Guyanese award-winning matriarch of insurance, travel and tourism Gem Eytle is the epitome of grace, elegance and charm, yet a businesswoman of steel. She is not fazed at how the internet has subsumed travel and tourism because there is continuous need by some for people to take care of their travel needs.
“As much as there will be people booking their own flights and planning their own itineraries, there will always be a place for travel agencies. There will always be people who need support in planning their travel and many who do not want to research flights and travel destinations. They will need someone to troubleshoot for them,” Eytle told Stabroek Weekend in a recent interview from her Georgetown office, which she still runs at 93 years old.
Noting the human resources challenges travel agencies face, she said recently she had delegated a subordinate to follow up on a request by a potential client from England who wanted Frandec to arrange travel to the country’s interior. When she asked for a follow up, there was none. A response was sent out after she enquired. She told staffers they were letting the trail get cold. On the day of this interview, the potential client had not responded.
“I said, when he asked for information today, that meant he needed it like yesterday. You have to strike while the iron is hot. The market is saturated so you have to act immediately. When you are selling something, people do not call back. The only time people call back is if you owe them money. You want the business, you have to call back to get the business and to get rid of nuisance value,” she shared.
Earlier this month, the Tourism and Hospitality Association of Guyana inducted Eytle into its Hall of Fame and honoured her with a Lifetime Award for her over 60 years in the travel and tourism industry which she helped to pioneer and guide as a suave businesswoman over the years with the establishment of Frandec Travel Services Inc. She became the majority shareholder of Frandec in the early 1980s and assumed the chairmanship of the board of directors in the early 1990s, a position she still holds.
She visits her office once a week or more often as her service is required. Frandec is a key service provider in the travel sector nationally, regionally, and internationally.
Over the years, she said, the company moved from strength to strength but also faced a number of challenges including an arson attack in 2012 that destroyed its Main Street location. The travel service temporarily operated out of her home until the 92 Middle Street, North Cummingsburg, Georgetown location was secured.
The Covid-19 pandemic was another challenge. Many clients started to book online. The airlines no longer give free seats to the agencies for clients as they did in the past. “Frandec has to now be more proactive,” she said.
The GEM
Known by the acronym for her maiden name, Gertrude Elaine Morgan (GEM), Eytle being her married name, she said that even her school friends who once called her Gertie now address her as Gem.
Eytle recalled how it was to “get to know your country” from a young age to what is called “tourism” today.
From an early age, her parents introduced the six Morgan siblings to local travel out of Georgetown. Eytle, the eldest, is the lone sibling residing in Guyana. Her remaining sister, Amy Thomason, lives in England and her brother, Colonel (ret’d) Carl Morgan, the youngest, lives in Canada.
She recalled that their parents took them to several places by train; to Rosignol and to Parika stopping along the way to picnic at a beach or at some place in a village. They left home by eight o’clock in the mornings and returned by the train in the afternoons.
Eytle was born in New Market Street “by the hospital gate” where her parents and grandparents lived. “Across the way was a funeral parlour. Now it houses Sigma Labs. The family house is still there. Every time I pass, I would say, ‘you know, I was born in this house’,” she related.
Life was decent growing up in New Market Street back then, she said. “We never had to lock the doors. At 21 years old, there was no getting a key to the door. There were no choke-and-robbers. We had no break-and-enter. There were no vendors selling on the street. Some people sold snacks like pickled mangoes, sugar cake, from trays in their yards,” she recalled.
Pioneering
She was nearly 23 years old when she resigned from her job at the Supreme Court Registry to get married in November 1954, after four years as a civil servant. “In those days, married women and single parents couldn’t work in the civil service. When I left that job, I thought the end of the world had come. What I didn’t know was that it had just begun,” she said laughing heartily.
Eytle soon joined the private sector. “I was employed right away from the 2nd January1955 at Francis de Caires and Company, insurance agents for North American Life Insurance, CALICO, Lloyd’s of London. The company was also the commissioned manufacturers’ representative for various merchant companies marketing their products in Guyana,” she said.
She was employed as a secretary and not as a switchboard operator as one newspaper reported. She said, “In those days, we had no switchboard. It was a telephone on a pole and Telephone House had to put through calls for us.”
Francis de Caires and Company was owned by Cecil de Caires, son of Francis de Caires who was a family friend of the Morgans.
Eytle had responsibilities for some of the insurance portfolios, which she recently sold to Hand in Hand Insurance Company.
Francis de Caires and Co was not in the travel business at the time. However, Cecil de Caires did a lot of travelling as a manufacturers’ representative to Europe, Canada and the USA. “One day, Eytle said, “a woman at Sprostons, who had connections to the airlines and who did his bookings to travel through Trinidad and Tobago told de Caires, ‘Why don’t you open a travel agency and let me run it for you?’”
Francis de Caires and Co opened the travel agency on September 1st 1960 in America Street, and the woman left Sprostons and joined the company. A Trinidadian director, Eytle said, suggested the name Frandec in keeping with the cable name, which was used to send messages via Cable and Wireless to make reservations and bookings. It obtained full International Air Transport Association status in February 1961 under Eytle’s watch. She was responsible for sales and promotion.
“It was the first travel agency in then British Guiana and it was the authorised agent for Celebrity Cruises,” she said.
Eventually Sprostons, which was a shipping agent, also got a travel agency. Wieting and Richter and Sandbach Parker were also agents for shipping lines. During that period, many people travelled to Trinidad and Tobago to join steam ships travelling to Europe and North America.
“We didn’t have many aeroplanes in those days. Even before we started the travel agency, there weren’t many airlines. There was BOAC [British Overseas Aircraft Corporation] which was bought over by British Airways and Pan American Airlines. BWIA played an important role in our travel industry too,” she said.
She recalled that when the mass migration out of Guyana started following the 1962 race riots, there were no visa requirements to travel to the United Kingdom and a single airfare was $406. “That was a lot of money at the time,” she noted.
She recalled Frandec being the first travel agency to offer trips to Kaieteur Falls by air. She partnered with M & M Tours, owned and operated by Merilyn Mekdeci and Margaret Chan-A-Sue in 1990, to offer tours to Kaieteur Falls via the Civil Aviation Authority’s Skyvan, piloted by Malcolm Chan-A-Sue.
Eytle personally prepared sandwiches, fruit salads and juices for visitors on their way to Kaieteur Falls. Her husband who supported her ventures, she said, transported clients, mainly foreigners, to the airport for their flights.
Prior to the flights, visitors to Kaieteur travelled the overland route through the Demerara River to Mackenzie (there was no Linden/Soesdyke Highway), then by truck through a trail that led to the Denham Suspension Bridge via Kangaruma, up the Potaro River to Tukeit, Amatuk and Waratuk, then trekked up to Kaieteur Falls. Visitors spent the night sleeping on the plateau at Kaieteur Falls before descending the next day to return to Georgetown via Bartica, Parika and Vreed-en-Hoop. “That was a week’s trip,” she said.
Hobby is busyness
The mother of two, Kathryn and Raymond, who both lived in Canada at one time, said she never thought of migrating even though she was offered permanent residency in Canada.
After she was widowed 31 years ago, and after her Canadian visa expired, she was made the offer but she turned it down. The official who made the offer said he had interviewed hundreds of people and Eytle was the first person to turn down the offer of permanent residency.
“Of course they knew me because we did business with all the embassies and high commissions at the time. We did a lot of business at cocktail parties and dinners,” she said.
Eytle said she could not think of leaving Guyana because she enjoyed what she was doing and she wanted to do it for as long as she could.
“I said I like my independence. I like my job. I did not own the business then. I now own it. For 30 years,” she said Eytle said she made the right choice because her children had a good grounding in Guyana. Raymond became a Guyana scholar and attended Cornell, one of the Ivy League universities in the USA. Kathryn obtained a Trust House scholarship to study in England.
“I wasn’t able to get up and cook and chase the weather and things like that. I have a good life in Guyana in spite of its ups and downs,” she added.
Although she has had helpers at home, she said, she herself is a first class cook. She showed Stabroek Weekend several pictures of her culinary arts ranging from hor d’oeuvres at cocktail parties to main courses for dinners.
She recalled that she took part in a crash course on housekeeping and home management at the Carnegie School of Home Economics. “The stairway at Carnegie, we rubbed on Mansion polish then polished it by hand on all fours. We didn’t have electric polishers. I had a good grilling on house management and housekeeping,” she said.
Eytle also loves to bake and sew her own clothes. She employs a cook and a cleaner, but said when they try to do mediocre work, she tells them, “You all can’t fool me. I can tell you all what to do.”
When her children were young, she sewed their clothes. The dress she wore during the interview she said she had sewn herself. “Nobody can outfit me like me,” she noted.
With a flair for fashion and hats in particular, Eytle launched the Inner Wheel’s Easter Hat Show in Georgetown over 40 years ago. “I started the Easter Hat show because I knew of hat shows as a child and it was all about creativity. Creativity is in our family’s genes,” she said.
She loves gardening with a penchant for dahlias and orchids but her love is for roses and hibiscuses. She is a member of the local horticultural society. Her husband was the backbone of her gardening efforts.
Asked when she got the time to cook, bake and garden, she said she after work and on weekends. “Busyness was my hobby,” she said.
A grandmother of three, Eytle is due to travel to Barbados this week to take part in a ceremony to mark her grandson, (Kathryn’s son) sailing a vessel to Barbados. He is a member of the US Coast Guard and is also pursuing studies in naval architecture and marine engineering.
