Thomas Ostebo
Thomas Ostebo started his work as president of CLIA this month, following a 38-year career in the Coast Guard, where he retired as a rear admiral. He is the first military officer to head CLIA and has no previous experience in the cruise industry but plenty of familiarity with maritime issues. He spoke with cruise editor Tom Stieghorst about his plans and background.
Q: What are your priorities for CLIA?
A: I looked at my opportunities as I left the service, and I was really intrigued with their global presence. My goal is to help expand and realize their full potential as a global organization, and to increase our value and our relationships and engagement with all of our partners, primarily the lines themselves, the travel agents, as well as the executive partners. CLIA represents the entire industry; we have 40 years of experience, and I just want to take that to the next level globally.
Q: What can CLIA do for its travel agent members?
A: We've made some really great strides this year. We're approaching 18,000 individual agents who have signed up with CLIA. We've got about 10,000 travel agencies across the U.S. and Canada that have signed up now. So I think the value of CLIA is growing, and as we roll out I'm not really sure what the old program looked like but I know where we are now. We've brought on some fantastic staff who are working with them on an individual basis.
Q: What in your Coast Guard background helps you in running CLIA?
A: Obviously the maritime background is there. As a Coast Guard officer, we teach and thrive on relationship building, on operational expertise, on regulatory acumen, on responsibility, and we teach all of our officers from day one great leadership skills. When you think about the future of CLIA globally, and where it wants to grow, I think my combination of leadership skills and experience are a perfect match. Again, one of the prime reasons I was attracted to CLIA was it kept me in the maritime community.
Q: Why did you leave the Coast Guard?
A: I had reached the height of the organization, and really enjoyed a marvelous career. It was time, after kids leaving college and 15 moves across the country. It seemed to me, as my family and I discussed it late last year, that it was a good time to move on.
Q: Have you been on a cruise?
A: My family has all spent a lot of time on cruises, my wife and kids, but unfortunately most of my cruise time has been with the Coast Guard underway.
Q: Do you have a travel agent?
A: We do. She's actually out in Oregon. She's somebody that a friend of ours a long time ago hooked us up with and for cruises my wife has found her to be invaluable to help make a lot of the decisions and look for the deals. We use her quite a bit.
Q: Do you have any passions? What are you known for?
A: Most people would say I work a lot. I don't know if that's a good thing or not. And exercise is a big part of my life, working out and biking. My wife and I just did a couple of up and downs on Mount Washington up in New Hampshire, and believe it or not, that was a killer. We parked our bikes at the bottom of [a trail] and after 11 or 12 hours we had to jump on our bikes and bike about 12 miles to catch up to where the car was, so that was a long day.