In his update to members last
week, Travel Industry Association President Roger Dow, after
recapping the association's recent progress in governmental
affairs, wrote that "the board authorized continuing conversations
to explore fully merging Travel Business Roundtable with TIA, and
to absorb the excellent staff currently managing the Discover
America Partnership."
Early in his tenure,
Dow argued that the industry couldn't lobby effectively using a
fragmented approach, and he introduced his catchphrase, "one
industry, one voice." He quickly formed a political alliance with
TBR, a much smaller organization but one whose concentration of
high-profile CEO members made it relatively effective at getting
attention on Capitol Hill.
It's not only that
its CEOs are high-profile. They are fluent in a language all
politicians understand: Six of its board members alone gave a total
of $73,500 to candidates and political action committees in the
first quarter of 2007, according to CampaignMoney.com.
The TIA is
considerably larger than TBR. It's only a slight exaggeration to
say it has more member categories than TBR has members, and the
total political spending of TIA members is considerably higher. But
its very size works against the "one industry, one voice"
philosophy.
The TIA is a
collection of companies and associations that often have their own
political agenda, political action committees and lobbying efforts
in addition to supporting the industry at large. Regarding forming
a TIA political action committee, Rick Webster, the TIA's vice
president for governmental affairs, told me, "Individual checks are
already going to Disney's PAC or Marriott's PAC. We don't want to
cannibalize those efforts."
Does that limit the
TIA's clout? "Let's not kid ourselves," he said. "Does money open
doors? Yes. But it's not so crass that you need to [contribute] to
see a representative or a senator."
Dow told me that
discussions to merge the TIA and TBR were "very
preliminary."
"We're exploring
whether it makes sense. A lot of good things have happened since we
started working together. But things still sometimes come out on
the Discover America Partnership letterhead, others come from TIA
and TBR combined. They call on Tuesday, we on
Wednesday."
TBR's chairman, Loews
Hotels CEO Jon Tisch, told me only that he was "not ready to
comment" on merger talks. He referred me to Discover America
Partnership's executive director, Geoff Freeman. While emphasizing
that the three groups have worked together successfully, Freeman
said, "It's too early to talk about a merger."
By chance, I happened
to sit down last week next to Hank Phillips, former president of
the National Tour Association, at a Tourism Cares dinner. Tourism
Cares, which raises money for scholarships and supports initiatives
to conserve tourism-related sites, resulted from a merger of two
similar but separate initiatives within the NTA and the U.S. Tour
Operators Association.
While the goals of
Tourism Cares and the Discover America Partnership are clearly
different, there are some parallels between the evolutions of
TIA/TBR/Discover America Partnership and NTA/USTOA/Tourism Cares.
In each case, a large association worked with a smaller but
arguably more prestigious group to create a third organization to
work in an area of mutual interest.
Phillips said he
learned some lessons along the way about mergers. He credits Dow
with bringing the TIA "to a point where [a merger] can even be
talked about. But mergers require something to be given up. In the
case of Tourism Cares, people were willing to give up in order to
give; they saw they didn't have to own it to get credit. But so
much in hard-nosed business is about who gets credit for what
happens."
Dow, Tisch and
Freeman have all shown themselves to be, individually and together,
effective for the industry. But putting aside for a moment the
question of who gets credit, the TIA and TBR seem to be culturally
distinct. And if at this point one of them still goes calling on
Tuesday and another on Wednesday, I suspect it's for reasons that
go beyond an inability to coordinate those calls. The industry, I
think, is not yet ready to speak with one voice.