What are the biggest challenges facing your members right now, and what are the most promising solutions to those problems?
Inman: Sensationalized media stories can be a problem if people are afraid to travel. The more we can get the word out about the safety of travel, the better. And if travelers are seasoned, they’re not as influenced by sensationalized stories as others.
Our members are having challenges finding qualified applicants to fill jobs in their companies. So we’re starting a career center on our NTA website that will hopefully help with that. Our colleges and universities aren’t really teaching about the tour operator part of travel and tourism, so the more we can get universities to develop these programs the better.
The fast change of technology is always an issue, especially for small businesses. We continue to look for solutions to help our members with that.
Assante: Our challenging situations are safety and risk management for traveling student groups, both domestically and internationally. Our customers — educators, school boards, etc. — are pushing the liability for student safety in all areas onto the tour operator, where in the past it may have been divided between the school and the tour operator. This relates to all areas: transportation, finance, contracts, chaperones and even social issues such as students with disabilities, transgender and health issues.
We are responding by creating and implementing a crisis and safety preparedness plan, educating members about best practices in crisis and safety planning, and developing a crisis safety readiness certification program for members. We are going to require minimum planning and readiness standards for members, establish insurance requirements, and provide members and their customers with tools and resources.
Pantuso: The biggest thing I hear repeatedly from our members is the driver shortage issue: finding good drivers and being able to hire them. That’s not unique to us; I hear the same thing from my friends in the trucking industry. Because the economy is doing really well, unemployment is relatively low and puts a lot of pressure on the ability to find replacement employees and new employees. If the economy gets better, you’re investing more and have more demand, and you need to staff up. But because unemployment rates are relatively low, you don’t have the people to staff up. It’s a challenge and an opportunity at the same time.
Dale: The overarching challenge is to recognize that your competitor isn’t the member seated next to you at events or conferences, but those disrupters in the broader, larger industry. That could be the sharing economy, online travel agencies or the hotel chain I just read about that is now selling air and packaged travel, functioning as a tour operator. Recognize that is the threat. The challenges are much bigger than a single business. It really requires us as an industry to address and determine ways that we can maintain relevance and create successful businesses that can thrive.
Are you seeing new group travel buyers enter the industry? Where are they coming from, and in what ways are they different than the conventional group travel planner?
Assante: In the student and youth market, more teachers are planning educational travel for their students by doing their own research online, searching travel sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp, and then reaching out directly to suppliers. Many of them are starting with a local or regional trip and then moving up to overnight travel. Fortunately, we see that as the trip becomes more complex with airfares, hotels, contracts and airline availability, they are reaching out to professional tour operators and group travel planners like our members.
In addition, we see independent and private high schools developing travel programs for credit and making it part of their curriculum and tuition, whereas before, this was done at the college level.
Pantuso: We are struggling to figure out who and where these new buyers are. All my motorcoach operators are busy right now; every one of them tell me they’re having one of the best years they’ve ever had.
The people who are chartering are different in some cases. You see trips coming from sports teams and PTAs. They’re not what we would call group leaders, but they’re leaders of groups. They can be meet-ups, professional societies, alumni groups or corporate planners of some kind. The opportunity for all of us in this space is to try to figure out who these new buyers are and enlist them to understand how the group process works.
Inman: For us, it’s still China. Our China Inbound program has more than 200 Chinese tour operators. We continue to see interest with our existing tour operators to work more and more with the existing inbound market. We just recently went to India with the U.S. Department of Commerce and Brand USA and met with their tourism industry. We have signed an agreement with the India Tour Operators Association for a partnership with them.
