USTOA’s Terry Dale: ‘We Don’t Want to Grow’

The U.S. Tour Operators Association welcomed two new active members and 118 new supplier partner members to the association in 2018, but according to Terry Dale, president and CEO of the tour operator association, growing the size of the membership is not an objective of the organization.

“Odd as this may sound, we aren’t looking to get bigger,” said Terry Dale in an interview at USTOA’s Annual Conference and Marketplace in Phoenix last week. “Our intention is to have this conference not get any bigger than it is today.”

Although the association did bring in new members, it is not getting appreciably larger. “Every year, you have attrition,” Dale said. “So, we will lose some. Often there is a change in administration, somebody new comes into a company who doesn’t know about USTOA. Then two years later, they come back. We did welcome new members, but mostly we just filled seats that were vacated. I think we lost 96 members over the course of this last year.”

Big enough
That makes the USTOA one of those rare entities in the business world that is not bent on growing larger. Over the past five years, Dale said, it has more or less maintained a steady state.

“We accepted the same number of reservations [to the conference] this year as last year,” he said. “And in preparing our budget for next year, we put in the same number. If the mandate from the board was ‘grow the conference’ and they said grow it from 960 to 1260, Peggy [Murphy, executive vice president of USTOA] and I could do that easily.

“But we think the strength of what we offer is the intimacy, the accessibility, that if you want to speak to the CEO of Tauck, Dan Mahar, you can do that. And if you grow it to a couple of thousand, five years from now, I think we lose what we think is a way in which we differentiate ourselves.”

Before taking over as president and CEO of USTOA, Dale led other associations, such as NYC and Co., and Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA).

“In practically every association, I think, it’s always like, ‘Okay, we’re here and your goal next year is here, and then your goal next year is here.’ But we’re happy with our size.”

Geographic balance
When USTOA does bring in new members, it’s not with the goal of growing the size of the association.

“It’s really more about geographic balance,” said Dale, “identifying pockets geographically that our members are going to, but where we don’t have adequate representation, whether it’s from hotels or ground operators.”

The objective is not to grow, but rather “just to get the right businesses in the room that can benefit from being a member of USTOA.”

Representing the upper tier of companies in the tour segment of the travel industry (active members must each post a $1 million bond to maintain membership), USTOA has the luxury of being able to concern itself with more than just making the cash register ring.

As members of a global industry that depends on peace, stability and environmental sustainability for the successful conduct of its business, USTOA members have other concerns beyond basic business operations.

USTOA members are also concerned with determining what kind of an organization they want to be, and what they want it to stand for.

There is an implicit understanding among USTOA’s membership that the association should represent the global industry it works in. Without fanfare, the association upholds the principle that the membership should reflect the diversity of the industry it represents.

“One word I keep reminding myself and our little team and our board of is that we want to be inclusive,” said Dale. “When I think and hope or talk about change, I would hope our members see that our desire is to be inclusive.”

The antennae of an industry
Dale also sees part of USTOA’s role and responsibility to its members to help keep them informed on changes that may affect their businesses.

“We had a guest speaker who spoke on blockchain,” said Dale, “which I still don’t understand. But I understand it enough that I see it as my responsibility to USTOA and our members to put something on their radar screen so they start thinking at least about application. So, part of the purpose of the conference is to put on the table issues and topics that they can hopefully take back and start thinking about.”

The association likes to not only talk about change and innovation, but to embody it in action. The team is always trying new things, new ways to present information. For example, the Terry Talks are a series of short presentations based on the model of Ted Talks.

In the Terry Talks series, four speakers came in and talked for about a dozen minutes each, about global economics, cybersecurity and other subjects.

“I try to get us outside of just travel,” said Dale, “because I fear, sometimes we think we can only learn from people in the travel industry, and I don’t believe that’s true. I think we can be inspired by individuals and thought leaders from outside our industry, and maybe that may open something in the thought process of, ‘Oh yeah, that’s something I can apply to X,’ whatever X might be.”

The Terry Talks were introduced a few years ago, and the series has been a hit, so it has continued. This year, instead of the conventional panel discussion, USTOA set up a question-answer session that gave supplier members a chance to ask questions to tour operator members. If an idea works, they repeat it. If not, they toss it and move onto the next idea. 

Try laughter
This year, the association is mounting a humor campaign, partnering with comedian Harrison Greenbaum to create a series of videos presenting destinations in a way that is informative, but also funny.

“The goal is to use humor to tell our story,” said Dale. “We did this brainstorming session in April and, as a group, we somehow got on this thing, we need to laugh, and humor is the vehicle. Now more than ever, we need to smile. One way to unify people is around laughter. When you laugh, it tends to break down barriers because you feel at ease and comfortable.”

Will it work? Dale acknowledges that no one knows the answer to that question. “This is new territory,” he said. “We’re hopeful. But we also know that we don’t know how this will play out. But we’re willing to take a calculated risk that this may or may not pan out to be a big deal or a great campaign. But we are willing to experiment. Let’s think in a different way, approach it in a different way in how we tell our story.”