Hans Illy (86), ‘founder of incentives’, passes away

After a short illness, Hans Illy passed away last Thursday. He lived to be 86 years old. He passed away in the presence of his family.

Hans Illy began his career with the Holland West Africa Line, then went to Lissone Lindeman in Amsterdam and is best known for his time with De Vries & Co and later, when De Vries & Co ceased to exist in early 1980, with GI Travel.

‘Hans is the founder in the Netherlands of the so-called ‘incentives’. ‘He was very creative,’ says Marijke Vink, managing director of GI Travel, who worked with him for many years. ‘He created the most beautiful incentives for all kinds of clients. He was employed by GI Travel until well after his retirement,’ said Vink, reminiscing.

Travel agency De Vries & Co was a well-established travel agency in the early 1960s, with a large business department. The store had a shipping and vacation travel department. Hans Illy was in charge of vacation travel. He put together his own trips and built relationships with hotels in Europe. It operated on the basis of scheduled flights. Charters were barely there yet.

Marijke Vink describes Illy as “very inventive. ‘At some point he found it necessary to make a travel brochure himself. Everything was made by him in-house. A printer around the corner carried it out. Hans also did the window displays.’ Meanwhile, more and more tour operators entered the market, such as Centouri, FIT and Airtour. ‘That was actually nothing for Hans. His strength was designing trips himself.’

Later Illy developed golf trips, making De Vries & Co a specialist. The impetus for establishing this specialty was the fact that the company gained a second director, A. C. Strumphler, who was an avid golfer. ‘At that time Hans managed to persuade the Swiss travel company Kuoni to award the license for selling their trips in the Netherlands to De Vries & Co,’ says Vink.

Later, Illy specialized more and more in safaris to Africa. With his well-known flair, he managed to ensnare well-known Dutch people in those days to link their names to such a group trip, such as Bertus Aafjes, Kick Stokhuizen and Annet Nieuwenhuizen. It ran like a train. To do this, Hans had to travel a lot himself, but he was happy to do so.

‘Gradually, requests for group travel came. In the beginning safaris, but soon business group tours. The first major incentive was to Monte Carlo, two planes rented from KLM. That was spectacular for the time,” says Vink, who describes Illy as the founder of incentive travel in the Netherlands. De Vries & Co was acquired by Arke Reizen in the early 1980s. Illy was put in charge of the Amsterdam office. ‘Later this became GI Travel with Hans continuing to run the Amsterdam branch,’ says Vink.

‘Hans was super creative, a very well-read man and had a clear opinion of his own. He was a fine human being with tremendous passion. He had a big heart for the business. Even after he retired, I still received regular emails when our magazine Inventive was out, because he disagreed with something or wanted to know more about it. We were happy to engage in discussion.’

The funeral will be private next Thursday and will take place in Bilthoven.