In 1982, entrepreneurs Josephine Kling and Joyce Landry founded Landry & Kling Inc., a new breed of travel company, and the first to specialize exclusively in cruise sales. The company provided the first distribution channel between cruise lines and corporate America by selling and operating incentive cruises and meetings at sea for Fortune 1000 companies such as GE, Radio Shack, AFLAC, Motorola, Miller Brewing, EDS, and others who use incentive travel to motivate peak performance.
Kling and Landry started their venture in New York City, with Kling responsible for marketing/media relations, finance, retail sales and administration. In 1988 the business relocated to Miami, Cruise Capital of the World. From a $26,000 start-up, annual sales grew rapidly by focusing on full-ship charters for corporate groups cruising in worldwide destinations,
As a pioneer of corporate cruises, Kling became a virtual industry spokesman, developing a reputation with journalists as a reliable source for consumer and trade publications, speaking to MPI, SITE, Seatrade and other industry groups, serving on cruise line advisory boards, writing a regular column for “Incentive” magazine, and appearing as a cruise expert (twice on NBC’s Today Show). Landry & Kling Inc. is now one of the most highly visible and widely imitated companies in the incentive cruise industry.
In 1998 the company was sought after and purchased by a public company, Travel Services International, the first specialized distributor of leisure travel to be traded on Wall Street. And in May, 2005 the partners completed the buy-back of Landry & Kling Inc. with plans for growth well underway.
Kling started her cruise career as marketing & sales coordinator for Royal Viking Line in San Francisco. Later, moving to New York City, she worked as an advertising account manager for Scali McCabe Sloves; then joined Holland America Line as director of program planning & passenger research, where she developed the business plans of 5 vessels in worldwide destinations, and started a long friendship with Joyce Landry.
She serves on the advisory board for The Commonwealth Institute of South Florida, a non-profit organization founded to help women entrepreneurs build successful businesses. She’s also a family partner for Habitat for Humanity and helped launch their first Women’s Build in Vero Beach, FL. In 2004 Kling was a delegate to the Riga Women Business Leaders Summit in Riga, Latvia, a business development initiative in the Baltic sponsored by the US State Department. Kling Also serves on the board of directors of a steel fabricating business in Cincinnati, Ohio.
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