Michelle Baran
On a fall evening in Manhattan, some 80 allied and associate members of the U.S. Tour Operators Association gathered at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square for a new Business After Hours networking event hosted by the organization.
"A high priority for me is to create year-round engagement," USTOA President Terry Dale said of the networking events. "So much of our relationship with our membership has been focused on [the annual] conference. But we need to extend beyond just a four-day conference."
In his first year as USTOA president, Dale has been looking for ways to enhance membership, and as a result of a member survey and feedback signaling that members wanted more opportunities to get together, hosted an initial Business After Hours event in Los Angeles in June.
"What we were hearing was that everyone was clamoring for more access and more networking opportunities," Dale said. "All of this is about creating touch points, where we have the opportunity to connect and interact with one another."
To further that, Dale has quietly begun posting "Two Minutes With Terry" segments on YouTube to update members on USTOA activities and initiatives.
"I took a look at ways in which associations communicate with their stakeholders," Dale said. "There are e-newsletters, which I'm not convinced that a lot of people spend their time reading the content of. I don't know that members have the time to go through all these e-newsletters. I also believe that as a culture we are becoming more and more visual. So I thought, why not deliver sound bites about what's going on with USTOA?"
Dale said that ultimately, the "Two Minutes With Terry" segments will be intended to drive traffic to what will be a revamped USTOA website in the near- to midterm, for more information on topics of interest.
"We'll see," Dale said. "We're trying different things; some things will work, some won't. But if we don't try, shame on us."
View the "Two Minutes With Terry" segment from the Business After Hours event in New York below.
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