Adventure planner hands over map
Owner of Marlin Travel retires after 38 years, keeps company in the North
Beth Brown
Northern News Services
Friday, August 26, 2016
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Evelyn Nind loves to plan adventures. That's how the owner of Marlin Travel has spent the last 38 years fashioning trips of a lifetime for Northerners.
Melissa Hernandez, left, employee of Marlin Yellowknife Travel and agency owner Evelyn Nind are in the process of saying goodbye to their office on 50 Avenue on Tuesday. Nind is retiring after 38 years of serving the community and transferring the company to another Northern agency. - Beth Brown/NNSL photo |
"People say to me, 'I've always wanted to go there, and I never got around to it,'" says Nind. "You immerse yourself into their dream, you try to listen to what they really want, what they are really looking for."
After almost four decades in the business, Nind has decided to retire.
On Sept. 1, Marlin Travel will close its doors and transfer the business just a few blocks over to longtime competitor Top of the World Travel.
It's a move she is sad - but also glad - to make. "We are a Northern business and always have been. I wanted to keep it in the North."
Originally from the Netherlands, Nind moved to Canada in 1959 and then to Yellowknife in the late 1970s.
Like many who travel here, she had only planned to stay for a couple of years.
"I've been here ever since," says Nind. "I love the North, it's my home now."
She was hired on the spot at the Yellowknife Travel Agency as a bookkeeper in June 1978, later transitioning to travel agent. In 1995, Nind bought the business, which has been operating in Yellowknife since 1963 in a variety of locations, and was the first travel agency of its kind in the Northwest Territories.
She says the travel industry has seen a great deal of change since she started, when travel requests would be handwritten on green reservation cards, and flights booked by calling across the street to Pacific Western Airlines.
Everything is computerized now but she says technology doesn't change the most important part of her job, which is taking the stress out of travel and making sure her clients are treated like proper customers, instead of a confirmation number. She says that's where the value of a travel agency lies.
"When you do it online, you have difficulty trying to get in touch with Expedia," says Nind.
Top of the World owner Michael Olson agrees.
"It's a business built on trust and relationships. That's a huge part of what Evelyn and Melissa offered over there. She wanted to make sure her customers were looked after."
This is why Nind will be spending time helping her customers transition to the new company. Melissa Hernandez, a Marlin employee of 18 years, will be making the move to Top of the World Travel as well.
Olson says having a Northern-based agency to deal with the nuances of travelling in and out of the Canadian territories, like poor weather, irregular flight schedules and multiple layovers, makes the experience more comfortable for customers - even if it just means that the agent actually knows where you are travelling to and from.
"Most agents in Calgary and Edmonton don't know where Kugluktuk is, if there's an airline that flies there, if there is a hotel and if there is a car rental agency," he said, adding that travel in the North requires a "more hands-on booking."
As for Nind, she can pack up the rows of glossy travel brochures that array her 50 Avenue office, confident that her business will stay in the North where she worked so hard to build it.
That doesn't mean she is done planning adventures. After she catches up on her housecleaning and takes a good long nap, Nind says she'll have time to do some globetrotting of her own.
"At least once a year I go to a place I have never been before or would like to go again," she said.
