Virtuoso Reviews

Pros

At that time, truly innovative. The company had collected the very best retail travel agencies in the world, and working with those companies was inspiring. The preferred suppliers were and are second to none.

Cons

The company has spent millions of dollars over the years on failed technology initiatives, which has drained resources and soured opinions of the company in the industry. In not having a solid, and reasonable plan for growth, the company has failed to live up to its potential. Competitors, especially Signature, have benefited from Virtuoso's lack of disapline and focus.

Advice to Senior Management

Be flexible and adjust the business plan so that the retail travel agency members share in the profits of the company. Nail down a real plan for technology, and focus on achieving benchmarks. Go for good enough and then improve. Have a plan for mobile. Keep your eyes on the ball. And invest in better PR; over the past few years, it seems, to the casual observer, like the bloom is off the rose.

Pros

Decent Pay, Relaxed Dress Code, Fun people.

Cons

Micromanagement from direct manager. A outside contractor was brought in to "assist" the onsite team with pushing out a project that was lagging behind as our SVP informed us. What actually happened is the team came in and asked us all what we did and then they promptly let the vast majority of IT go and took over our jobs. But of course we were led to believe that they were brought in to work with us. It was devastating to a lot of people and no the economy wasn't the reason for being laid off. This was

Advice to Senior Management

Talk to the little people a little more. Informally or in private without direct managers present to get a real feel on what goes on

Pros

The program manager truly cares about creating a great site. IT manager is a great manager to work. The CEO is passionate about the company.

Cons

A developer harasses and yells at other team members, which created a hostile work place. The leadership in the Development team was very poor and aggressive. The development teams have a high school click type of attitude, and are not very professional in their software development or release process.

Advice to Senior Management

I would take a close look at why a QA manger does not stay very long. If you challenge the Development director, you are fired.
I would also look at the development team hostile attitude. There have been many incidents where one of the developer that is larger than other yell and bully his agenda on other team members.

Pros

Great people, love my co-workers
fun product, great events
Free parking
flex hours if needed
travel perks
accepting and supportive environment

Cons

economy has really impacted the business...
communication bottlenecks
still too many silos

Advice to Senior Management

watch the bottom line!

Pros

If you have your heart set on working in the travel industry, there are plenty of worse places to be.

Cons

Much of your time will be spent on constant internal re-organizations and sudden priority shifts. Virtuoso proves you CAN run a business in a constant state of chaos, confusion and panic!

Advice to Senior Management

Good luck!

Pros

There are a great many travel perks (both organized and free-form) and the company fully supports travel holidays. The people 'in the trenches' are genuinely friendly and (usually) quite intelligent and I really felt like upper management wanted employees to be happy to work there.

Cons

There were often very political reasons for movement around the company (capacity to do a job seemed secondary to who you know and who you've socialized with). There were some extreme instances of nepotism amongst the leadership that were generally well known amongst the rank and file. Some of the staff were given directives that could not be completed without funding, yet no funding was allowed.

Advice to Senior Management

The culture change required by Virtuoso staff when Maxsam came in was handled poorly. Most employees didn't understand agile, scrum, etc and resisted it purely due to confusion. You would have gotten far better buy-in if you'd taken a bit of time to explain why agile works and what can be gained by it.

Pros

Nice Co-Workers, location in Sundance, unique concept

Cons

High turn over rate, unable to retain ambitious workers, inability to plan and put together effective work teams. Disappointing travel benefits. Benefits overall are below average.
Leadership is too concerned about the big picture; company's infrastructure is unfortunately chaotic and very misleading.

Advice to Senior Management

Please Attend Business School!
Learn from your mistakes and stop repeating the same errors year after year. Pay close attention to your potential and unique concept. Treat all of your employees great and cease having too many non-management material workers in charge.

Pros

Friendly co-workers, nice HR department
You get to see how a severely dysfunctional company still stays above ground

Cons

I have seen so many lay offs over the years; this company is more in financial difficulties than it says it is. I used to be a loyal worker but they have done so many good people wrong that I am looking for a new job. Layed off the good hard-working people; kept the lazy ones just because of severe favoritism in management.
You can't trust anyone here and HR is totally out of the loop on what is really going. You don't feel motivated when you see how they treat their employees and agents.
They can't build a decent platform either; their website always has the same issues and nothing ever gets resolved. Many frustrated travel agents; few happy ones.
The new website already has issues. They just can't get their technology together.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop the greed or give it up to real travel businesses like Signature (your competitor). Hire new management; especially in Technology. Build a reliable and up-to-date platform for your agents and suppliers or you will lose them all

Pros

Loved the line staff. That's pretty much it.

Cons

Where do I begin? I worked my ass off for the company, making sure customers were happy, management was happy, and the company looked good. What did I get for my hard work? I was laid off, along with 80+ people. In one all-hands meeting, management said, "We have money, we will offer contractors a job." The next all-hands meeting: "Sorry, we had to let people go because of the economy." Yet management continued to hire new blood, and continued to spend lavishly on themselves. It became clear to me that the owners and upper management were like queen bees, getting fat of the sweat of the workers. I was once proud of Virtuoso. Not anymore.

Advice to Senior Management

Give your people a reason to feel they can trust you. Be loyal to the people who support your business.

Pros

Friendly coworkers, few overt office politics, some schedule flexibility, opportunity for discount travel.

Cons

Low salary, non-competitive health insurance (high deductible, mediocre coverage, and small network), not good communication from HR, IT does not seek input from users when developing their software.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay people competitive wages, based on similar positions in their respective cities, or you will lose your good people.