful season. I had no idea 
where I would go after Bangkok, or whether I would continue my journey. Bangkok was 
even less inviting than the last time I had been there: more humid, more exhaust 
fumes and more penetrating stench in the streets.

A perfect reason to go to a massage parlor a couple of times a day, get yourself 
cleaned up by some beautiful Thai woman whom you had handpicked out of the 
shopwindow. Although 10 guilders would buy you one hour of bathing and massage, 
the girls would start whining about their secondary activities after about 20 minutes. 
On mentioning that you were not in the mood, or didn’t have the guts, they would get 
angry and walk out. So, it was necessary to stall that moment as long as possible. 
Telling them you weren’t clean yet, still wet behind the ears or not understanding 
what they meant were the best stalling tricks. Yet, stalling for more than 45 minutes 
was virtually impossible.

The price list mentioned numerous destinations with attractive rates. Bali, Manila, 
Brunei and Peking, 950 guilders return ticket. I never knew Bangkok was so close to 
Peking. Never realised either how small the world became because of cheap air fares. 
I couldn’t suppress a feeling of pride.
It was an easy choice. The three days I had to wait for a visa to China were spent 
with a day trip to Pattaya and regular visits to the Thai “bathing salons”. 
I couldn’t suspect how much this visit to China would impress me and how much I would 
come to admire the Chinese people.

I had heard many stories on the bad service aboard CAAC, the Red China airline company. 
But then reality…
Friendly service, good food and a brand new American plane.   After good American custom, 
passport control was at the first port of entry in China, namely Canton. 
Fast, efficient and without much ado all passengers were handled.

After retrieving my suitcase from the belt in Peking I was prepared for hours of minute 
checking of luggage by bad humored immigration officers. This had been my experience 
in visits to other communist nations like the Soviet Union, Romania and Mongolia. 
No such thing: just like in Western countries, there was a green and red zone. 
Continue your journey. At the exchange office I asked how many dollars I had to 
exchange daily. Another communist habit not applicable to China. No obligations. 
Off then, to that grey bus, which would take me to my hotel already booked in Bangkok.

No buses, just a whole group of cabdrivers who, like anywhere else in the world, were 
plucking at my suitcase in order to get me to go with them. Entering Peking was 
tremendous. One enormous building pit. Busy workers everywhere, high cranes proving 
their work. It seemed as if all Chinese were intent on catching up 40 years of 
laming communist despotic regime within a few years. The service at the hotel desk 
was contrary to communist traditions, friendly too.

The first thing I did that evening was pay a visit to the Square of Heavenly Peace. 
In case the revolution should start that evening, they couldn’t take that away from me. 
The square was peaceful. No protesting students. It was incomprehensibly busy though. 
Thousands of strolling Chinese who seemed to be enjoying the warm summer’s evening too. 
Just like in Times Square, New York, you can feel the heartbeat of our current world, 
yet a totally different world. A world of 1100 million Chinese who find their own way 
into our history, with a totally different culture which attracts me. If nothing else, 
for the great diligence of the Chinese, all over the world, which I admire.

I visited the Forbidden City the next day and several other tourist attractions. 
I booked a day trip to the Chinese Wall in the hotel, about four hours’ drive from 
Peking. If Christ would have laid the first stone on the day of his death, and if 
since then a piece of wall 5 metres in length and 3 stories high had been built daily, 
the Wall would still not have been finished now. An unearthly accomplishment by a 
people which started building this monument of human perseverance some 3000 years ago. 

The evening before my departure I had dinner with my Chinese agent and his staff. 
I had come across this agent through a mediating Chinese reporter of the China Daily. 
In no way could I discover to be dealing with people raised in any other way than 
capitalistic. They had completely adopted the western way of economic thinking and 
I often thought of them two years later during the student revolt. Did they survive 
the suppression?
I thoroughly hope they did, as it is people like this China will need immensely 
in the future.


Berlin 1990

Even after strong blows with the hammer he had taken from the Italian restaurant, 
the wall wouldn’t budge. He hit it again and again and only small pieces would chip off. 
The hated wall didn’t give up that easily. After David, an American Jew living in Paris, 
Heinz from Switzerland, and Rudy, a Swede living in France and working in Germany, I 
could have a go. Lots of sparks flew off, but little stone. 
Finally I managed to get a few souvenirs for aunt Anne and the others at home.

Having worked all day on the European Travel Network stand at the ITB in Berlin, I had 
agreed to have dinner with a few people afterwards.    During dinner David had suggested 
the idea of visiting the Wall.    There had been more symbolic parts of the wall then 
the part close to the Brandenburg Tower.   The passage to Eastern Berlin next to the 
Tower was oddly enough only for Germans. 
  
Foreigners still had to use Checkpoint Charlie in the Friedrichstrasse. 
We didn’t bother, not to see grey, disconsolate Eastern Berlin. 
So, David took us to the Reichstag. A frightening feeling went through 
me when I walked up the steps of the monumental building. The world’s biggest murderer 
had inspected his endless troops from these steps, troops who were sent to their death 
for the Fatherland, troops who had departed from this spot.

To David especially, this was an emotional moment.   Who knew what had happened to his 
family during this last war? It’s best to say nothing at moments like this. 
Like an experienced guide he had the taxi drive by other parts of the wall. 
Through quiet areas where hardly any pieces had been hacked out of the wall and where 
the Western Berlin graffiti was still to be admired. Often an expression of frustration 
and anger on so much communist injustice.


The United States of America

Every time I fly into the States, I’m reminded of the words of Kamal Dafesh, Jordanian 
Airlines manager, who often told me to move to the States as Holland was too small for 
me in his opinion. Indeed, America is the land of unlimited possibilities. 
Every time I visit, I’m inspired in one way or another by their way of thinking, their 
advertising and business manners.

The only reason I never settled in the States is the simple fact that I wouldn’t think 
of moving without my wife, and she doesn’t want to. Besides, it has become more clear 
over the past few years that a United Europe will offer similar chances in the future.

Describing America is a mission impossible, it is too divers. Hectic New York, 
outstretched Florida, the diversity of California, the peace and quiet of prairies and 
mountains, Las Vegas decadence. Anything may be found there.
My preferences have changed over the years too.   At first, New York was my favorite. 
When strolling on Times Square with lots of other people, or in Macy’s, you can feel 
the heartbeat of our time. Living day and night, a city that never sleeps, like in 
Frank Sinatra’s song.

But after a while I fell in love with California, not only because of the cold in New York, 
but because of the unique combinations in the American culture to be found there. 
Hollywood glitter and glamour combined with the hardworking winefarmers around 
San Francisco.    Chique boutiques in Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills and street gangs in the 
slums of Los Angeles two miles down the road. Watching skiiers coming down the slopes 
from the beach in Malibu.
However, endless traffic jams on the 405 day and night plus the suffocating smog on 
some days thoroughly ruin the happiness in this beautiful state.

That’s why, since a couple of years, I’ve fallen in love with Florida. 
Not the New York hussle and bussle, not the Californian diversity but peace and quiet, 
and endless space. Things that charm a middle-aged ticketman. Arrive at the airport 
and in no time you find yourself in a luxury car close to a beach and numerous hotels.
America is the country to just get up and go. No worries about hotels, shops or anything 
like that. There is plenty and available day and night.   The land of milk and honey.


South America 1988

He drove much too fast through the dark night. From Iguassu Falls back to Asuncion: 
400 kilometres. Although the road was paved, he needed to swerve once in a while to 
avoid the potholes. No lights in sight. And then, a cow in the road.....

To avoid collision he janked the steering wheel to the left, flew across the ditch, 
turned around and came to a halt beside the road in the ditch. Within a few minutes 
loads of Paraguayans came to watch our van. Henriette’s leg was heavily bruised and 
she could hardly move. For two hours they tried to recover the van from the ditch 
using manpower and tractors. In the end, we traveled on to Asuncion with a bus, 
accidentally stopping, fully packed. The next day the leg was treated in a private 
clinic in Rio, where we had flown at 7 o’clock the next morning. 
This was the reason why we didn’t see much of Rio apart from the tourist ‘musts’ 
like the Sugarbread mountain and the Christ statue.


Kenya 1975

It wouldn’t budge. The gear box had probably died on us. So, there we were, 
Loek and I, half way up African’s highest mountain, Kilimanjaro. 
Our only luck was that there was a way back, thanks to the law of gravity.
 
Roadworkers, who were working on the concrete, helped us turn the vehicle around 
and slowly we drove back to the police station in Arusha, at the foot of the mountain.
But how were we to get back to Mombasa, Kenya, from where our flight home would depart 
in two days?    We had little time left as we had been driving in Eastern and Western 
Tsavo for almost a week. Just lucky therefore that we hadn’t broken down earlier 
in this outstretched area.

In that case our only option had been to walk with a group of elephants in order to 
survive....    The taxi took us to Arusha airport, but unfortunately the flight to 
Mombasa was booked full.    For US$ 20 the traffic control leader, also known as 
check-in counter clerk, had everyone off the plane and weighed all luggage, but no 
one had excess luggage. Or they did, but they had paid more, who shall say? 
Without our US$ 20 donation for the Third World, we took a cab back to Arusha late 
in the evening where we spent the night.   The next day we finally reached Mombasa 
after a taxi ride which took most of the day.
Back in Tilburg, Clasien had bought our first house.


Egypt 1973

“No sir, no flight today, the war has started.”    Matthew and I looked at each other, 
speechless. War? And we were to fly back from Luxor to Cairo today, fly on to Nairobi 
and then over land to Tanzania and, if possible, to Madagascar. Great. 
That evening we took the night train to Cairo and checked into the Sheraton Hotel, 
waiting for things to come.

Which was very little at the moment. The ambassadors of EEC countries were busy 
planning the evacuation of around 1200 EEC inhabitants. In Cairo little was 
noticeable of the war. Daily life was the same as always. We followed the war on 
the Reuter telex in the hotel foyer and on the World radio.
After a few days it became clear that we were in the wrong hotel. 
All guests staying in Egyptian state hotels were given free accommodation during 
their forced prolonged stay by the Egyptian government.

We visited the Netherlands embassy every day, and after a week we were told that 
the French government had directed the Marseille-Algeria ferry to Alexandria in 
order to pick up the Europeans.   For four days we sailed the seas escorted by 
several European naval ships. 


Middle East 1972

From half past eight that morning we had been screaming for more passengers. 
Literally. The cab driver had sworn not to leave until he had two more passengers. 
Only then would he start the long ride which would take us through the desert 
from Damascus to Baghdad in 18 hours. The alternative was to pay 40 guilders 
more per empty seat. Ok, we’ll scream a little longer.  Close to twelve o’clock 
we had two more Saoudi’s who wanted to reach Kuwait and beyond via Baghdad. 
The taxi left. There seemed to be no end to the desert. Boiling hot. 

At regular intervals there was a stop in order to pray in the direction of Mecca. 
In the middle of the night and in the middle of the desert we reached the Syrian 
border point. 100 kilometers further down the road the last one.

At the time of the first prayer meeting in the mosque, the taxi driver dropped us 
off at a hotel where we were met by the cockroaches at the door. We made it clear 
to a local taxi driver that spoiled Westerners really were used to a different 
sort of hotel.    The next hotel still wasn’t cream of the crop, but Westerners 
were staying there which made us feel a little more at ease.

We couldn’t sleep anymore, so we started the hunt for a visa. Kuwait was no problem, 
but the Saudi Arabian embassy was.    We were made to understand that only Muslims 
were given a visa. 

No delay, off to the mosque.   Six hours after our arrival in Baghdad we stood 
in front of a theologian, looking like he had run off out of Arabian Nights 
including a long grey beard, wanting to “convert” us as long as we had two 
witnesses who could convince him that we would be eternally faithful to Allah 
after our return home. But we only knew the taxi driver who had accompanied us.

What else could one expect after 6 hours in a strange town?
The Dutch embassy couldn’t help us either, they only had Christian civil servants 
there.    Probably because they pray less and work harder. Besides, the embassy 
staff rightly didn’t believe we would stay Muslim for long once we were back 
in Holland.

Well, we were going to Kuwait anyway hoping that Allah would offer us a solution 
on the way. First Babylon of course, visiting the hanging gardens. 
We were the only tourists that day and had all the time of the world.

A week before we had traveled through Lebanon in a red Beetle. 
We had visited a lot of old ruins. A beautiful country, more beautiful even than Israel. 
Matthew and I had noticed then that one had to have a lot of fantasy to be able to 
imagine how things looked like two or three thousand years ago. 
Why not restore everything with the ruin as a base? All stones are the same age, whether 
they are part of the ruin or not. It would make history alive and attract more tourists.

After Babylon, we went to Kuwait via Basra. We couldn’t resist stopping the taxi on the 
way entering a city with a name which in Dutch would translate to an obscene 
four-letter word and which the Arabs pronounce as “Koot”.    And on a beautiful July day 
we checked in at the Kuwait Hilton in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. 
They looked surprised at the sight of these Dutch wise guys, but were too nice to 
say anything.

In Kuwait we weren’t successful at the Saudi embassy either. So, on to Iran. 
From Kuwait to Abadan by air, and at that point we were so fed up with the whole thing 
that we decided to go to Israel.    From Abadan to the border by taxi, walk two 
kilometres to the Iraqi border, a taxi to Basra, Baghad and on to Amman and the last 
taxi to the Allenby bridge over the Jordan river, the dividing line between Jordan and 
Israel. 
Unfortunately, the Jordanian still think they rule the West bank and they make everyone 
apply for a visa which means a 5 day wait in Amman.   So, a taxi to Damascus via Beirut, 
a plane to Cyprus and the boat to Haifa.

At luggage control the Israeli police found the PLO pins we had bought as a 
souvenir in Damascus.    Four hours of questioning was the result, and only then 
they finally believed we weren’t terrorists.    Also because we were Dutch and had 
worked in the kibbutz before. 

Two days later I flew back to Holland.    Dead tired from our trip to the Middle East 
which had only lasted 17 days.   And to think that we had planned to go to India 
for 6 weeks.....   Across land that is…



Round the world

Long flights between the continents. BERMUDA
Circling forever before permission to land. BAHAMA’S
Endless rows of waiting passengers for immigration control. MIAMI
Expensive taxi rides to town. LOS ANGELES
And more waiting at the hotel desk. HAWAII
Discover a new country every day or week. TOKYO

No cruise or luxury train trip can give you the feeling of the Round-the-World trip. SEOUL
The cosmopolitan feeling for a while. TAIPEI
Flying across Mother Earth like a bird. HONG KONG
Belonging to the “jet set” for a while. BANGKOK
Far away from problems at home. BOMBAY
And pick up where you left off on return. HOLLAND

Leave the dream world of the “top of the bill” in travel: Round the World




The earth has been turning for millions of years....

The earth has been turning for millions of years
We all get to ride a few turns
Like a kid in the merry-go-round
Some rides are fantastic, others horrific
Nothing has eternal life

Everything is relative, in good times and bad
All men have a choice in how to take that ride
The way in which you take it is not that important
Because at a given day, the fair will be over for you too....


    Copyright 1990-2003 Ad Latjes
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