Today we’d like to introduce you to Emily Pinga.
Hi Emily, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
Green Light Group Tours started as Capitol Music Fest. It was created by Apryl and Corey Black as an affordable music festival for high school and middle school bands. Corey, Apryl’s husband, used to be a band director and wanted to take his students somewhere that they could afford, which was also educational. Washington, D.C. is where they chose to have the first Capitol Music Festival. Apryl and I went to school in Virginia right outside the D.C. area and were in a band in high school.
Our former band director let us borrow the instruments and music stands we needed to make the festival happen. Our parents own a restaurant across the street from The George Washington Masonic National Memorial, so the people that worked there had lunch at our parent’s restaurant often. The George Washington Masonic National Memorial happens to have a fantastic stage area and they agreed to let us use it for our festival. So we were all set, except for one important detail, you can’t have a competitive festival without competition.
In order to find other bands that wanted to participate in Capital Music Fest, we needed to meet with other band directors. Apryl and Corey build their first convention booth and traveled to Texas where they attended the Texas Band Association conference. Other companies would approach and question who they were and where they came from. Some people commented on how young they were. But, in the end, they found other groups to participate in the festival.
The first festival was a success so they decided to do it again the next year. It became apparent that the fun part of planning these trips was the travel itself. The festival was just an educational blip in a memorable, educational, unforgettable trip of a lifetime. Therefore, Capitol Music Fest started to book not only the festival but also the trip to Washington, D.C. as well. This includes transportation, meals, tours of monuments, hotels, museums, and even phone cards. That is right, people used to use phone cards to call their parents from their hotel rooms. It is crazy to think of that now.
Early on, a group that went to D.C. came to the booth and said “D.C. was so fun, will you take my students to New York next year?” And so we did, and Capitol Music Fest started doing all domestic tours. Years went by and Capitol Music Fest was growing every year. We found out that our county’s 8th-grade trips go to D.C. every year. Therefore, we met with the principals of the Saint Johns County schools to show them how great traveling with us could be.
They did not want to use us because our business name had music in it, and their group was an educational group. It occurred to us that we might be losing more clients than we even knew about because we had this name with music in it. Also, at this time, festivals had become less and less popular and we had stopped running Capitol Music the festival. Our business had become group travel for school groups, mainly musical school groups. The name had to go.
A few nights later we were drinking wine and brainstorming with some friends on the new name and what it should be. We thought of the Golden ticket but thought that sounded to Willy Wonka to us. There were some other bad ones I do not remember, we were at it for hours. Then hours in, one of our friends jumped up and said “Green Light because you know, you go”. The website was available and so we went for it. We also enjoyed the fact that the clothes would be green and we all like that color on us.
After we changed the name one client came up to the booth and said “Oh, you changed your name. Why would you do that?” We responded with “do you remember what the name was before?” He didn’t, so we thought the move was a good choice. Now, most of the county’s 8th-grade classes take their educational tours with us to Washington, D.C. So there is a lot to a name.
Since then, with the exception of the “Covid years,” we have successfully grown our business each year. We have 12 full-time employees that work in the office here in Saint Augustine. We also have several employees that run the trips while they are on the road. We strongly believe that travel is more educational and contributes more to a person’s outlook than most things in life. I am very happy to be a part of that experience.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Have you ever read the book, “Who Moved My Cheese?” Well, I already mentioned the phone cards. One year we were passing them out and a kid asked what it was, so we stopped passing them out after that.
The same goes for how trips were paid for. The group leader used to collect all the money from the students and send us a check for the trip. Then, one day, we were visiting a director at his school. As he is eating lunch, kids are coming in with cash and coins and he is writing them receipts and trying to keep track of who gave him what. We realized that we were creating more work for the customer, so we had to make a change.
Corey spent a very long time creating an online billing system. We were one of the first to offer this service and it was a huge success. But it was a bit bumpy getting there. Now all the tour companies offer individual billing, but I am proud of Corey and the team for realizing the need for change before we became outdated.
Really the hardest bump we went through was the completely unexpected shutdown of the United States in 2020 due to COVID. We had one group that was already on a bus, o their way to their destination, that had to turn around. We had another group in New York when Broadway shut its doors. I was at a friend’s wedding and my phone started ringing off the hook with groups canceling their trip. It was awful and people were mad and there was nothing we could do about it.
We’ve been impressed with Green Light Group Tours, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
We organize trips for groups of 20 or more to the destination of their choice. We specialize in custom trips that are all-inclusive. Our goal is to create a magical, educational, safe experience for each of our travelers.
We are honestly really great friends with a lot of the people that travel with us. We are passionate about what we do and we love what we do. We might not be the best fit for everyone, but I appreciate that we hold our product to a high standard.
Are there any books, apps, podcasts, or blogs that help you do your best?
We have everyone that starts here read the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. Personally, I think the title is a little strange but I do think the book has some great takeaways.
We are pretty much completely digital, so google drive is our best friend. We also use Trello and I think that it is super helpful when working on projects with others.
Personally, I like to use trips as well for my personal travel.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.greenlightgrouptours.com
Image Credits
Erik young
