Many things catch the eye when one walks into Jonathan Carroll's office; the big toys flying outside and the smaller toys parked inside. Outside, he has a great view of nearly every plane taking off or landing at Pearson International Airport.

"A plane takes off from Toronto Airport every minute and a half," he says. As the President of itravel 2000, he should know. "Until all those passengers [on those planes] are itravel 2000 customers, we still have work to do.

"For now, he'll have to content himself with the fact that his company manages to fill between 10 and 20 aircraft on an average week. (An aide confides that Jonathan can even tell when a plane taking off is nearly empty by the way it is flying.)

While he enjoys the view, his window once looked out on an event that could well have turned tragic. Last August, Toronto witnessed the infamous Air France crash. Though Jonathan was on vacation in Florida at the time, his brother Shane, whose office is right next door, had a clear view of the smoke.

"The windows shook when it exploded," he remembers hearing. It was a visual reminder for the business of how quickly things can go sour in the travel world, and that to expect the unexpected is an occupational hazard of the industry. In the past year alone, numerous natural disasters played havoc with his company's scheduling. Hurricane Katrina, for example, caused a "huge amount of problems. We had to handle every booking twice...[It was] very time consuming and costly," he said.

But the company went out of its way to find alternate accommodations for tourists whose travel plans were scuttled because of the devastating storm. On top of that, the company found alternate locales that were at or near the original price that the travelers had paid for. The time and effort paid off.

"They knew that they had made the right choice," he said of his decision to place a premium on growing customer loyalty.

As a result of the various storms, Carroll advises travelers that there are now huge travel savings to be had in Florida and other areas recovering that are trying to draw tourists back. "They're so dependent on travel," he says, pointing to Mexico as an example, where it is the third largest industry in the country.

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 also created a major downturn in the industry. But Carroll and company were ready with a counter-offensive.

"Post 9/11, we spent more money on marketing than ever before," he says. And it paid off. After the terror attacks, the SARS crisis, and the invasion of Iraq, Carroll has found that Canadians remain undeterred in their desire to see the world.

"Canadians are pretty resilient. They look at travel as God-given right. We market through it," he says.

One area which sets the company apart is its devotion to technological innovation, and that it was one of the first to harness the power of the internet in giving its customers a choice. Long before the dot.com bubble burst, when the information superhighway was but single-lane suburban street, Carroll approached his father with an idea about letting customers book their trips via the computer. His father was blunt about the plan's chances, saying that it likely would not fly. Still, he wished his son the best in his new venture. The website went ahead and the first version was officially launched in December of 1996. "We were pioneers in that space," he says proudly. The site was re-launched to great fanfare at the company this past January after a five-month technological overhaul.

The company has about 220 employees, about 105 of whom are agents trained on-site, handling over one million calls a year. Some 22 languages are spoken by his company's agents. "That's now the culture of Canada," he says. The company will celebrate its 12th anniversary next month on April 22nd. The company has been at its current airport site just off of - and visible from - Highway 401 since 2001. Before then, it had a location on the East Mall.

"We've had phenomenal growth over the past few years," he says, most of which he attributes to keeping his staff happy. "Get the people, get the spirit and the culture and the attitude...and if you bring them together, you get success...We focus on our staff and a fun work environment."