Jetwing Travels and Herbert Cooray’s business philosophy in good times and bad

(Excerpted from The Jetwing Story and the Life of Herbert Cooray by Shiromal Cooray)

The legacy of Herbert Cooray shines just as brightly at Jetwing Travels, the agency he created and renamed at the behest of a German business associate. Commencing operation on April 29, 1981, at an office located in Negombo, Jetwing Travels has grown its client base a hundredfold, from 500 in 1983 to over 50,000 by 2010. No longer does it restrict its operations to the German or Scandinavian markets. Today, its customers are worldwide.

Broadening the client base was no easy task. Jetwing Travels’ teams traveled the world – from Poland and Serbia to Malaysia and Thailand, from India and Israel to China, Korea and Taiwan, from Russia and Kazakhstan, to Iran and Israel promoting Sri Lanka as one of the world’s most rewarding holiday destinations.

Trained to swim against the tide, to stay positive in the face of resistance and even rejection they would follow every business lead no matter how inconsequential, venturing into markets conventional wisdom judged hopeless, building a worldwide client base, one agency and tour operator at a time.

The firm’s 30 and more years of operation span the whole of Sri Lanka tourism’s fallow period.

At times, revenues were negligible; still, never during all that time was a single employee made redundant. While industry shrank with every blow to security – the JVP threats of the late eighties, the Bandaranike International Airport and Central Bank bombings, the tsunami in 2004, Jetwing Travels held onto its people whom Herbert, long before the phrase became a management cliche, called the firm’s greatest asset.

“It is people who go out and capture business, who accompany and guide our clients and make their experience memorable, who handle all the logistics” he would say. “What would we have if we got rid of them? We would end up being a shell company”. He was strongly conscious of the investment in training, the effort to inculcate the Jetwing way of doing things in every employee. He did not want to have to write off such an important investment, nor did he wish to put it at the disposal of his competitors.

When times grew hard, Jetwing Travels’ management would call a general staff meeting to explain the situation and describe measures the firm needed to take in order to survive. “We didn’t make a single one of our associates redundant, nor did we ask them to take any pay cuts the way some others did,” remembers one of the directors.

After all, they had their own commitments, young families and so on. But we did explain the situation…. I still remember the look of fear in some of my colleagues’ eyes as unpleasant facts were listed. But there was no point painting a false rosy picture – any more than there was in exaggerating the problems.”

To stay viable, the company embarked on an efficiency regime, finding ways to eliminate waste and unnecessary expenditure of time or money. As the amount of work to be done declined, operating costs could be saved by reducing working hours (Saturday became a full day off). In the end, Jetwing Travels was able to continue posting a profit, albeit modest, year after year.

Things did not always look so bleak, however. There were times, especially during the late 1990s and the Peace Accord period, when tourism, both internal and foreign, would begin to revive, only to suffer another setback, just as those in the business were beginning to breathe more easily.

In 1993, having qualified as an accountant and made a successful career for herself in the advertising industry, Herbert’s daughter Shiromal joined Jetwing Travels as Managing Director. By 1995, the firm had left Negombo for spacious new offices in Colombo. The ensuing period had been an excellent test of its mettle and that of its people. Both came through with flying colours, and the experience cemented bonds of association and loyalty that have stood Jetwing Travels in good stead ever since.

In 1996, Raju Arasaratnam joined Jetwing Travels as an Executive Director and helped expand the company to be a force to reckon with in the industry.

The Jetwing Group, created and built up by Herbert Cooray, continues to reflect his values, his business philosophy and the life lessons he learned and applied to his dealings with others. These values passion, humility, tenacity and integrity – lie at the heart of everything Jetwing does.

Herbert Cooray never set out to do anything he did not feel passionately about. If he chose to support a cause, he would throw himself fully into it, dedicating himself to it with commitment and loyalty.

He loathed ostentation of any kind, dressing as simply and informally as possible, eschewing status symbols and advertisements of wealth.

Pragmatic and not selfconscious, he would never turn away when someone was in trouble and needed help. Valuing people and human relationships highly, he was courteous and punctual. A Jetwing associate who missed an appointment or kept a client/supplier waiting was certain to earn a rebuke from Herbert. Hospitality, like humility, was in his blood.

His integrity was legendary. He dealt honourably with friend or foe alike, and associates, whether suppliers, partners or competitors, never had cause for a complaint. He believed in remunerating his associates equitably, ensuring his suppliers got fair prices and were paid on time, and giving his customers a fair deal – and whenever possible, a little bit on top.

The example and values of Herbert Cooray still guide all the actions and decisions of the Jetwing Group. They are, in a sense, family values, which is why the group often refers to itself as the ‘Jetwing family of companies. Jetwing people – engaged, so to speak, on family business, truly put their hearts into what they are doing. Empathy, appreciation and mutual care are part of their interactions with suppliers, clients and all others.

The champion of human values and equality also believed in choosing the right people. “You can’t teach someone to smile” he said. “You can’t teach someone to want to serve others well, you can’t teach personality, you can’t teach a person to be passionate about what they are doing. But you can find people with those qualities and teach them what to do”.

He never shrank from hiring young, inexperienced people, provided they had the right attitude. Formal qualifications were rarely an issue. He was a fine judge of character, and he trusted his own judgment.

Following his example, Jetwing always puts customers first; even company directors have to wait their turn.

“I remember a rather embarrassing experience some years ago” recalled one of the directors. “We were negotiating the management contract for a hotel owned by another business group, so Mr. Cooray and some of the other directors drove down there to have a look at the place. The chairman of that group and his family were there to meet us. We were almost swamped with hospitality – it seemed as if the entire staff had been ordered to look after us. The other hotel guests were visibly neglected. It was most uncomfortable, because clearly they would have resented it”.

Such a thing, he went on to explain, would never happen at Jetwing. Jetwing reserves no special room or facilities for the use of directors or the Chairman. Friends and associates of the directors cannot expect special treatment when it comes to reservations if a hotel is full. Even at the company head offices, there are no special washrooms or dining-rooms for senior management or directors. Only guests and customers get special treatment at Jetwing. All associates are treated alike.

Having entered the field in which he would make his name through what was, essentially, a series of happy accidents, the founder of Jetwing understood the importance of being able to recognize and respond swiftly to opportunity, no matter how unlikely or unpropitious the circumstances under which it might arise. Sensitive to the currents of history, he would explain to his team that Sri Lanka and the world were experiencing a period of intense millennial change, a time during which long-term plans and forecasts were unusually likely to be invalidated by unexpected developments.

He believed the best way to prosper in such times was to be as fully informed as possible. He was fond of quoting something he had once read: “In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future; the learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists”. He was always ready to learn and absorb change.

He encouraged his son Hiran, his successor as Chairman of Jetwing, to accompany the firm’s managers on frequent working visits to famous hotels overseas, where they could assess the guest experience first-hand, as they learnt the inner workings of the industry. He encouraged his managers to keep an eye out for new ideas and innovations, not simply with a view to adopting them for Jetwing, but also to spot customer and industry trends and understand better the changing nature of the hospitality business.

He also understood that the industry could not continue to depend on traffic from Western Europe to fill its hotels, plane seats and tour buses; long before most others realized it, Herbert had seen that future lay in growing Asian markets like China and India.

Not all opportunities, though, were equally worth pursuing. Unlike many self-made men, Herbert Cooray did not delude himself into an exaggerated estimate of his own abilities. He was never one to bite off more than he could chew, especially in terms of financial commitment. He did not believe in plunging the company into debt to finance some over-ambitious project; he always made sure the gearing was comfortable and manageable.

This policy of minimizing financial risk may have curbed expansion during industry boom times, but it was the lightness of the group’s debt burden that enabled Jetwing to keep going and keep all of its people – through the long years of industry depression. Slower growth never bothered Herbert Cooray: what he wanted to be was not the biggest, but the best.

A former chairman of the Sri Lanka Tourist Board, Mr. H. M. S. Samaranayake in his memoir – A Lifetime in Tourism- had this to say of Herbert; “Herbert Cooray could be identified as the single individual who had made the largest contribution to the development of tourism in Sri Lanka” (Page 142).

He certainly transformed Negombo, from being a sleepy, remote fishing village to a bustling, clean, popular and organized tourism hub. He braved naysayers and had confidence in his convictions that Galle will be another tourism hub and pioneered leisure sector investments there. He created a team of committed passionate people who continue to follow and develop the Jetwing way and that has helped Jetwing to be a respected brand in Sri Lanka tourism industry.