Before Miami and Miami Beach became year-round vacation destinations, resort operators made strong efforts to boost off-season bookings.

The late Morris Landsburgh, who at the time operated four or five oceanfront hotels, once staged a mini circus in cooperation with Eastern Airlines and numerous South Florida attractions and ground operators to target travel agents throughout North America.

Our client, Greyhound’s South Florida conglomerate of airport shuttle, sightseeing buses, rental cars and limousines, asked us to create a venue for them, and we developed “Greyhound’s Sideshow of Vacation Transportation” to familiarize the 2,100 travel retailers attending the event with the product.

By promising on-site exposure for the attraction, I persuaded the Lion Country Safari operators in Palm Beach County to lend us an elephant as the highlight of Greyhound’s exhibit area. The pachyderm proved to be the main attraction of the day and the client reaped the lion’s share of attention.