FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 23, 2008
CONTACT: Molly Dannenmaier
Director of Marketing and Public Relations,
409-765-7834

Galveston Historical Foundation Purchases Galveston Island Tours as a Wholly Owned For-Profit Subsidiary

Click here to go directly the Galveston Island Tours website

Galveston Historical Foundation (GHF) announces the purchase of Galveston Island Tours LLC, to be operated as a wholly owned for-profit subsidiary offering a wide range of destination services.

“GHF’s board of directors is very excited about the opportunities that this new business venture brings to our organization,” says Raymond Lewis, president of GHF. “Galveston Island Tours is a well respected business. We really feel that its business goals are right in line with the foundation’s mission of providing services that will expand awareness of the island’s heritage. This acquisition is a natural growth opportunity for GHF.”

After four increasingly successful years as an Island-based provider of destination services, the owners of Galveston Island Tours began discussions with GHF leadership several months ago about the feasibility of joining forces to offer a full-service Galveston-Houston area event and visit-planning business. As a for-profit subsidiary, Galveston Island Tours can market more aggressively to convention, corporate, excursion and even family groups in a larger geographical area than the foundation does, making detailed arrangements for visits to the island from Houston and the Bay Area, and providing tours from Galveston to mainland destinations such as NASA, Houston’s Museum District, and even to Southern Louisiana.

The company now offers services to groups meeting in Houston from transportation to translation, including booking venues and hotels, airport pick-up and complete event planning. The purchase by GHF links Galveston Island Tours to an organization that already provides trained guides at the historic sites and buildings that it preserves and maintains.

This kind of business arrangement between a non-profit preservation organization and a for-profit subsidiary business has been successfully undertaken in recent years by GHF’s national partner, The National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington, D.C., which owns five for-profit and non-profit subsidiaries.

This innovative purchase allows the historical foundation to expand services to the Greater Houston area and beyond. “We believe this endeavor will widen the exposure of our historic properties, and other cultural amenities in the area to corporate clients and visiting groups,” says Dwayne Jones, executive director of GHF.

Galveston Island Tours started four years ago under the direction of Paul Lyle, Frey Reggio and Lydia Miller.

“We began the company as a tour operator and quickly evolved into a full service, first class event planning and destination services company, based on clientele requests from all areas of the country,” says Lyle. “We have been very successful, and the sale of the business to the Galveston Historical Foundation is a logical expansion for that organization, which already operates many of the local historic sites we visit.”

Link: http://www.galvestonislandtours.com/