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Morris Columbus Travel is a travel agency headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States, with six additional offices in Utah (Bountiful, Draper, Ogden, Orem and St. George) and Montana (Billings) and home-based agents located throughout Utah, Idaho and Montana. The agency primarily facilitates cruises, escorted tours, group travel, airfare, hotel accommodations, car rentals, full vacation packages, honeymoon/anniversary travel, luxury travel, and incentive travel programs.[1]
Morris Murdock Travel began in 1958 when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) approached Franklin Murdock about starting an agency to handle the travel needs of its employees and missionaries. The modern Morris Murdock Travel is the result of combining multiple other travel companies, including the 1996 merger of Morris Travel and Beehive Tours and Travel [2] and the 2000 merger of Morris Travel and Murdock Travel,[3] among others. The company also developed from several acquisitions including Seattle's Diamond Travel in 1995, Corporate Travel Services in 1996, and Utah's LDS Travel Study, a provider of LDS faith-based travel, in November 2008.[4] In addition, Morris Travel started Morris Air in 1984, which chartered flights to Hawaii and Mexico from Utah. Due to its growth, Morris Air was sold to Southwest Airlines in 1995.[5] Morris Murdock sold its business travel division to Hess Travel in January 2009 in order to better serve its corporate clients.[6]
In 1997, ownership of Morris Travel and Murdock Travel (which stood as two separate companies) belonged to Yamagata Enterprises and the officers of the company, respectively. In 2004, Crestwood Communications, LLC (a subsidiary of Simmons Media Group), took full control of the then-merged Morris Murdock Travel.[5]
As the oldest and largest privately owned leisure travel agency in Utah and the Intermountain region of the United States, Morris Murdock became an associate of CWT in 2002 and joined the American Express U.S. Representative Travel Network in July 2007.[7] In the first quarter of 2010, Morris Murdock Travel left American Express and joined the Signature Travel Network, an international network of 190 agencies that generates $4 billion in annual travel sales.[8]
Due to the nature of the travel industry's relation to the overall health of local economies, Morris Murdock underwent several changes to survive the 2009 swine flu pandemic and the Great Recession. These changes include closing the company's Helena, Orem, Pocatello and Idaho Falls offices and a reduction in workforce at the company's remaining locations.[citation needed] Morris Murdock reopened its Orem, Utah location in April 2010.[9]
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