TravelMole Interview: David Preece, The Travel Institute
The recent summit of top US travel industry leaders in New York was unprecedented, claims David Preece, president and CEO of The Travel Institute. “In today’s dynamic market, even people who might perceive themselves as competitors can and need to find ways to benefit each other,” he told TravelMole. The non-profit Travel Institute, which since 1964 has provided education and professional development tools for travel industry professionals, brought together a meeting of many top industry leaders such as the American Society of Travel Agents, the United States Tour Operators Association and many others. “These were the major industry associations, most of them from the US. Certainly, these organizations have relationships, primarily one-on-one, but never before have they all gathered together for a meeting of this kind,” said Mr Preece. The result: “We have not determined yet what level of cooperation is of interest to everybody.” Mr Preece said the group agreed to meet again in April to review and make recommendations on what should happen next. “If nothing else, this could result in more cooperation and communication across the different segments of the market,” he said. There’s nothing yet specific, he added. “But our potential could be simply doing some cross-promotional activity to other forms of mutually beneficial areas such as educational programs.” A key part of the meeting was a presentation by Knapp and Associates International on the subject of success factors for effective professional development and certification. The consulting firm presented relevant case studies from other industries that demonstrated the advantages of collaboration. One other area of consensus from the meeting, Mr Preece said, was a “fairly optimistic” view of the travel business in 2004. “Unless someone throws a monkey wrench into our optimism, we see signs based on consumer demand that would indicate the next year or two will be fairly positive,” he said. But that judgment is based more on leisure than business travel. “I think more recovery needs to happen there [business travel]”,said Mr Preece.
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