By Kathleen Cassedy

“The goal of the ATME Atlas awards is to recognize excellence,” said Jim Sparks, senior director of Discover Business Services, to a room full of travel marketing executives during the awards banquet, May 23. “The efforts of the winners really serve as an inspiration for all of us.”

The Atlas awards banquet was a highlight of the ATME 2001 Conference, held at the Sheraton Bal Harbour, a beachfront property in Miami Beach. The banquet was sponsored by Discover Business Services.

Atlas awards are designed to encourage break-through thinking, innovative marketing, and industry leadership. Winners are individuals from public or private organizations who have been instrumental in conceiving and executing important travel marketing programs. Work is judged on relevance to marketing needs, demonstrated results, and a broad marketing vision.

ED & LYNN HOGAN RECEIVE
INSPIRATION AWARD

The Atlas Inspiration Award recognizes individuals who have shown extraordinary leadership in developing marketing approaches to involve multiple levels of constituents.

Ed and Lynn Hogan were awarded the 2001 Atlas Inspiration Award in absentia for their Hogan Family Foundation and its touring bus program, which promotes the travel and tourism industry to students throughout the country.

After more than 40 years of success in the tour and travel business, the Hogans established the foundation in 1998 to promote world peace through the tourism industry. The foundation supports better community, national and international relations through its programs.

The son of Irish immigrants, Ed Hogan developed a love for aviation with the Naval Air Corps during the mid-1940s. He later flew for Transocean Air Lines, a non-scheduled airline that became the first tourist flight operation to Hawaii. In 1959, he and his wife, Lynn, opened their first retail travel agency, Pleasant Travel Service in Point Pleasant, New Jersey. They moved the agency to California three years later to concentrate on bringing tours to Hawaii. The business grew to encompass a tour operator empire, including six hotels.

In October 1998, the entire Pleasant wholesale travel division was made a limited liability corporation and donated to the nonprofit Hogan Family Foundation. At the same time the Travel and Tourism Institute was established as a division of the foundation to support innovative educational programs. The institute funded $3 million to create the Ed and Lynn Hogan School of Travel at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles. The institute also supports the travel and tourism curricula at Gonzaga University in Spokane Washington, and the mobile classroom.

The Hogan Family Foundation disburses assets solely in support of its programs. In 1999, the foundation took over funding of the historic Kodak Hula Show in Waikiki, following Kodak’s decision to abandon the program after 62 years of operation. In the same year, the foundation purchased land to create the Gardens of the World educational park in Thousand Oaks, California.

Two years ago, the institute purchased a new 45-foot custom coach, which it transformed into a mobile classroom with complete audio-visual facilities. The mobile classroom presents educational programs that are arranged in cooperation with schools that focus on travel and tourism as a catalyst for world peace, and offers a travel and tourism career video series, which was developed at Loyola Marymount University.

‘TO MARKET’ TO CORREIA
OF RENAISSANCE CRUISELINES

Derek Correia, senior vice president marketing of Renaissance Cruises, received the Atlas “To Market” Award for leading the cruise line’s complete reversal of its former distribution strategy to bypass travel agents. Within eight months of the change, travel agency sales soared to nearly 83 percent from 22 percent.

“Confucius said, ‘It is only the wisest and stupidest that cannot change.’ I know we are not the wisest, but at least we’re not the stupidest anymore. I am quite happy,” Correia said during his acceptance remarks. He also thanked his marketing team, and noted that the plan to re-embrace travel agents had already been made when he recently joined the company.

When Renaissance had decided to sell directly to consumers, that decision had not been based on the premise that the company could save 10 percent to 15 percent agency commissions, Correia said.

“We were mavericks for the sake of being mavericks,” he said. “We were not a consumer-driven company.” Because consumers prefer to buy cruise vacations from agents, who provide advice and handle ticketing. Any commission savings was spent to market the cruise lines directly, when travel agencies had already been doing this.

Since reversing the policy, Renaissance has built its national sales force to support and grow the travel agency business. The company also formed a Travel Agent Advisory Board to work closer with its newly appreciated partner, who now help shape advertising and marketing directed towards them and their clients.

TRAVELOCITY’S MARK STACY
RECEIVES IMC AWARD

The Integrated Marketing Communications award was presented to Mark Stacy, vice president of consumer marketing for Travelocity, the dotcom travel agency, who thanked his eight-member marketing team in Dallas.

Stacy joined Travelocity in 1998 and manages advertising, public relations, customer database and distributive marketing initiatives. The award recognizes the company’s innovative use of true integrated marketing strategy to connect with its customers.

MARKETER FRED LOUNSBERRY
OF UNIVERSAL STUDIOS PARK
GETS GUERILLA AWARD

The ATME Guerrilla Marketing Award was given to Fred Lounsberry, executive vice president of marketing for Universal Studios Recreation Group, Florida, for creating novel non-mainstream approaches and new sales platforms to boost the impact of marketing efforts.

Lounsberry joined Universal in 1987—three years before the Orlando movie park opened. “We didn’t have the big budgets to work with given our business mode, but we knew we had to do something in a medium, or to create an event, that wasn’t being done by another attraction, and to make it our own.” The medium they chose was 3-D billboards, which showcased bigger-than-life movie characters that included King Kong and E.T.

The marketing team also built a community base of visitors by developing programs for senior citizens and condominium associations.

Special holiday events, such as Mardi Gras, were also developed to appeal to the local market. Universal created a Halloween event, copied from the successful Knotts Berry Farm goblin fest in California. “We started with a three-day [Halloween] event, which did not do very well for the first three years,” Lounsberry recalled. “However, the park stuck with it, and October, when it is held, became the biggest month in attendance, selling out days and virtually every night,” he said. Last year, Universal’s Halloween celebration was expanded to 21 days.

VANDERPOOL-WALLACE
OF BAHAMAS TOURISM
ACHIEVES LIFETIME HONOR

The most prestigious ATME recognition, the Atlas Lifetime Achievement Award, was presented to Vincent Vanderpool-Wallace, Director General of the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism. The award recognizes individuals who have consistently distinguished themselves as marketing leaders and who have advanced the travel industry worldwide.

“I don’t work for tourism in the Bahamas….We are working for the schools, the roads, and the hospitals,” said Vanderpool-Wallace, 48, noting the tourism industry’s great contribution to the island country’s economy.

Last year’s lifetime achievement winner, Phil Bakes, CEO of Far & Wide Travel, quoted from the former Bahamas Minister of Tourism Frank Watson (now Deputy Prime Minister) in 1992, during his introduction of Vanderpool-Wallace. “‘Our entire economy was in crisis because of the state of the hospitality industry…the infrastructure was in poor condition, room rates were low….Identifying a man to lead the recovery of tourism was a top priority…’”

That man was Vanderpool-Wallace, who joined the tourism ministry in 1993. Born in the Bahamas in 1953, educated at Harvard University and the University of Miami, Vanderpool-Wallace had experience working in the public sector for the Ministry of Tourism earlier in his career, and in the private sector for Resorts International in the Bahamas.

Vanderpool-Wallace is also the president of the National Advisory Board of Tourism, director of the Central Bank of the Bahamas and director of the Chamber of Commerce of the Bahamas.
In his positions he has worked to build public-private partnerships that facilitate development and investment in infrastructure and products that support the tourism industry. He also initiated country-wide marketing programs, involving the entire population in a consumer satisfaction campaign, “It’s the experience, stupid.” (See earlier Bahamas story in Conference Report’s Picture in Detail.) At the same time, the destination’s slogan was revised to “The Islands of the Bahamas. It Just Keeps Getting Better.” That slogan has become an absolute religion, Vanderpool-Wallace remarked.
“I’m accepting this reward tonight on behalf of all the 300,000 people of the Bahamas who every single day, wake up in the morning, and try to make it better.”