Jim Jalet III knows unusual tourism like few others in the industry in Orange County.
He can tell you about world-famous entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson offering drinks and autographs at his hotel in the South African bush.
Then there’s the trip when he hired the rock band Foreigner to play at a former church in Venice, Italy.
It would be hard to top the night his company rented the Louvre museum for an evening dinner for 100 guests.
Although it cost $40,000, the guests didn’t have to wait in line to see the “Mona Lisa.”
“The clients liked it because they got bragging rights to doing something other tourists in Paris couldn’t do,” Jalet said.
He’s co-owner with his wife, LuAnn of JNR Inc., an Irvine firm that organizes exotic trips for the incentives programs of large corporations. It employs 125 people and generates about $45 million a year, almost double 2010 revenue.
JNR intends to keep calling Orange County home. It recently renewed its lease for five years on 30,000 square feet of prime office space overlooking Newport Beach’s Back Bay.
The Edge
The company has a wide variety of clients, including well-known Orange County firms like Hyundai Motor North America, Toshiba Corp. and Beckman Coulter Inc. JNR competes against much larger firms, including Maritz Holdings Inc. of Fenton, Mo., and BI Worldwide of Minneapolis.
JNR’s edge is its ability to work with small groups and provide a “personalized touch,” said Ashley Harker, who manages events at Toyota Material Handling USA Inc., a distributor of the company’s industrial products.
Toyota takes about 40 people from its top 15 industrial dealers on extravagant trips each year arranged by JNR, such as descending into a dormant volcano in Iceland and riding helicopters to a picnic at a remote New Zealand village.
“Our dealers are very excited about going on such trips,” Harker said. One dealer told her the Iceland vacation in June “was one of the three best trips he’s ever made.”
The Mob Hotel
Born and raised in Albany, N.Y., Jim liked the hotel industry as a youngster, so he attended the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, graduating with one of its first hotel management degrees.
In 1971, he helped open Disney World’s first hotel in Orlando, Fla., rising to assistant director of sales and marketing during a time when the company had few people with hotel experience.
“I was a one-eyed man in a desert of blind people,” he quipped.
He returned to Las Vegas, where six months into a job at the Aladdin Hotel and Casino, the FBI arrested the hotel owners, who, unbeknownst to him, were members of the Mafia. He then took the general manager role overseeing the hotel side of the business.
A wall in his corner office is testament to his Las Vegas background, with numerous photos of stars he’s met, such as Bob Hope, or celebrities he’s worked with, including Paul Anka. He’s a huge fan of the Rat Pack, and the wall is lined with many photos of Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. He’s friends with legendary basketball coach Pat Riley when they played basketball against each other in their high school days.
The 73 year old, who’s survived cancer, co-wrote a book with Michael Ashley, “From the Mouse to the Mob: Stories I Thought You’d Like to Know,” that’s scheduled to be published next month.
JNR Start
Jim saw an opportunity in the incentives business, saying the competition at the time didn’t know the hotel industry well. In 1980, he and LuAnn started the company with two partners who are no longer involved.
Today, JNR has two main units. One with more than half of the employees, 70, to manage prepaid debit cards, which are more prevalent now than in prior decades, when corporations awarded prizes such as televisions. JNR built the unit from the ground up about 16 years ago. It provides profit streams, such as a $200 million float, Jalet said.
The other unit organizes hard-to-duplicate group vacations for top-performing salespeople at corporations employing more than 2,000.
JNR arranges everything from airplane tickets to excursions to meals to entertainment. If a group of 100 employees are taken on a trip, JNR sends a team of five to seven to make sure everything goes smoothly.
One new twist is providing guests with their own personalized “swag gifts,” such as sunglasses or customized shoes.
Another is passing over Europe for more exotic locations, like New Zealand, South Africa and Cambodia.
“People want to be immersed in the culture rather than lying on a beach,” he said.
OC Tourism
Some JNR trips include Orange County destinations, such as a Volkswagen top-dealer program at the Resort at Pelican Hill with Huey Lewis as entertainer.
Jim’s a big fan of Newport Coast’s Resort at Pelican Hill, calling it one of the 10 best U.S. hotels. He also praised the Montage Laguna Beach and Dana Point’s Ritz-Carlton as world-class resorts.
In fact, he said very few tourism destinations can compete with Orange County, pointing to its world-class restaurants and shopping at South Coast Plaza and Fashion Island.
“I’ve been to so many places. Orange County is as good as any place in the world.”
