Yellowknife (Mar 01/06) - A lot has changed in the travel industry over the last 20 years, but Nishi-Khon/Key West Travel has been through it all.

On thing hasn't changed and that's the phrase the staff hears most.

Kerri Yamkowy: "We now focus 95 per cent on corporate travel and five per cent on leisure." -

"I've had it, send me somewhere warm," recounts co-owner Kerri Yamkowy.

While she continues to send people on holidays, hot or otherwise, the company has reinvented itself over the past two decades to handle more corporate clients.

"We now focus 95 per cent on corporate travel and five per cent on leisure," she said.

Yamkowy originally operated Key West with two other partners and her husband Don in three locations: two in Winnipeg and one in Yellowknife.

But the husband and wife team bought out the other partners and focused on Yellowknife. Today it operates through partnerships with American Express Travel Services and the Tlicho Investment Corporation.

Corporate travel is much more than just booking a flight, said Yamkowy.

"A company may have hundreds of employees. It involves booking flights, hotels and cars, providing 24-hour service, emergency lines and a reporting system," she said.

That has meant Nishi-Khon/Key West has had to keep pace with the ever changing technology.

"We started out with phones and teletype and now we have complex booking systems," she said.

Yamkowy said all of the companies nine full-time staff have to be computer savvy.

One thing that keeps the company's on its toes is the number of name changes in the North. Clients might know one name of a town in the North, but it may be known by another name.

We need to be familiar with names, past and present, she said.

As the company celebrates its 20 year anniversary, Yamkowy knows one thing is for certain.

"No matter what is happening in the world, Canadians will not stop travelling."