Reporting from Stockholm, Sweden, on May 19th…meetings today included relationship-building with VisitSweden.com, The Swedish Ecotourism Society and Nature’s Best, a 80-member group of tour operators here in Sweden. ATTA’s visit here builds upon the ATTA’s 2008 Adventure Travel World Summit (host destination: Norway) efforts to strengthen the global network within Scandinavia.
Our visit here comes on the heel’s of last week’s trek through New York City, where National Geographic Adventure graciously hosted more than 90 adventure travel trade professionals at our May 13th regional meeting, which included ATTA member tour operators, destination marketing organizations and service providers, plus an impressive contingent of influencers new to ATTA and eager to connect, plus quality media keeping tabs on our industry’s progress. Attendees networked early in the meeting, gained insights from ATTA updates, and then participated in several group discussions.
Given the gravity of the crisis in Mexico concerning the so called “swine flu”, the ATTA lent Mexico Tourism Board’s Deputy Director Clara Torres the floor to provide the very latest update from Mexico: her update served as the first discussion item about crises affecting the entire supply chain and moved quickly into discussions about media treatment of crises and the need for industry-wide contingency planning. Perceptual issues also became a hot-button of discussion for the group, and emerged out of further exploration of special marketing and promotional strategies that could help our industry weather challenging economic times.
These were just two of the key topics addressed at our most recent ATTA regional meeting - stay tuned to another regional meeting update when ATTA President Shannon Stowell arrives in the Boulder/Denver, Colorado to host at REI the May 29th regional meeting there. Of course, in between our physical world meetings, jump into AdventureTravelNews.com, contribute to our updates and to stay tuned on the latest from the field.
Yours in adventure, Chris Doyle
Editor