Editor's note: Este artículo está traducido al español.
For Las Vegas locals, Pink Jeep Tours are not an uncommon sight. The off-road touring company’s notable pink vehicles, a seeming favorite among tourists looking for outdoor entertainment in Southern Nevada, are hard to miss.
Headquartered in Sedona, Ariz., and owned by Herschend — the company behind Dollywood, Silver Dollar City and the Harlem Globetrotters — Pink Jeep Tours first came to Southern Nevada in 2001, said Carol Keane, a senior guide who has been with Pink Jeep Tours for nearly two decades.
Since then, the brand has evolved to offer tours to nearby Hoover Dam and Red Rock Canyon, more distantly to Zion National Park and the Grand Canyon and more.
The Sun spoke with Keane to discuss Pink Jeep Tours’ unique experience in Southern Nevada and its ongoing evolution.
In your own words, can you describe Pink Jeep Tours’ mission, what it does and the services that it seeks to provide?
We look to create memories for families. We take people out on tours. We help them to learn about places that we go on tours. We drive them to the tour location. We give a tour on the way out, and when we get there, we show them different places and sometimes those tours involve meals, if it’s a long day, sometimes not — it just depends. And we educate our guests, as well as helping people have fun. We also help them to get into each one of the locations, like Hoover Dam, places like that that we do.
Why are Pink Jeep Tours so unique, and why is it important that there’s this family-friendly or outdoor option for tourists to Southern Nevada who maybe want to go beyond gaming or the Las Vegas Strip?
We’re unique in a lot of ways. We have unique vehicles. We have Dodge 3500 pickup trucks that we converted, and we use those for our tours. We also have open Jeeps for off-roading, and we use it for our city tour at nighttime. Our guides are unique. Our guys are awesome. We do a lot of training — a lot of education training, a lot of driver training, a lot of safety training. We put, really, a lot into it. The company has done a lot over the years to really help with that. I can’t say enough about my co-workers, who do a great job. And they really care about their guests, and that’s important to us. And we really want people to have a good time.
We can take kids on any of the tours. We just have a couple age restrictions for real small ones, but kids 3 and up can go on all our tours. So that’s good. Also, we have child seats for the kids. We take a lot of families, especially during spring break and the holidays. So, our tours are very, very family friendly.
What do you hear from people who engage with Pink Jeep Tours, about what they really appreciate about the service?
I think people — they get a lot of information. I think they appreciate the information that they get. I think they appreciate the fact that they don’t have to drive, that they don’t have to worry about GPS and trying to find something and being able to get to these places and not have to worry about where to go. We help them with all that.
And a lot of people like our vehicles. They’re unique. … But people like it. It’s a good safety color.
Was that the motivation behind the branding, or was there more to it than that?
More to it than that. (The) company actually was founded by Don Pratt and his wife in Sedona, and he was a real estate agent, and he used to like to take people for rides out in his Jeep to show them real estate. And they went to Hawaii, and they stayed at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, and they have pink vehicles. And so, they used that idea. And when they came back, they started the tour company in Sedona, and that’s where the pink came from. That’s where the Jeep came from. And so, they used those ideas.
And then from there, we got these Dodge 3500 pickup trucks, I guess about 18 years ago, right after I started. And these are awesome. We can fit 10 people to a vehicle; four wheel drive.
Pink Jeep Tours is approaching 25 years in Southern Nevada. How has it grown in that time, and how do you see it continuing to evolve?
It’s grown. When I first started, we had maybe 10 Suburbans. And then, when we started to get these trucks, we ordered Dodge basic chassis, and then the passenger pod was built by a company called Prefix out of Detroit, they made that special pod for us, and some of the guys flew out and picked them up and drove them back. And we had about five or six, I think, in the first group, and then we had more. Now we have about, I guess, right around 28.
The company has grown a lot. We’ve had probably as many as maybe 33 guides at one point, here in Vegas.
We try to keep up with tours people are interested in. I always like to ask my guests what they like. I like to get their opinions on things. I always like to ask them what they like, what they like to see, and what may be a good idea for a tour. Because that’s important to us. We want to try to do what people want.
Is there anything else that you want to add?
We got bought by the Herschend family in 2018, and it’s a great company to work for. And I like that they’ve really concentrated on family entertainment.
And they want to make memories for people, and I think they really instill that in everybody.