<I><B>From Hewlett-Packard to travel agent</B></I>

His professional life in Mauritius dates back to 1982 when he first came for holidays. His love story with Francine has given rise to a number of successes in both of their lives…

Robert, known as “Bob”, first came to Mauritius in 1982 on holiday. He was then working for the US company: Hewlett Packard. His wife and he noticed several uninhabited villas and decided to rent them to colleagues in Germany, who were interested in visiting Mauritius. They carried on with this business up to 1990. Meanwhile, they had bought a villa in Grand-Bay.

However, they were not making a real profit as it was not their priority. In 1993, both left Hewlett Packard to dedicate more time to their travel agency, Ward Travel and Tours. The most incredible development was when Bob created a website to attract tourists. Indeed, in the tourism area, he was among the first in Mauritius, if not the first, to create a web site for his travel agency. For this, he used the knowledge and experience he had gained while working for Hewlett Packard.

Bob was born at the end of the WWII, in 1943 in Coventry. He did his primary and secondary education in Bristol and Manchester. Then he went to university in Salford where he did his BSc in electrical engineering. After he graduated, Bob started working for a company called Farranti. He was dealing with military electronics for ten years.

When he turned 28, he moved to Germany to a place called Karlsruhe and started working for a company called Bruker Physics, which manufactured nuclear resonance magnetic spectrometers. He spent one year there before moving to Hewlett Packard where he worked in the marketing department.

Bob lives in Grand-Gaube. He has several hobbies and is involved in three clubs. He is a member of Toastmasters and Skal where he gets to meet people and has made many friends. Moreover, he does some ballroom and Latin American dancing in Quatre-Bornes.

For some time now, Bob has developed the reputation of a joke-maker among the people around him. This arises from the fact that, when he gets time, he goes on the Internet to find jokes. With all these activities and his work, Bob is busy enough.

Up to now, Bob has loved his time in Mauritius. But, when it comes to talk about the future, he shows how optimistic he is: “I have no real big plans. I just take things day by day. It would be nice if there could be a real boom in the tourism industry. I believe that if the chikungunya would go away, we would have lots of tourists.