Sharing Best Practices: 31st Annual United States Tour Operators Association (USTOA)

People to People Ambassador Programs is a member of the United States Tour Operators Association (USTOA). In December, USTOA held their 31st annual conference and marketplace in Banff, Alberta, Canada. The weather was incredibly cold at -22 F on Monday of the conference, and I heard the temperature had dropped to -33 F by Tuesday.

The Fairmont Banff Springs was our home from Sunday to Friday. Styled after a Scottish Baronial castle, The Fairmont Banff Springs is located in the heart of Banff National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

History
A small group of California tour operators founded USTOA in 1972. These founding members recognized the need for a unified voice to protect the traveling public, as well as to represent the interests of tour operators. In 1975, USTOA became a national organization with headquarters in New York.

USTOA's motto is "Integrity in Tourism." Accordingly, the association has established some of the highest standards in the industry for their members to follow. Among USTOA's goals is to foster a high level of professionalism within the tour operator industry, a vision shared by all of us here at People to People Ambassador Programs.

The first few days of the conference are reserved for the annual membership meeting and the active member board of directors meeting, which are open to all active members. The majority of the second day is set aside for various workshops designed to improve the knowledge of each individual company. Selected members share their experiences and best practices with all members. The last few days of the conference are set aside for various vendors to speak to active members and share their service offerings.

Crisis Management Planning
I was invited by USTOA to present in two educational conference sessions this year. The first session was titled “Preparedness through Crisis Management Planning.” In this session, I was asked to describe our extensive on-call support system and escalation process. The on-call support system is the process we have in place to support, manage, and ultimately resolve situations that may arise while a student is traveling on one of our programs. I was joined by Rakesh Dewan, director of Worldwide Operations of Tauck World Discovery, who also shared what his organization is doing. The next portion of my presentation was designed to help educate the members on how to take an emergency response template and transform that guide into an effective formal response plan.
Minimizing H1N1's Effect on Travelers
The second training session of the day focused on the current status of the H1N1 pandemic and how organizations can better prepare to minimize the pandemic’s effect on their travelers. The session started off with a very informative global update by Dr. Grant Tarling, chief medical officer for Princess Cruises International. Dr. Tarling leads a shipboard team of 60 doctors and 150 nurses on 30 cruise ships worldwide and is responsible for the medical and public health care provided to 1 million passengers and 20,000 crew members each year. Dr. Tarling highly recommends that everyone get the H1N1 vaccination, especially those under the age of 24. I have had both the H1N1 vaccination and the normal seasonal flu shot, as have my sons and wife.

After Dr. Tarling’s presentation, it was my turn to share the success People to People Ambassador Programs had in 2009 with controlling the number of influenza cases. We had just five total cases, and four occurred on domestic programs. I explained how each member could take specific steps to help an organization better control its chances of eliminating the virus on its programs during the coming year. Based on the feedback we received at the conference, I believe these presentations were timely and of great value to the active members of USTOA.

Our Focus is Health and Safety for All Travelers
Now, you may ask, “Why would People to People Ambassador Programs share its secrets of success with operators who potentially compete for the same customers?” The answer is very simple; our focus is the safety and health of all travelers, whether they are traveling with us or our competition. When we have learned by experience, we feel it is our responsibility to share that information with others in our industry to make international travel safer for all. In return, others become more open to share their successes, and ultimately we end up with a very strong network of experienced, credible operators working closely together for the betterment of all travelers. We believe we need to actively pursue calibration in the industry, and USTOA clearly shares that vision with us.

Next year, USTOA will hold their 32nd annual conference in New Orleans, and we look forward to attending and sharing what we will learn in 2010. I hope we can help all travel-related organizations enhance their health and safety practices, and gain new ideas from our peers as well to ensure the safety of every People to People Ambassador Program delegate. Let’s just hope it is a little warmer then it was this year!

With that, I wish you all safe travels and a healthy life.

Mike

Developing Safety and Security Worldwide

At People to People Ambassador Programs, the safety and health of all delegates and citizen ambassadors is our top priority. We strive to have a solid working knowledge and understanding of the current state of affairs in all corners of the world, especially the countries we visit. In order to stay current with world affairs, we use multiple resources to ensure we have the latest information.

Utilizing Worldwide Partners

First and foremost, we rely on our worldwide partners. These organizations are incredibly well connected within their respective areas and are in a unique position to pass along current and relevant information. We also rely on our past experiences. We have been operating programs around the world for more than 40 years and we have many proven safety and health procedures that provide the greatest opportunity for a positive experience for our students. In addition to these sources, we rely heavily on the U.S. Department of State and their available resources. One of these resources is the Overseas Security Advisors Council (OSAC), which employs highly skilled regional coordinators who collect and analyze the most current intelligence from all corners of the world.

One example of how OSAC supports People to People Ambassador Programs happened in late March. Each morning, I receive a summary of current events from around the world. On this day in March, I received a report of a young boy who reportedly had contracted H1N1, or swine flu, as it is commonly known. Within a few days, another alert reported the first death in Mexico. These alerts allowed our organization to start making preparations for our summer season in the event the disease spread, which it soon did. By the time we received reports about the first U.S. case, our organization was already planning communication with our delegate families and preparing to prescreen travelers.

Thanks to the information we received from the OSAC and our worldwide partners, we successfully traveled thousands of students to countries with sophisticated screening processes at airports, such as China, New Zealand, and Japan, and we did not travel one student with the virus, nor did any student traveling on our programs come down with the swine flu. Based on these results, I have now been asked by organizations such as the United States Tour Operators Association and the Student Youth Travel Association to share our practices at their conferences to reduce the chance that other students contract the virus. We clearly would not have been as successful without the early intelligence provided to us by the OSAC.

Keeping Up with Safety and Security

As a federal advisory committee, the OSAC promotes security cooperation between the U.S. Department of State, American businesses, and private sector interests worldwide. Essentially, the OSAC comprises government specialists who collect and share safety and security information to businesses around the world.

On November 18, the OSAC hosted their 24th annual briefing at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., and I attended as a representative of People to People Ambassador Programs. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was scheduled to open the conference, but she had to attend a meeting in China the night before with President Obama, and was unable to return in time. Daniel Weber, the OSAC executive director, opened the conference instead. I was pleased to spend some time with him during the two-day event. Jeffrey W. Culver, director of Diplomatic Security, also presented at the conference.

In addition we heard from Ambassador Eric J. Boswell, assistant secretary for Diplomatic Security for the U.S. Department of State.

After hearing from these individuals, I am confident we walked away with the most current and accurate information available, which will help us continue to achieve our safety goals.

The presentations gave us current intelligence on conditions in all parts of the world. Participants also had opportunities to hear and share best practices that we can incorporate into the People to People Ambassador Programs' safety, health, and security processes to ensure the continued safety of your child.

The conference theme was "Confronting Global Risks." Each presenter was highly specialized in their area of focus, and the subjects ranged from hotel safety to global finances' impact on security.

Among the attendees were some of the top corporate security specialists in the nation. For example, I was able to share many stories and ideas with Michael A. Mason, the chief security officer at Verizon Communications. Mason served as a public servant for 28 years, first as a military officer, and then in the FBI prior to joining Verizon. When the conference ended, Mason attended a meeting with the newly established Domestic Security Alliance Council (DSAC), a domestic version of the OSAC. In this group, the FBI serves as the chief liaison with businesses, instead of the State Department as with the OSAC.

As this group develops, People to People Ambassador Programs will stay involved to help ensure the continued success and safety of our domestic programs, such as our World Leadership Forums held in Washington, D.C., and our Leadership Summits at high profile universities including Harvard, Rice, and Stanford. The information gained from the DSAC will also help us develop safety practices for our "Leadership Summit: Remembering Hurricane Katrina" in New Orleans this summer.

Next year, the OSAC will celebrate 25 years of providing critical information to U.S. businesses that enables us to travel the world safely. We thank them for all they have done, and wish them the best during their 25th anniversary. We plan to attend their annual conference to continue to develop our safety and security practices at People to People Ambassador Programs.

With that, I wish you all safe travels and a healthy life.

Mike

Safety Measures for Swine-Flu-Free Experiences in Washington, D.C.

Yesterday we reached out to the families of all our delegates traveling with us on one of our fall World Leadership Forum programs in Washington, D.C.

The safety of all our delegates is our number-one priority. To that end, we are prepared to aggressively control the risk of the influenza virus impacting any of our delegates, and I’d like to share with you how we are achieving that goal.

Usually, we see a small number (generally 4-6) of students who arrive at our leadership forums with some form of virus. Each program consists of several hundred students, so it is a very small percentage that arrives at a program ill. People to People ensures these students receive prompt care by one of the many medical facilities in the D.C. area. They are also attended to by individual People to People associates assigned to monitor their conditions and personal needs as they recover. We have found that students who arrive ill on our programs almost always had symptoms at home prior to travel.

I experienced this firsthand on my first World Leadership Forum last fall when a young man experienced shallow breathing, fatigue, and other symptoms upon arrival at the program. He was immediately seen by a medical professional on site, and then he and I headed to the hospital via ambulance. The diagnosis was early-stage pneumonia, a condition he had developed several days prior to departing for our program.

I spent the next two nights sleeping in a chair in his room while the doctors cared for the student, as it is our policy to never leave a student alone in a medical facility. Fortunately, we caught the condition early and were able to immediately get this student the medical attention he so needed, and he was able to rejoin the rest of the delegation for the remainder of the program once we were assured he was no longer contagious and was fit to participate in the many activities planned.

I share this story with you to give you some insight into how we protect your student from exposure to viruses and other conditions that some students unknowingly bring onto our programs. With the media coverage surrounding swine flu and the potential for contracting influenza A as students come together, we thought you should know we are taking steps to ensure your child’s health and safety.

The question most often asked by parents during the enrollment process is always “How will People to People ensure the safety of my child?” The answer is that we are proactive with many programs, procedures, and safeguards in place to ensure the risk of any problem is reduced as much as possible. Our program this fall for our World Leadership Forum in Washington, D.C., is just one example of our attention to detail in this matter.

Yesterday we sent an email to every family of delegates traveling to Washington, D.C., during the next three weeks. We will also contact the remaining delegations as we get closer to their departure dates. In these emails, we disclose our plans to prevent any student from contracting influenza A while on our program. This program is very similar to the successful steps we took to ensure no delegate traveled internationally this summer with the H1N1 virus.

The U.S. government no longer tests for swine flu or H1N1 due to the volume of cases already reported, the difficulty in tracking such a high volume, and the cost of the individual tests. Instead, a quick blood test can yield results within 30 minutes that will determine if a patient has influenza A. If this test is positive, it is assumed that the patient has the H1N1 virus.

In our email, we ask if anyone in the family has experienced any of the following symptoms:

• High fever above 100.4 degrees F
• Coughing or sneezing
• Sore throat
• Body aches
• Chills and fatigue
• Diarrhea and vomiting

If their child shows the above symptoms the day prior to travel, we advise the family not to send their child on the program. Instead, we provide many options, one of which includes transferring the delegate to another fall 2009 or spring 2010 program without penalty.

We also advise the families that it is our intent to take the temperatures of each student using a nonintrusive scanner prior to acceptance into our programs. Those few who show significant symptoms will be immediately escorted to a medical professional for evaluation. If they test positive for influenza A, the student will be cared for away from the rest of the delegation and will rejoin the group 48 hours after symptoms have subsided.

We do not anticipate that many students will need to be escorted to a medical facility. Instead, we believe that being proactive and up-front with all families in advance will discourage those few with a sick child from sending them on the program, further ensuring the health and safety of the majority of students who arrive healthy and ready to participate in their life-changing experiences.

I share with you our safety measures not to scare you but to reassure you that our team here at People to People cares deeply about your child and will do all that we can to help them proceed with their great adventure.

With that, I wish you all safe travels and a healthy life.

Mike

Time to hit the road and learn!

Now that the 2009 summer travel season has come to a close, it’s time to focus our attention on the 2010 season. Each year we dive deep into the detail of the past season to draw out lessons learned, best practices, and detailed information that will be transferred into action plans that enable us to continually enhance our safety practices. Although 2009 was a great season, like all responsible organizations, we must never rest on our success, but continually seek new and innovative ways to improve our systems and processes. One of the ways we accomplish that objective is to participate in industry conferences designed to share ideas and concepts with other educational travel providers.

Tomorrow I will depart for Norfolk, VA to attend the Student Youth Travel Association’s (SYTA) Annual Conference. The SYTA Conference is considered the premier event for the student and youth travel market. The Conference provides educational growth and information sharing to help companies involved with student travel improve themselves and the products and services they provide.

SYTA is the non-profit, professional trade association that promotes student & youth travel and seeks to foster integrity and professionalism among student and youth travel service providers. SYTA also maintains and is guided by an Educational Advisory Board comprised of representatives from organizations such as the Canadian Association of Principals, National Association of Music Education, National Association of Secondary School Principals, National Association of State Boards of Education, National Middle School Association, and the National School Boards Association.

By participating in this conference, we are able to learn and share best industry practices and also help shape future policies and regulations that will impact the Educational Travel Industry.
Attending this year’s conference with me will be Shannon Scheiwiller, the Senior Director of Leadership Programs. Shannon is also a nominee to the Board of Directors for SYTA. Shannon is responsible for our leadership development programs in prominent centers of history and learning—including Washington, D.C., London, Brussels, Paris, and top American universities. Students from grades 5-12 come from all over the world to hone their leadership skills, prepare for college, and explore future careers through unique access to extraordinary people, places, and insights.

I will also participate in the leadership of this organization this year by serving on the Professional Development Committee. This committee will evaluate Travel Accreditation Programs, Certified Student Travel Professional Programs, and Supplier Certification programs. All are designed to ensure the highest standards of safety and excellence of the operators we associate with. I’m excited about this opportunity.

On October 13th, I will be the keynote speaker on best practices for the handling of swine flu. This will be an Educational Conference Call sponsored by SYTA and offered to all members. I will share our successes in the handling of swine flu exposure to help other organizations successfully react to this disease as the nation continues to develop its pandemic response. Our experiences in China uniquely qualify our organization for leading this event as we did not have a single case of swine flu in China during the travel season due to the proactive steps we took in preparing our associates, students, parents, and leaders for travel.

I will provide more information on the scheduled conference call and the information shared as the date grows closer. I also plan to highlight lessons learned at this conference in my blog next week so please come back to view them.

If you would like more information about SYTA please go to SYTA.com or you may contact them directly at the address or phone number listed below.

SYTA Office
Student & Youth Travel Association
8400 Westpark Drive, 2nd Floor
McLean, VA 22102-5116
Tel: 703-610-1263

With that, it’s time for me to pack my bag and hit the road. As always, I wish you all safe travels and a healthy life!

Mike

Another Safe Summer Travel Season Comes to a Close

Here we are again with another summer coming to a close. As our final travelers head home from their journeys, it’s a perfect time to launch my regular travel safety blog. What I want to accomplish with my new blog is to talk about travel safety and the many ways safety impacts travel, trends, learnings, and also to establish open communications with you.

This summer has been full of some unique challenges. I’m happy to say that we have risen to all of them, and learned a lot in the process. This summer was all about moving quickly to manage the Swine Flu (H1N1) and eventual pandemic along with the very individual ways different countries responded to it. We at People to People Ambassadors Programs had a very significant China program this year, our groups were traveling through China all summer. The Chinese government in general, had the most aggressive response to the pandemic of any major country, holding anyone with a raised body temperature for as much as 24 hours in a hospital or placing in quarantine for up to seven days anyone who may have been exposed to the illness depending on where they sat on the plane. More than one People to People group was impacted this summer. See our web site for People to People’s response and my regular messages on the subject at http://www.peopletopeople.com/alerts/Pages/swine-flu.aspx.

One of the most important things to do in a situation like the H1N1 pandemic is to maintain open channels of communication. Here are some of the procedures we immediately put into place to ensure that we did just that:

• We immediately sent a senior team to China to make sure we had staff on the ground to ensure the health and safety of our student ambassadors; I headed out to China immediately myself to access the situation prior to our first student delegation arriving.
  
• We immediately contacted the U.S. Embassy in China and worked with them throughout the summer.
  
• We contacted all parents of students traveling to China at least 7 to 14 days in advance of their student’s program to complete a questionnaire and ensure we never sent a student exposed to, or with H1N1.
  
• We immediately alerted all parents of anyone taken into quarantine or secondary screening at the hospital and maintained a 24-hour staff here in Spokane, which is standard procedure for the organization every travel season.
  
• Each family with a quarantined student was assigned a specific Family Liaison Team member who they could contact 24 hours a day for any need they might have.
  
• We alerted all parents with students traveling in the China program as to what was happening with the quarantine situation as it evolved.
  
• We provided the quarantined students with laptops and cell phones so that they could keep in touch back home and let everyone know they were fine and to keep the lines of communication open.
  
• Daily care packages were brought into the quarantine hotel to make sure the students had something to do, and brighten their day. I personally brought games, candy and other items in right away. We had so many gifts that the generous students shared with other people under quarantine!
  

Our leaders are world class! While not required to be there by the Chinese government, our leaders all volunteered to be quarantined to ensure the health and well-being of our students. In addition, nine other leaders volunteered to be placed with the 15 students who were taken to a local hospital for secondary screening.

Even though Chinese officials promised that we would always be able to have a student accompanied by a leader, in one case at a hospital used for the first time by the government they didn’t keep that promise. One of our leaders stayed directly outside the door to the quarantined student’s room to make sure that only the medical staff was entering. This leader is a great example of the level of commitment to the students of our extraordinary adults who lead People to People programs.

Beyond the international incident we tackled over the summer with the H1N1 virus, we also had one that was more of a personal nature. One unexpected incident that we handled this summer had to do with the brief disappearance of one of our students while in Paris, France. This student chose deliberately to slip away from the delegation to “explore independently.” As parents and delegates know, small-group exploration for short periods is a free-time activity for our older students only and much of the reason for our pre-travel screening of students; whether at home or abroad, teens need to make good decisions, follow the rules, and listen to those in charge. In this instance we did everything we could to ensure this student’s safety as quickly as possible:

• We made contact with the student’s parents within an hour of the student intentionally leaving the hotel.
  
• A citywide APB was put out within 2 hours.
  
• We involved the U.S. Embassy, FBI, Paris police, and U.S. police in the search.
  
• The Paris police requested a 24-hour period before the full search began, so we cooperated with the student’s parents instead to follow the student’s credit card use.
  
• We obtained photos of the student using the ATMs by herself and under no apparent distress.
  
• We sent staff to the locations where the card was being used to show photos of the student to the employees to see if anyone had seen the student.
  
• We sent the parents to get emergency passports.
  
• We arranged for the parents to be flown to Paris with a representative from our organization.
  
• Within 36 hours the student was reunited with the parents at the U.S. Embassy.
  
• The parents had their child formally apologize to our organization and the law officials for running away.
  
• The parents and student were returned to the U.S.
  

For other People to People parents, I want you to know that this type of concern and responsiveness are available to each and every student. We don’t just pay lip-service to the idea that our students’ safety is our first priority. We live it—in cases like these, on a moment-to-moment basis, with the care and concern nearly as great as that of the parents.

Though our first concern is always the safety of the student, it was gratifying to speak to the U.S. Embassy in Paris, where a representative told us that in 20 years she had never seen an incident like this better handled by an organization.

My sole focus at People to People, as well as that of my entire team, is to ensure the health and safety of every single delegate. We are very proud of our ability to do just that during the 2009 season, even with unexpected situations and unexpected choices from students. We continually improve our ability to expect the unexpected and be prepared for all situations. It’s why I’m here, the only person in the industry with my job title and description. And that’s why we are dedicated to being the leader in offering high-quality, safe educational adventures for thousands of students every year.

The summer has nearly come to an end for People to People Ambassador Programs, and what a summer it has been. We saw some fabulous People to People moments—including the return of a World War II battle flag to a Japanese widow. Moments like this are the very essence of People to People—bridging cultural and political borders, and making the world a better place for future generations.

Until next time - I’m wishing you safe and happy travels,

Mike