Discover travel bliss with Cruise Planners in Annapolis, offering expertly crafted cruise itineraries.
Annapolis, MD
21401
| Monday | 9am - 5pm |
| Tuesday | 9am - 5pm |
| Wednesday | 9am - 5pm |
| Thursday | 9am - 5pm |
| Friday | 9am - 5pm |
| Saturday | 9am - 12pm |
| Sunday | 9am - 12pm |
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411 to Travel is owned & operated by Claire Hodgkin & Casey Coven. Casey and I are sisters. We have always been close...we shared a room growing up, we went to the same college and belonged to the same sorority, and for most of our lives, we have lived in the same area. We both had careers in retail for about 15 years. I moved into corporate America and then into real estate for 10 years. Casey worked in retail liquidation which means she traveled around the US and Canada closing retail stores.
In 2013, Casey came with me to a real estate convention in Washington D.C. She also had a real estate license and worked with me part time. There was a lull in the liquidation business, and she was looking for something else to do. At the conference trade show, there was a booth for Cruise Planners. She listened while the representative talked about owning a travel franchise. On the train home, I asked her what she learned. She said that she thought it would be fun and interesting to own a travel business and she was going to explore it further. I told her that I always thought in the back of my mind that I would do something in travel when I retired from a “normal job.”
True to her word, Casey started to research. We made a couple of conference calls talking to different travel companies that offered franchises. We settled on Cruise Planners because it fit our purposes best. Since we had both owned businesses in the past, we wrote a business plan, and we funded our business figuring that it would take a year or more before we made money.
Casey was ready to get started in late 2013; I had to finish up with my real estate clients, so I started part time. We went to classes in Florida to learn about the travel industry, and we met a lot of travel vendors. Our strategy was to network in our local areas. Since Casey had been national president of a women’s organization, she put together our first group...a winter cruise in the Caribbean, and we sold it to members of the organization. In 2018, we went on our fourth cruise with this group. I closed my real estate door in July, 2014. After a bout with cancer, I too, became active in the business.
