Business
News
Travel
exec stayed local,
and true to his faith
By Lou Baldwin
Special to The CS&T
NEWTOWN SQUARE — John J. Mullen has been in the travel business
his entire working life. But Mullen, himself, has always cherished his
roots.
The board chairman of the travel giant Atkinson, Mullen & Rosso, he
is a pioneer in group travel packages. It was Mullen’s company that
organized the Archdiocese’s recent pilgrimage to Rome for the consistory
where John Cardinal Foley received his red biretta from Pope Benedict
XVI.
For all that, Mullen is also a Philadelphia man, through-and-through.
His first parish was Most Blessed Sacrament Parish, he graduated from
West Catholic High School, and he earned a degree in business from Temple
University.
Mullen started out working for United Airlines and Lufthansa. But to get
ahead, he would have had to relocate, something that would take him and
his wife, the former Joan Alice Atkinson — they married in 1963
— away from their Philly family roots.
Instead, in 1969 he founded a travel agency — Atkinson & Mullen
— with his brother-in-law, Al Atkinson.
“We started in individual travel, but then we specialized in group
travel, something that was new at the time,” Mullen recalled. “It
was fun. We gave low prices to the masses. When I was a kid, a trip to
the Bahamas was a trip of a lifetime. We offered a lot of travel to Europe,
to religious sites, to Ireland — and there were domestic flights.”
When Mullen recalled low prices, he wasn’t kidding. One of the most
memorable packages, in those days of cheap airplane fuel, was a full-week
charter to Hawaii — including air fare and hotel — for an
incredible $299.
Another steal, never to be repeated, was a series of single-day roundtrip
excursions to Disney World, including park admission, for $59. The only
catch was that the trips were midweek —because Mullen’s company
knew a particular airline sent empty planes to Florida to be serviced.
“Why not carry people down and back at a discount?” he thought.
It worked.
Outstanding, too, was a huge charter from Philadelphia to New Orleans
in 1981, when the Eagles played in the Super Bowl. And there was also
the charter for 1,000 pilgrims to Rome in 1977 for the canonization of
St. John Neumann, Philadelphia’s first saint.
Most recently, his travel firm handled the pilgrimage to see John Cardinal
Foley receive his red biretta in Rome this past November. The Cardinal
and Mullen have been good friends since 1970, when then-Father Foley was
the new editor of The Catholic Standard & Times.
John and Joan Alice Mullen belong to St. Mary Magdalen Parish in Media,
where she is an extraordinary minister of holy Communion. They are the
parents of four children, Timothy, Jeffrey, Janine and Matt, and have
14 grandchildren. A number of family members have followed Mullen into
the “family business” of travel.
Now, the company might be best known through its subsidiary, Apple Vacations,
as well as U.S.A. 3000 — a growing airline that has scheduled and
chartered flights from several airports to destinations in the United
States, Mexico, Bermuda, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic.
Mullen credits his success in the travel industry to the values he learned
from his parents, from the Immaculate Heart Sisters at Most Blessed Sacrament,
and the Christian Brothers at West Catholic.
“If you take those things with you into business, you will succeed,”
he said.
Lou Baldwin is a member of St. Leo parish and a freelance writer.