Meet Cessy Meacham: An Entrepreneurial Spirit
by Judy Jacobs /Cecelia Meacham, more commonly known as Cessy, began her career as a travel agent in Lima, Peru, before immigrating to Miami in her mid-20s.
You might say it was a bit of sibling envy that got her involved in the industry.
Meacham watched her older sister, who worked in reservations for Aero Peru, fly off on trips that she couldn’t take. So right after finishing high school she got an internship at a travel agency and learned everything the old-fashioned way.
“That was back in the 80s, when I was just 20 years old. There were no computers in Peru yet and we got trained through the airlines,” she said.
“I went to Spain to the Iberia learning center and to Colombia to the Avianca learning center.”
A budding entrepreneur
While learning the travel industry, Meacham also studied business administration. Her real education in entrepreneurship, however, came from her job with a second travel agency.
The agency was run by a group of Peruvian entrepreneurs, who owned franchises like Kentucky Fried Chicken. They had high expectations, and that gave Meacham the confidence to succeed—even at a young age.
Meaham’s duties included handling a politician’s travel, and she followed him around Peru on the campaign trail. Her former boss at the agency later became vice-president of Peru.
U.S. bound
After five years at the agency, Meacham immigrated to Miami in line with her father’s plan to relocate his family to the U.S.
Not knowing English, the only job she could get initially was as a security guard at the Port of Miami. That position provided work on weekends while she built up her client base as an independent travel agent.
Meacham befriended the immigration officers and crew members of the cruise ships who called at the port, many of whom became clients.
Agency owner
A decade after arriving in the U.S., Meacham opened a corporate travel agency in Miami with three partners. She stayed there for seven years before following her husband to Melbourne, Fla. where she opened her own brick and mortar agency—Anytime Travel Solutions—in the city’s downtown.
She has a staff of three agents in the office plus another agent who works independently. The business mix is 70% corporate and 30% leisure, but Meacham plans to build the leisure side.
Branching out
No longer finding corporate travel a challenge, Meacham has begun to focus on “exotic destinations” like the Maldives and India and hopes to encourage her honeymoon clients to travel to these kinds of places.
But in spite of her interest in the exotic, Meacham’s true love is Italy.
After meeting professional women in several organizations she’s a part of, Meacham decided in 2009 to organize and lead annual one-week, women-only tours to that country.
Participants range from 45-years-old to those in their seventies. They come to Meacham through word of mouth as well as the vino nights she presents at a local Italian restaurant to promote the trips. She limits group size to 12.
“We make dreams come true. I give a questionnaire to the ladies before they leave to see what they want to do and then make it happen,” Meacham said.
She also organized a two-week trip to Peru in 2012. Participants spent the first week making water filters in a village near Iquitos – to ensure that the local Bora tribal people have access to clean drinking water – and the second week exploring Machu Picchu and other parts of the country.
Passionate about promoting sustainable tourism, Meacham books locally-owned hotels rather than big-chain properties.
More plans
For her next entrepreneurial endeavor, Meacham will launch an inbound tour operation early next year. She’s working with Italian, German and Spanish tour operators in the hopes that Europeans visiting Miami will want to venture north to Melbourne.
She isn’t stopping there though.
Meacham has plans for Antarctica. “It’s my target and on my vision board,” she said.
“I have to go in 2015, but I’m not sure how I will do it yet. It will be the last of the seven continents that I visit.”