Thank You, Mr. Greenspan
And a prosperous millennium to all!


By Patrick Totty

Cultural Travels Ends 2000 on Growth Note!

Somebody once compared the emotional stability of the stock market in particular and the U.S. economy in general to that of chickens on a moonless night. Every wisp of wind, or grunt from a passing animal or rustle of leaves throws the poor things into a panic. A good chicken farmer realizes how hair-trigger his critters are and finds ways to soothe them.

The chicken farmer for the whole U.S. is Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. He finally realized on January 3 that his clucks -- the New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, bond markets, Fannie Mae, etc. -- had worked themselves into a pre-recessionary dither in the wake of falling stock prices and slowing economic growth. By dropping federal interest rates one-half a point, he restored order -- heck, exuberance -- to the hen house. 

For that we say, thank you, Mr. Greenspan.

What Mr. Greenspan's boost to the economy means is that the travel industry will not suffer quite the letdown that many people were fearing near the end of 2000. The economy is going to continue growing at a healthy, rather than breakneck, pace, and most of us will see a good business year. 

For us at Cultural Travels, while we welcome Mr. Greenspan's move to boost confidence, we had been planning all along to continue plugging away at building one of the most useful, distinctive travel sites on the Web. While other dot-com companies have been torching their way through other people's investment  money, we've been quietly investing our own money to build a company that will have "legs" no matter what economic conditions prevail. 

The proof of that is the ever-expanding list of services this site offers: the ability of tour hosts to come and go on this site and change their copy at will; the ability for Web Page Ad holders to show their current travel specials; our direct connection to Magellan Books' 4,000-title online travel book catalog; our willingness to give every travel host, regardless of size, a "place at the table" by giving each a free listing; our continually expanding online newsletter, which we think is one of the best on the Web.

There will be plenty more. Watch for Cultural Travels to increase its range of services and usefulness to the industry. While the other chickens are running around trying to buy market share and directing unsuspecting travelers to captive or in-house tour hosts, you'll find us here, continuing to lay golden eggs.

Happy New Year and a Prosperous Millennium!

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