As the 10:45 a.m. opening session of the USTOA Annual Conference and Marketplace approached, several hundred attendees converged in an auditorium at the JW Marriott Marco Island Beach Resort, and a tentative hum grew into a roar. As people strolled in and the crowd grew in size, a palpable energy built until it became like a wild force of nature, crackling in the atmosphere. By the time Terry Dale, the CEO of the U.S. Tour Operators Association, hopped onto the stage to open the ceremonies, it was already clear why this event was one of the most exciting places to be in the travel industry and in the world at large.
The combined energy and synergy of people from cultures, destinations and businesses around the world generated sparks that may not have been visible to the eye, but could certainly be felt. And in those few moments, the conference was off like a rocket.
The theme of this year’s conference was “Kindness.”
“The USTOA is a bridge,” said Terry Dale in his opening remarks. “We are a bridge to kindness, compassion, caring and economic empowerment.”
He said that the association’s Sustainability is Responsibility conference in Singapore last February celebrated “climate kindness.” At the out-of-country board meeting in Portugal last April, “we were culture kind.” But there at the annual conference, he said, “We are humankind, with 100 destinations coming together in the spirit of kindness.”
During the conference, the attendees would have opportunities for tightly scheduled business meetings, and many networking opportunities in receptions, parties and meal events. That, Dale said, is the “backbone of the conference.”
In addition to that, the painstakingly curated speakers at the general sessions provide a vital educational component, presenting new ideas and information with up-to-the-minute relevance. The various presentations are helpful at a time when the world is changing more rapidly and wildly than ever before. You can walk out of those sessions armed with information and insight you did not have before. It can change your outlook and give you insights that can help you adapt effectively to the changes.
The kindness theme resonated with each speaker. To keep the program moving at a quick clip, the speakers must condense their ideas into a few minutes. The keynote speech of the opening session was 30 minutes. The speakers on the Terry Talks session on the second day were limited to eight minutes each.
No rambling speeches where people start scratching themselves and their eyelids droop, these are performances that bring you to the edge of your chair. They pump insights into you rapidfire until your mind is overflowing with new ideas, delicious food for thought. They can cause your point of view to shift significantly. They open up new subjects you didn’t know exist. And they always give you new reasons for hope for the future, and faith in your fellow human beings.
The Futurist
The keynote speaker was Nancy Giordano, author of Leadering: The Ways Visionary Leaders Play Bigger, a self-described strategic futurist. Her specialty is to confront a future that is coming rapidly from all sides, and in shapes no one has seen before, and to try to make sense of it.
A lot is coming at us, she told us, and we’ll have a lot to get used to. Someone like her, who studies it constantly, can tell you that what’s coming is big. But it’s beyond anyone’s capacity to tell you what it will really be like.
During the last big wave of change, when Facebook was launched to the public in 2006, its founders were not aware that in January 2007, Steve Jobs would launch the iPhone. Neither Facebook nor Apple knew what the other was doing, and neither had any inkling of the kind of synergy that would explode between social media and the iPhone, and would change the world as much as the internet itself.
Now, Giordano said, there are several different developments coming to their respective heads that will each have as much transformational potential as the internet. Some of the areas she mentioned were: artificial intelligence (of course), spatial computing, robotics, drones, 3D printing, biotech, nanotech, and quantum computing.
No one knows how these technologies will combine and how the synergies will develop. We are certainly on the edge of a new Brave New World.
Technology is advancing, she said, information is growing and culture is shifting, and the changes will be exponential, not incremental, not linear. We are at an “amazing inflection point,” as we evolve beyond the industrial era.
The Misinformation Specialist
There was an eye-opening presentation on misinformation and how to defend against it by Nina Jankowicz, the author of How to Lose the Information War (2020), on Russian use of disinformation as geopolitical strategy. We are not powerless against it, she said. “We have agency. We can stop disinformation in its tracks.”
She brought it back to kindness. People who have fallen under the influence of disinformation are not likely to be persuaded by a fact check. Research shows that’s more likely to cause people to hunker down on their beliefs. Better to try kindness. “Answer with kindness,” she said, “Let them feel heard. Disinformation is a human problem. It’s not going to be defeated with a whack-a-mole approach.”
The Economist
One of the most fascinating of the presentations was by Mark Blyth, professor of international economics at Brown University, an economist with a sense of humor, as well as some useful insight.
The economy is actually in pretty good shape he said. Consumer spending has rebounded from 2022. GDP growth and consumer confidence are up.
“I’m going to tell you something which is a bit surprising, I hope, which is burn baby burn! That’s going to be the state of the US economy for the next two years, despite all the worries about Trump tariffs and all that. And I’m going to tell you why that’s the case and why that’s good for you all.”
Good news is always welcome. Do tell.
He explained some obscure aspects of global economic dynamics that suggested that tariffs might not be as bad as anticipated.
“It’s not what you think,” he said. Americans buy Chinese goods via Amazon and Walmart. China then needs a way to save the money, so it invests in U.S. Treasury bonds.
It works like this: “We just sent you a lot of money you can’t use, you turned it into a treasury bill and to pay for that, you gave us the money back. That’s actually what happens. This is why you can get a TV the size of Belgium for 500 quid. The end result is you mobilize the economy.”
As for worries about the economy, he dismissed them.
“There are two things that can make or break any business,” he said, “one is a black swan, the impact of the highly improbable.” He used COVID as an example of a highly improbable thing you can’t anticipate.
“So how do you guard against them?” he said. “It’s really hard to do. You can get too much into it. You can think too much about these risks. You can become paralyzed, and when you do that you leave money on the table. You should be out there taking the risk, trying to get as much as you possibly can, not worrying about downside risks, because these things, if they happen, there’s nothing you can do about them anyway.”
The Student
The last of the Terry Talks was from Sarah Wong, transmitted via Zoom from Singapore. She asked, “Is kindness in our future?”
Kindness is good for you, she said. When you are kind it spikes the generation of oxytocin, the love hormone, and it has long-lasting benefits. “If kindness was a pill,” she said, “It would fly off the shelf.”
She gave us some good food for thought, and reasons for hopefulness. Then at the end she revealed that the speech and the person we saw on the screen were AI generated. So that left us with something to think about, to take home, along with all the rest.
As always, the USTOA annual conference put the year into perspective, and set the tone for a positive approach to the New Year. It’s a new world, and we ought to get with it, even though no one really knows where it’s going.
David Cogswell is a freelance writer working remotely, from wherever he is at the moment. Born at the dead center of the United States during the last century, he has been incessantly moving and exploring for decades. His articles have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Fortune, Fox News, Luxury Travel Magazine, Travel Weekly, Travel Market Report, Travel Agent Magazine, TravelPulse.com, Quirkycruise.com, and other publications. He is the author of four books and a contributor to several others. He was last seen somewhere in the Northeast US.
