Mideast His Specialty, Travel Agent Hurting

Waseem Qaiser is selling the wrong place at the wrong time.

The Anaheim travel agent specializes in trips to the Middle East. Starting in 1995 and for six years, the niche made dreams come true for Qaiser and his wife, Javaria. The couple emigrated from Pakistan a decade ago, arriving here with more hopes than prospects.

They borrowed on credit cards to launch Travel Plus. As the business grew, it paid for their house in Fullerton and seeded a college fund for their three children. Qaiser brought in his younger brother Fahim to help with bookings and manage the storefront office.

He hired five independent agents on a commission basis. Two receptionists answered the phones.

“It was good,” said Qaiser, 42, smiling at the memory, savoring it. “Everything was good. People were traveling.” The smile vanished. “All of a sudden, everything stopped.”

Today, the agents and receptionists are gone, the phones mostly silent, and sales down 95%. The college fund is wanting.

Qaiser feels like the loneliest entrepreneur in town, a merchant-pariah whose stock in trade could be a late-night comedian’s riff: Experience the ancient wonders -- and modern warfare -- of a Middle East vacation.

“Things are terrible,” he said, standing at his cubicle desk in front of a promotional poster for Dubai. He has the flagpole posture and unblinking eyes of a striver. But there are worry lines around the dark eyes.

“I’ll be happy just to keep my head above water. We’ve been hit so hard.”

The first blow came with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Travel Plus’ bookings dropped nearly to zero, beginning with reservations for pilgrimages to Mecca. Back then, it didn’t help that one of the company’s prime destinations outside the Middle East was Pakistan, a neighbor of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

After U.S. forces had routed the Taliban, there were glimmers of a rebound in Middle East tourism. Qaiser placed deposits on 100 hotel rooms in Saudi Arabia, in anticipation of this year’s Mecca excursions. He was confident.

But then the United States prepared to invade Iraq.

“I’ve sold four of those hotel rooms,” said Qaiser. “Usually, by now, I would have sold 80 at least. We haven’t sold any packages since January.”

Marketing the Middle East has long carried risks for travel professionals. Agents like Qaiser rode a roller coaster in the 1990s. The low points were marked by the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the 1997 terrorist massacre of 58 tourists in Egypt and the nuclear saber-rattling of Pakistan and India toward the end of the decade.

In peaceful times, however, the Middle East has ranked as a top attraction, with travelers drawn by the Holy Land, the pyramids and the antiquities of thousands of years of civilization.

“You’ve got some wonderful sites there,” said Richard Copland, president of the American Society of Travel Agents. “It was a major destination until the last year and half.”

Copland said Middle East travel has declined more than 50% in that period. “In four to six months it might open up,” he said. “But there’s no question it will be a tough sell.”

Qaiser used to do his selling through advertisements on local cable-TV stations and in newspapers. These days, he can’t afford to buy ads, and depends on referrals from longtime customers and the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles.

It isn’t much.

“You can count the calls,” he said, pointing at the phone on his desk, which sits beside a wooden model of the HMS Bounty. “It’s just not ringing. It used to ring off the hook.... It’s awful.”

The Travel Plus office looks out on a worn stretch of Lincoln Avenue, next to a TV repair shop. It is composed of cinderblock walls, thin carpeting and bare fluorescent lights. Qaiser chose it because the rent is cheap.

“Luckily, I have low overhead,” he said.

Two customers wandered in on a recent afternoon. There were a few calls, and Fahim Qaiser was grateful to land a couple of reservations. He is his brother’s lone employee, although Javaria Qaiser occasionally pitches in.

“Before Sept. 11, I would get so many reservations that I had to do them the next day,” Fahim Qaiser said.

Terrorism and war aren’t the only calamities besetting Travel Plus. The outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, has gutted the company’s bookings to Asia. The Qaisers offer discounted trips to Pakistan and India through China, where the deadly SARS epidemic is believed to have originated.

“Because of this SARS disease, people aren’t willing to go to the Far East,” said Waseem Qaiser, holding up his hands in a gesture of futility.

He told of drifting into the travel game, after earning a mechanical engineering degree in Islamabad. With engineering jobs scarce, he went to work in sales for Air France and Emirates Airlines.

Qaiser moved his family to the United States under the sponsorship of his sister, a local physician. Fahim and his family followed the same route.

Now, the brothers are learning to become financial planners. They intend to keep Travel Plus operating but see the need for a sideline.

“I have 20 years left before I retire,” said Waseem Qaiser. “I have to send three kids to college and set up a retirement fund for me and my wife. The travel business won’t take me there.”