The tour business has long been plagued with a bit of an inferiority complex. Indeed, the word "tour" has been virtually eliminated in the names of most of the companies that are active members of the U.S. Tour Operators Association (USTOA) because of its negative association with escorted motor coach programs that spanned multiple cities in a short amount of time.
But this at year's USTOA conference, held Dec. 4-7 in Boca Raton, Fla., I found a strong and resilient business in packaged travel and guided vacations. USTOA President Terry Dale now leads an association that is growing and has a $13.5 billion impact on the nation's economy, up 8 percent since the previous year, and 32 percent since 2011.
USTOA members also carried nearly eight million travelers, up 5 percent compared to the previous year and 29 percent since 2011, and are projected to employ 12,350 by the end of 2014. As Dale pointed out to his members, those numbers, validated by a PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) study, are solid indicators of strong performance. And that performance should continue into 2015, with 95 percent of USTOA members anticipating an increase in sales, including 26 percent who are forecasting a "boom" year with sales up more than 10 percent.
USTOA also is growing. Three major tour companies joined over the past year-Austin Adventures, Down Under Answers and Perillo Tours, a famous name in tours that had never been a member before. The association also added 91 new associate members representing 25 countries around the world, including four new national members-Albania, Bangladesh, Guatemala and Qatar.
Yet another surprising new member is Norwegian Cruise Line, which hosted one of the conference lunches last week. USTOA already counts a few cruise lines as members, including Holland America and Princess Cruises, both of which historically have had strong Alaska tour operations, as well as Viking Cruises. But until now there has not been an individual cruise member like Norwegian. Could Royal Caribbean, which has an extensive in-house tour operation, and Carnival Cruise Lines be next?
This year's conference also showcased a renewed focus by USTOA members on emerging destinations. Top U.S. destinations in 2014 for USTOA members are familiar, including California, Hawaii, New York, Florida and Nevada, while top foreign destinations are Mexico, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, France and Italy (with France, Italy, United Kingdom, Germany and Canada leading in the "guided" destinations category and Mexico, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Aruba and Bahamas leading in the packaged FIT category.
But it's in the emerging destinations where USTOA members are focused on some groundbreaking stuff. Top new countries in 2014 for tours include Myanmar (currently on everyone's top list), Cuba (where USTOA members have been expanding their people-to-people programs), Croatia, Iceland, India, Peru, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Cambodia and Panama.
Those emerging destinations, combined with new experiential travel programs, are changing the face of tour products. USTOA members say they now feature niche programs focused on arts and culture (71 percent), families and multigenerational groups (71 percent), culinary (64 percent), adventure (57 percent), safari (50 percent), and sports and fitness (21 percent).
Under Dale's leadership, the "new" tour business is now being actively promoted online by USTOA through social media and video. Two years ago USTOA enlisted the talents of Matt Harding, known as a YouTube sensation for his "Dancin' with Matt" videos around the world. Hardin traveled to different countries with a number of USTOA members to showcase a variety of destinations.
Earlier this year USTOA launched a similar campaign, Travel Together, featuring video tours of destinations with Kelley Ferro, a travel host and filmmaker, who traveled with USTOA member operators to six countries to showcase the experiences found in each destination. Ferro visited Egypt, South Africa, Australia's Northern Territory, Taiwan, Croatia and Manitoba, Canada.
Indeed, Ferro departed for Cartagena, Colombia, to produce yet another video before this year's conference had concluded, and the campaign will continue in 2015 with new destinations. These videos are featured on USTOA's website as well as on USAToday.com and Afar.com. The campaign has resulted in a 200 percent increase in traffic to USTOA's website.
USTOA, in association with Cornell University's School of Business, also has created a new packaged travel index, which twice a year will be used to measure the intentions of consumers to take tours and packaged vacations. The initial survey found that 58 percent of those surveyed said they would book packaged travel in 2015. The index also measures expected number of leisure trips, average number of travelers on a trip, international versus domestic trips, expected cost per traveler, and what percentage of travelers have already booked trips for the coming year.
Earlier this year USTOA launched a new USTOA specialist educational course, in partnership with travAlliancemedia, parent of TravelPulse.com, to train travel agents on how to better sell packaged travel. The three-unit course provides a great primer for agents on selling the benefits of guided vacations and packaged tours.
With these innovative programs, Dale and USTOA are effectively trying to put a new face on the traditional tour using a variety of techniques and measurements. Some of these efforts may not bear fruit, but the sheer number of them will no doubt help change the image of the "tour" in the consumer mindset. We'll have to wait until the USTOA's 2015 annual conference and marketplace in Chicago next December to see just how much more the tour industry grows and how the image of a "tour" changes for an increasingly interested consumer.
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