Red Bird Travel has been a fixture in the Best Southwest for 32 years.

Owned and operated by Donna Johnson, the full-service travel agency is the 2008 neighborsgo Choice Award winner in the category of Best Travel Agency.

The agency got its start in DeSoto but moved to its current office on Cooper Street in Cedar Hill in 2003.

The office shares an affiliation with the Ensemble Travel Group, an international collection of travel agencies that specialize in luxury travel. Red Bird has connections through Ensemble to plan private sightseeing and shore excursions all over the world, as the agency recently did with an alumni group from TexasWesleyanUniversity, Johnson said.

“The travel agency industry has changed, not so much from the Internet because those travel sales have been flat for the past two years, but from the elimination of commission paid to travel agents by the airlines in 2002 that forced travel agents to charge fees for airline-based transactions,” Johnson said. “Also, the tragedy of 9/11 caused Americans to ‘nest’ for six years instead of traveling freely around the world, resulting in cutbacks throughout the travel industry, including a reduction of 10,000 travel agencies in North America.”

The year 2007 was big for cruises embarking from Galveston, Red Bird travel agent Corey Gunn said. This year, Red Bird agents have noticed a fondness for going to Hawaii and spending a few days visiting each island.

All-inclusive trips to Mexico are big, too, Gunn said.

Red Bird has 2,250 active travel accounts from repeat vacationers to corporations that pay the agency to manage their business travel, Johnson said.

Red Bird Travel, a member of the Lancaster and Cedar Hill chambers of commerce, is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and also by appointment.