Your First Coronavirus Course of Action is to Stay Informed
Here at Connect Travel’s INBOUND, we have seen, read and heard enough reports to realize this—as such accounts have ranged from those in which concerns are effectively dismissed by the expectation that everything will work out all right in the end to an advisory released last week by China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism which cautioned travelers not to visit the U.S. due to American’s overreaction to the deadly virus, unfair treatment of Chinese tourists in the U.S. and what the South China Morning Post described as “unspecified uncertainties over its domestic security.”
News accounts and numbers related to the coronavirus are changing frequently—not just daily, but sometimes every three or four hours. In such an environment, there is a need for all of us to stay up-to-date with the latest and accurate accounts on the situation through the resource materials provided by the U.S. Travel Association. Visit its website (www.ustravel.org) and you will a find wide variety of information that will help all of us to deal with the coronavirus.
In the meantime, it was announced by US Travel that the Leading Travel Index (LTI), the predictive component of its Travel Trends Index (TTI), projects international inbound travel to the U.S. will fall 6 percent over the next three months as the coronavirus outbreak continues to roil the global economy.
The latest TTI captures data from January, when awareness of coronavirus began to ramp up and China—one of the biggest travel markets to the U.S.—implemented aggressive measures to curb travel out of certain cities.
Wobbly 2020 Start for Overseas Markets
The latest monthly arrivals data posted by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Travel and Tourism Office (NTTO) show that, for the month of January 2020, arrivals from overseas source markets to the United States were off by more than a percent, with more than half of the Top 10 markets down compared to 2019.
Recall that the numbers below were close to final for the month of January—while the people who had contracted the coronavirus were largely confined to China—and they underscore the notion that the outlook for inbound tourism from these markets was already soft … a point underscored recently by Carroll Rheem, vice president of research and analytics at Brand USA, during her remarks to Connect Travel’s Market Outlook session at the Gaylord Palms Resort in Kissimmee, Florida (see article elsewhere in this issue of INBOUND). She summed up her presentation, saying simply, “It’s going to be a tough year.”
Following are the early numbers from NTTO that show how the USA closed out 2019 and started 2020 in the Top 15 Overseas Markets. They do not include figures from the international visitor counts of the USA’s neighboring markets of Canada and Mexico.
China’s Travel Outlook Was Already Flat
Coronavirus Complications Compound a Critical Market’s Outlook: People we talked to during the three days of Connect Travel’s recent Marketplace—it ran a schedule of programs paralleling other Connect events at the Gaylord Palms Resort in Kissimmee, Florida—told INBOUND what Carroll Rheem, vice president of research and analytics at Brand USA, confirmed with a rather thorough examination of up-to-date China travel market data and for the inbound travel market as well: It was already going to be a soft year for China’s Visit USA traffic.
Overall, Rheem said, 2020 was going to be a trying year for the international inbound tourism industry because of “the jitteriness of the markets around the world and the potential for economic slowdown, which is very much real, (the U.S.) domestic potential climate and international tensions – not just between the U.S. and other countries, but between themselves … “
“There are lot of things we don’t know and any one of them could have a strong impact on travel plans and the appetite for traveling in (key) markets,” she added.
Regarding China specifically, Rheem told Marketplace delegates that, “obviously, coronavirus has taken over as the topic for this market but, even before all of this—before the trade concerns, before the disease—there has been a persistent slowdown in China, in and of itself, by itself, for lots of different reasons, and that‘s really what impacts most of what we’re seeing.”
An Inequality Gap: By most accounts, measures of growth and progress are in place in China: Its economy has been growing faster than that of most countries – 6 percent a year. However, its Gini index (or inequality index) indicates that the portion of the economy that the wealthy control is high. China’s middle class—which has driven the growth of the travel market—is not growing as it once did, Rheem explained, noting that “travel did not grow at all in 2019 – before coronavirus ever hit. So, I think that when people talk about the impact of corona virus, it starts with this expectation that China was going to be growing like gangbusters. That didn’t happen. And that’s simply not the case. It was flat already.”
Rheem, who is quite popular as a speaker at travel and tourism industry events because of her ability to take some of the dense and abstruse data she deals with in her job and make it palatable and easy-to-grasp for all kinds of audiences, sometimes injecting humor into her presentations, letting delegates know that a recovery or expansion in the global industry is not going to be easy.
A sampler of Rheem’s humor was evident when she began to approach the subject of making a forecast for the near-term travel economy. She paused, so that delegates could see an image of the late John Kenneth Galbraith, a noted economist and one-time U.S. ambassador to India, with one of his quotes: “The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.”
She reviewed the economic condition of key markets, country-by-country, and pointed to challenges—political, economic and others—which mean that “it’s going to be a tough year.” The one economy “that really stands out,” she said, is India, which “has the strongest upward momentum in the next few years.”
What to Do in the Near-Term: No one, it seems, wanted to use the phrase, “wait and see,” but that’s how INBOUND translates what it heard at the Marketplace. Combined with accounts that have been published elsewhere, the conventional wisdom suggests that U.S. travel suppliers who do business in China, hold off on new expenditures or promotions, saving such resources until that vague point in the future when the coronavirus is receding and China—as well as other key markets—resumes air traffic to and from the United States.
Connect Marketplace 2020 Album
A Marketplace Album: Following is a brief collection of photos of the people who took part in the Connect Travel Marketplace, Market Leadership Summit and related events that were recently held coterminously at the Gaylord Palms Resort in Kissimmee, Florida.
DAY ONE: Registration, Workshops and Opening Reception
To see the Complete album Click Here.
Obama Connects at Connect
When Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States, came from behind a curtain and to the stage after being introduced by Chris Collinson, president of Connect Meetings, to address the more than 1,200 delegates to several parallel meetings of Connect groups that met recently at the Gaylord Palms Resort in Kissimmee, Florida, it took more nearly a minute for the audience to quiet down at his urging.
Clearly, President Obama was a crowd favorite, both during the noisy welcome and as he responded to 11 questions posed by Collinson on behalf of those who came to the event—some of them enduring a line that stretched, at times, some four football fields long—to hear the former President as he and Collinson spent an hour on topics that were intentionally non-political.
Instead, what the audience heard was a President Obama who was relaxed and humorous—almost chatty—as he sprinkled his answers with occasional wry bits of humor, some of it self-deprecating (at one point, he joked about the size of his ears) and using not-so-subtle facial expressions (arching his eyes or exaggerating a frown) when making a point about the U.S. economy or some other issue.
Following is INBOUND’s recap of the questions that Collinson posed to President Obama, and a capsulized version of his answers.
Question: When did you know that you were in love with Michelle (Obama and his wife, Michelle, have been married for more than 27 years)?
Response: In what was his longest answer of the session, the former President got into considerable detail, even mentioning what he used to wear and how he first noticed Michelle; but, in short, the answer was that he knew after their first date.
Question: Which is the hardest—to be President, the wife of a President, or the daughter of a President?
Response: It is difficult to compare or answer simply, as each position poses unique challenges.
Question: How long were you President before they told you about Area 51? (Area 51 is the common name of a highly classified United States Air Force facility located within the Nevada Test and Training Range. According to some conspiracy theorists, it is also the site where remains of crashed UFO spacecrafts are stored.)
Response: After a short time in office, he said, he had his “security person go take a look at it.” (This did not seem to be a serious answer.)
Question: If you had not become President, in what way would your life had been different?
Response: Here, President Obama went into a lengthy speculation as to what he—what any person—should seek in life, closing his answer with “wealth and power are not the things that bring you joy.”
Question: What were the highest and lowest points of your presidency?
Response: The highest point was the day that the Affordable Care Act was passed by Congress (March 21, 2010) and the lowest point was the day of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting occurred—December 14, 2012—when, in Newtown, Connecticut a deranged person shot and killed 26 people, including 20 children between six and seven years old, and six adult staff members.
Question: Why don’t leaders show emotion?
Response: Here, Obama explained that, when he was a child growing up, the leadership figures in popular were all men (“Who didn’t look like me” and were not women) who were “strong and silent: types who never showed emotion. As we see more leaders who can and will express themselves with emotion, it will benefit everyone.
Question: Which will be President? Michelle, Malia or Sasha? (Malia and Sasha are the names of President Obama’s two daughters.)
Response: In his shortest answer, the former President indicated that all three women are certain that they do not want to live the life of a President, commenting, “Don’t wait for that to happen, y’all.”
Question: What does a day in the life of a former President look like?
Response: The former President said he had a difficult time, at first, adapting to the change in pace. He compared the change of pace in his work today to a scene in the 1999 film, Matrix, in which bullets are shot at Neo (Keanu Reeves) who dodges them as if they are coming at him in slow motion. He no longer thinks and works 24/7 but still keeps busy with a pace that is still more than that of the normal work day—with speaking engagements, travel, writing and more.
Question: Why is tourism important to you?
Response: While he went on to discuss this issue at length, his answer was basic—tourism is good for the U.S. economy.
Question: What do you hope to accomplish from this day forward?
Response: While it seemed apparent that he plans to stay active politically, the former President seems focused, for the time being, in carrying out the work of the Obama Foundation and its goals and objectives. A Chicago-based entity, the Obama Foundation is overseeing the establishment of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. It also operates My Brother’s Keep Alliance which operates a scholarship program through the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy.
Question: What is your favorite destination?
Response: He cited Hawaii, where he was raised, and some popular U.S. cities, but the former President was most laudatory of U.S. national parks, which he described as America’s “Crown Jewel.”
The Latest from Germany—Just as ITB Cancelled
Released within the same 24-hour window of time as was the announcement that this year’s ITB—it was supposed to start on March 4th—had been cancelled, the latest survey results from Nuremberg-based Travel Data + Analytics on the condition of the German had some upbeat numbers for overseas travel in an otherwise mixed report, which complemented some of the findings of an earlier industry report (the 36th annual “Tourismus Analyse” from the Hamburg-based Institute for Future Studies, which found that German travelers’ interest is in overseas trips increasing this year, with 18 percent of those surveyed planning a trip outside Europe in 2020 compared to 17.4 percent. last year).
Some key findings of the Travel Data + Analytics report include the following:
—Overall, the current winter season 2019/20 and the advance bookings for the coming summer season 2020 are cumulatively minus three percent in sales.
—However, spending behavior speaks for stable vacation demand: Germans are spending an average of three percent more on their summer vacation by air than in the previous year.
—Egypt is particularly fast growing among summer travel destinations. Holidays in Germany are also increasingly in demand.
—Advance bookings for the upcoming 2020 summer season, which begins in May, are also still three percent behind. However, the drop in sales slowly decreases from booking month to booking month. “It was to be expected that the loss of what was once the second largest tour operator in the German market (Thomas Cook, which shut down last September) would be reflected in the current sales balance of travel sales,” explained Dörte Nordbeck, director of business development at Travel Data + Analytics.
—The study showed that the United States remains the top long-haul destination this year for Germans on holiday.
—On average, the German spends 1,012 euros ($1,116) for his/her vacation trip with flight. This corresponds to an increase of three percent compared to the previous year.
—The high willingness to spend influences the overall picture: in bookings, not sales, the summer season 2020 is still nine percent below the previous year.
The report closes with this additional, last-minute note:
“The effects that the outbreak of the corona virus will have on the booking behavior of German vacations to China, Asia or even cruises and European travel destinations as a whole can only be guessed at the moment. In the second half of January, however, there was already a visible decline in new bookings and an increase in travel cancellations for vacation trips to China. For Asia as a whole, this trend is visible in a weakened form.”
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Methodolgy: The TDA report is based on the booking data of around 2,000 travel agencies, which represent the stationary sales market in Germany. In addition, the booking data of classic travel portals and tour operators are recorded in the online area. Extrapolated to the overall market, the evaluations by TDA Travel Intelligence allow reliable conclusions to be drawn about the booking and travel behavior of German vacationers. Current trends and developments in the tourist market can be traced promptly. Further information, contact Dörte Nordbeck: doerte.nordbeck@traveldataanalytics.de.
Survey: British Seniors Favor North America
The just-released AITO Travel Insights 2020 report listing the top ten most popular long-haul destinations of its customers places North America at the top of the list. This is welcome news to the international inbound travel trade in the United States, particularly for those who book senior travel, because the finding is based on a survey of 26,406 customers who are predominantly in the 50-70 age group.
AITO is the short name for the Specialist Travel Association (it used to be the Association of Independent Tour Operators), a British industry trade group that represents around 120 specialist and independent tour operators.
The Top Ten regional destinations favored by AITO’s customers are as follows:
According to survey respondents, North America’s appeal lies in its diversity of landscapes and cultures, as well as opportunities for gastronomy tourism and shopping sprees.
Understandably, the Travel Insights 2020 report’s results read like a bit of a marketing document, since the distribution structure for selling travel in the UK still depends heavily on traditional travel agencies and tour operators for product.
According to the report:
—90 percent of clients who booked with an AITO operator would do so again
—96 percent or survey of respondents would recommend their company to a friend, family or colleague.
—Of those aged 50 to 70 years, 60 percent said expertise and specialism was more important to them than other factors.
During a panel discussion at which the report was released, Tom Dunn, director of digital design at digital agency Wild Dog Design, said: “These are astonishing levels of retention.”
As reported by Travel Weekly UK, Roy Barker, director of marketing company Spike, which analyzed the survey data for the report, said: “Social media is important but email is crucial in terms of how customers want to be kept in touch – [they want] personalized emails that appear to reinforce the customer service they get from a specialist operator rather than blanket communications.”
He also noted that AITO companies were well-placed to take advantage of the “bulge” of 47-65-year-olds in the current UK population. There are currently 17.3 million 47-to-65-year-olds in the market, compared with 14 million 28-to-46-year-olds, due to a fall in the birth rate. All totaled, 75 percent of the total wealth of the country is owned by people aged 45 to 74, said Barker, adding, “the population bulge will work in favor of specialist operators,” he said.
Mergers & Acquisitions
Simon Property Group, the Indianapolis-based company that owns more U.S. shopping malls than any other entity in the country, announced early last month that it was close to closing an $81 million agreement that would acquire Forever 21, which specializes in apparel for teens, out of bankruptcy. The reason, according to an item in Fast Company, the acquisition “is an attempt to stop more of their malls from becoming ghost towns. Simon Property Group’s malls have more than 100 Forever 21 stores in them alone.” The move came at about the same time that Simon announced its plans to acquire rival mall owner Taubman in a deal valued at $3.6 billion. Anything that Simon does has an impact on the inbound tourism industry in the U.S., as its more than 100 malls are staples on the itineraries of international group tours across the country.
Attraction World CEO Paul Stobbs has led a buyout of theme park and attraction ticket specialist for an undisclosed amount. Founded in 2006, the Birmingham, UK-based company has grown to the point at which it could tap into an inventory, according to its LinkedIn pages, of 8,000 attractions, tours, experiences and more in over 50 countries, including the U.S., across the world. As a result of the acquisition, private equity firm Maven Capital Partners and chairman Stephen Richards are leaving the business. Maven investment director Andrew Symmonds said: “We are pleased with the return that we have generated for our investors from the sale of our stake in Attraction World.” Departing Attraction World chairman Richards said: “I would like to thank Maven for their support during my tenure … The partnership has provided a stable platform for the continued growth of the Attraction World business as it looks to capitalize on new opportunities.”
GoVisit Media has the finalization of the purchase of WhereTraveler.com® (US edition) and trademark license rights to Where® publications in major markets across the USA from Morris Visitor Publications, LLC, for an undisclosed amount. Said Peter Flower, CEO of GoVisit Media: “Where® is a legacy brand with instant recognition and a direct association to hospitality, travel and tourism. GoVisit Media is perfectly positioned to propel Where® and WhereTraveler.com® to new heights, keeping up with requests for reliable destination information emanating from a constantly connected new generation of travelers.”
In conjunction with the purchase, GoVisit Media also announced the imminent revamping of the WhereTraveler.com® platform, conducted through its exclusive partnership with VisitorTix, a tour and activities online ticket sales facilitator. “The partnership with Where® represents an ideal showcase for the tremendous opportunities possible with our connected, omni-channel platform solution,” said Bruce Amick, CEO and co-founder of VisitorTix which, he added, “is the result of a journey started over fifteen years ago when I co-founded Broadway Inbound for the purpose of releasing the first set of APIs which granted live access to Broadway Shows inventory, for online travel agents (OTAs) and tour operators.”
Also a part of the transaction activity was Jonathan Elkoubi, VisitorTix co-founder and chief commercial officer, well known in the travel and tourism community in New York City.
Trend: The Ever-Shrinking Size of Groups
French Tour Operator Launches “Immersion” Tours Limited to 12 People: A steady story of the past decade has been the incredible shrinking size of the tour group. There seems to be no known specific date that the trend began, but it obviously coincided with the shrinking passenger capacity of the tour bus. Suddenly, it seemed, there were other vehicles besides the 50-passenger buses. There were 24-passenger buses or vans that offered smaller group tours options and flexibility in their tours, a shift that obviated the need for the larger capacity vehicles. The buses—now vans—continued to get smaller.
Soon, it was the Mercedes Benz Sprinters that one saw more and more in front of attractions, at restaurants or off-loading passengers at hotels. Today, one can rent, buy, purchase or hire 12-passengers Sprinters that can be customized to carry from 9 to 13 or more passengers.
At about the same time this was going on. A small French tour operator, VISITEURS, began making news in the travel trade with programs that one might call alternative tours. Last year, it launched its “Exploration” circuits for groups limited to 20 passengers. The product succeeded well enough that, this year, the company launched its “immersion” circuits.
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A note about VISITEURS: According its own website account, it was founded in 1986 by two friends (Didier Blanchard and Didier Rabaux) “fond of travel,” and it has been exploring the four corners of the world for 30 year: “At VISITEURS, you not only buy a trip, but you also buy a trip that makes sense, that will give you emotion, one that will allow you to have a real experience. It is no coincidence that we are constantly adding new ingredients to our ‘homemade’ recipes such as our ‘Splendeurs’ programs and our circuit extensions. In constant awareness of the expectations of travelers and our customers, we ‘unearth’ and concoct for you the most ‘Fine Travel.’ VISITEURS, today has close to 45 destinations around the world, mostly in Asia, Pacific & Middle East, Africa and Indian Ocean, North America & Latin America, and now Europe.”
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So, what is the “Immersion” spirit?
A news release announcing the product said that “”The Immersion spirit can
be summed up as ‘traveling differently,’ with new tours and stages, like the
Danakil desert in Ethiopia, or taking the time to discover a region for a
longer time, like Sapa in North Vietnam.”
On the accommodation side, said the release, “production gives pride of place
to eco-lodges in Vietnam and Thailand for example, character structures (a
dahabeya in Egypt or a yurt in Mongolia), or guest houses like in South
India—on a human scale and in an ever more personalized spirit.”
You can find out more about VISITEURS, which is based in Amien, France and is about a two-hour drive north of Paris, at https://www.visiteurs.fr/.
HODGE PODGE: Appointments & Changes
Stephen Foutes has been named director of the Missouri Division of Tourism by the Missouri Tourism Commission. He joins the agency from the Missouri State Medical Association, where he served for more than two years. For Foutes, it’s a return to a place where he worked before. Previously he served the division as a travel guide and website editor in 2010, communications manager in 2012, and public relations specialist in 2015.
Travis Napper has been named director of Arkansas Tourism. Napper comes to the position from Experience Ruston (the Ruston Lincoln Parish Convention and Visitors Bureau in Ruston, La.) where he served as the president and CEO of, since 2012. He replaces Jim Dailey, who retired at the end of 2019.
Virgin Holidays has confirmed the appointment of Siobhan Fitzpatrick has been appointed to lead the company. She replaces departing managing director Joe Thompson. In an expanded role, Fitzpatrick has been promoted to senior vice president Virgin Holidays and digital from her previous position of vice president digital and distribution at the group’s airline Virgin Atlantic. Before joining Virgin Atlantic, Fitzpatrick spent 15 years in retail with Argos and Homebase. Thompson was appointed managing director of Virgin Holidays in July 2017, when he replaced Mark Anderson – who now heads up Connect Airways, the Virgin-led consortium that acquired regional carrier Flybe. Before taking the role, Thompson spent 14 years at Virgin Atlantic in leadership positions.
The Visit Pensacola search committee has recommended Pamela Johnson as the next president and CEO of the organization to its board of directors. Following the recommendation, the board approved to move forward with a formal offer to Johnson and will work through negotiations. Johnson has worked at the Lee County Convention and Visitor Bureau in Fort Myers for 25 years, most recently serving as the deputy director beginning in 2014. Johnson also served as the interim director and deputy director of Lee County Economic Development.
Tour operator software company Tourwriter has a new chief operating officer—Pierre Malou, who is the latest hire for the Wellington-based company, who have undergone a period of rapid growth following the 2019 launch of their new online itinerary builder, Minim. Previously, Malou has held various roles throughout Asia-Pacific where he led, supported, and inspired growing teams. Tourwriter now has a suite of three established tour operator software solutions and a global team of 45 to date.
Tom Popper has been named to the new role of CEO at the global tour operator Friendly Planet Travel. At the same time, Peggy Goldman, founder of Family Planet Travel and its current president, will become chairwoman and will continue to work closely with Popper. Prior to his new role as CEO, Popper became part of the Friendly Planet Travel organization last year when the company acquired insightCuba, a single destination tour operator specializing solely in legal travel to Cuba for Americans, where Popper served as president.
Matt Kenny has left his post as Miami’s director of tourism and culture after a little more than a year on the job. City Commissioner Ricky Arriola said the move was “in protest” over frustration at the lack of a plan for Spring Break. Arriola made his comments during a discussion regarding an ordinance to limit the sale of alcohol during peak Spring Break. Previously, Kenny was managing director of Community Agency, a Miami-based global agency that specializes in brand positioning.
Jenny Yi YIN was recently named general manager of destination marketing for Beijing-based Quna.com. She joined the company from Trip.com—also in Beijing—where she was general manager for Europe, the U.S.& North China. She was with Trip.com for more than seven years.
Brett Oetting has been named as president and CEO of the Corpus Christi CVB. Oettig joins the bureau from Topeka, Kansas, were he was president of Visit Topeka and executive vice president of the Greater Topeka Partnership. Oetting begins his new job on March 16.
In an announcement that listed a series of leadership changes, Apple Leisure Group® said that Jim Tedesco, the group’s senior vice president of sales, will now oversee Apple Leisure Group Vacation sales for the whole United States. Tedesco joined the company last September. Previously, he served for more than 12 years with the Flight Centre Travel Group, The Americas.
Travel Counsellors has appointed Kieran Hartwell as its first managing director for Travel Counsellors for business. Hartwell was previously chief commercial officer for Omaha, Nebraska-based Travel and Transport, and president at global travel management company Radius Travel.
The French airline Corsair has announced the appointment of Christine Ozouf as head of foreign markets. A 25-year veteran of the travel and tourism industry, Ozouf has work in senior sales and marketing positions for United Airlines, Jet Airways and Air Seychelles.
Industry Job Postings
From SearchWide Global:
—Meet AC (Atlantic City) is seeking a new to find their next President & CEO. Click here for more details.
—The Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau is seeking a new president and CEO. More details here.
—The convention and visitors bureau of St. Charles, Missouri—it is a suburb northwest of St. Louis—is looking for a director. For more details, click here.
—Visit Topeka has an opening for a new president, who will also serve as senior vice president of the Greater Topeka Partnership. You’ll find more details here.
—Visit Santa Clara is searching for a president and CEO. Click here for more information.
—Destination Ann Arbor is looking to hire a vice president of sales. For more information, visit here.
—Brett Robinson Vacation Rentals has an opening for a director of IT. Click here for more details.
—The Port Aransas & Mustang Island Tourism Bureau & Chamber of Commerce is searching for a president & CEO. For more information, click here.
—Travel Portland has an opening for a vice president of community engagement and diversity, equity and inclusion. Click here for additional details.
—The Galesburg Area Convention and Visitors Bureau in Illinois is looking for an executive director. For more details, click here.
—The Spartanburg (S.C.) Convention & Visitors Bureau is seeking a chief tourism development officer. Visit here for more information.
—Visit Pittsburgh is searching for a new president and CEO. For more information, click here.
—Discover Lancaster is searching for a new president and EO. Click here for more details.
—In Little Rock, Arkansas, the DMO there is searching for a senior sales director. For more information, visit here.
—The Monterey County CVB is searching for a new president and CEO. Click here for more details.
—Travel Marquette is searching for a group marketing sales manager. Click here for more information.
—Visit San Antonio is looking for a director of market strategy. For more details, click here.
—There is an opening for a director of sales and catering at a Great Wolf Resort. Click here for specifics.
—The St. Louis Convention & Visitors Commission (Explore St. Louis) has an opening for a vice president of sales. Click here for more information
—The Monterey County Convention & Visitors Bureau is looking for a president and CEO. For more information, visit here.
—An international hotels & resorts company has an opening for a regional director of sales and marketing; the position is based in Vancouver, B.C. Visit here for details
—The Saugatuck Douglas Area Convention & Visitors Bureau is searching for a new executive director. Click here for more information.
—The Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau has an opening for a vice president of people strategies. Click here for more information.
—A collection of resorts at 17 locations in the U.S. is searching for national sales managers who will be part of a national sales force targeting group business for all markets. For more details, click here.
From HARP wallen Global Executive Recruitment and Search:
—In West London, a luxury travel company is seeking an experienced and inspirational manager to lead a luxury travel business. For more information, click here.
—In the Northern Home Counties, a growing luxury travel company is looking for an online marketing executive. Click here for more details.
—The position of head of sales, b2b Travel with a travel and tourism company in the Northern Home Counties is open. For more details, click here.
—In the North of England, a growing luxury travel company is looking for a marketing executive in a newly created role will help the marketing manager. Click here for additional information.