By Kathleen Cassedy

ATME ATLAS AWARDS

Each year among ATME conference highlights is the Atlas Awards banquet,
sponsored by Discovery Business Services for the past nine years. This year,
on May 1, 2002, the gala at the Sheraton Inner Harbor in Baltimore, Maryland,
celebrated four travel industry leaders for their marketing initiatives,
programs, and illustrious careers.

ATLAS INSPIRATION AWARD
The Atlas Inspiration Award, which was presented to Betsy O’Rourke,
Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications for the Travel Industry
Association of America, recognizes individuals who have shown extraordinary
leadership in developing marketing approaches that involved multiple levels
of constituents.

In the aftermath of the tragic events of September 11, when the last
thing a nation, paralyzed by fear and anguish, wanted to think about was
travel and holidays, Betsy O’Rourke and other travel industry leaders
gathered forces to create a crisis management and communications plan that
mobilized the travel industry to action.

As TIA’s Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications, O’Rourke
either led or helped to spearhead domestic and international marketing,
advertising messages, and innovative programs designed to encourage travel to and within the United States. (See O’Rourke story, this issue.) For her
leadership during these troubled times, ATME presented her with its Atlas
Inspiration Award.

"I consider this award to be all of ours… this is a symbol of the kind of
unity that we achieved this year under difficult circumstances," she said,
thanking ATME, TIA President William Norman, J.W. "Bill" Marriott, and her
colleagues.

TO MARKET AWARDED TO TWO
The 2002 Atlas "To Market" Award was given to two recipients, Michelle
Kassner, President of GoGo Worldwide Vacations, and Vicki Freed, Senior Vice
President of Sales and Marketing, Carnival Cruise Line. Atlas "To Market"
recognizes innovation in attracting new customers through specific channels.
The marketing effort can be business-to-business, travel agency to leisure
travel, or directly to consumers.

In 1988, Kassner joined the family business, founded by her father, Fred
Kassner, and Gilbert Haroche, who are widely recognized as key creators of
the package vacation. Kassner worked as director of European marketing and
senior vice president of marketing, before her promotion to president.
GoGo Worldwide Vacations serves the travel agent community exclusively,
and features the largest product line in the travel industry— more than 400
destinations on five continents. GoGo is the top producer to the
Ritz-Carlton, Hyatt, Sandals, and SuperClubs resorts, and the number one
wholesaler to the Caribbean.

Kassner was given the To Market Award because of the company’s
promotions, following September 11, that she developed with GoGo Worldwide’s best partners, including Starwood and Hilton hotels companies, which offered high-value tour packages. GoGo disseminated these promotions through multiple channels, which included direct mail, travel agent incentives, and trade advertising.

Vicki Freed is one of the most recognized marketers in the travel
industry. Since 1993, she has held her current position with Carnival Cruise
Lines, the world’s largest cruise line, with overall responsibilities for its
sales and marketing. She recently finished serving as chairman of the Cruise
Line Industry Association, where she oversaw successful programs that built
consumer interest in cruising and helped travel agents expand their cruise
sales. She is also a member of the Florida Commission on Tourism. Freed was
recognized with the Atlas "To Market" Award particularly for her innovative
use of multiple channels to improve the distribution of travel services to
specific customers.

Vicki Freed was profiled in Marketing Decisions in 1999, and received the
ATME 2000 Atlas Award for Integrated Marketing Communications for CLIA’s
Cruise 2000 campaign.

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT TO ARTHUR TAUCK JR.
ATME’s most prestigious honor is the Atlas Lifetime Achievement Award,
reserved for the industry’s true visionaries. These individuals have
consistently distinguished themselves as marketing leaders who have advanced the travel industry worldwide. The 2002 recipient is Arthur C. Tauck Jr., an industry leader for more than a half century. Since 1997, he has been
Chairman of the Board of Tauck Holdings, Inc., which includes Tauck World
Discovery, a tour company founded by his father, Arthur Tauck Sr., in 1925.
"Arthur took his successful family tour business, and turned it into one
of the world’s most admired tour operations…He introduced the concepts of
direct marketing and database marketing when these were new and untested," said Gary Sain, Chairman of ATME Board of directors, who presented the award.

Tauck began his career in the family business as a tour director during
summer break while attending Lehigh University. After graduating, he served
in the U.S. Air Force, then returned to Tauck Tours, becoming its president
in 1958. At the time, Tauck Tours offered six tour itineraries on the East
Coast, which served 2,000 travelers per year.

In 1958, Tauck introduced chartered air tour packages to Nova Scotia,
which continue today. In 1962, he combined air and motorcoach travel to
offer tours to the national parks in the west, while other tour companies
relied on trains. He was the first to add helicopter sightseeing to Hawaii
vacations. Then, in 1978, he paired helicopters with trekking, creating the
exciting concept of "heli-hiking," which he developed for tours in the
Canadian Rockies.

His new ideas kept coming. During the 1980s, Tauck would link small ship
voyages with land exploration. In the early 1990s, he launched the Yellow
Roads of Europe tour series, based on travel he knew from his Air Force days.
Yellow Roads grew into one-third of the company’s business. Tauck continued
to grow its product line, which now provides journeys on all seven
continents, including Antarctica and 60 North American itineraries.

The company has been recognized with awards from the American Society of
Travel Agents and the American Automobile Association, and rated highly by
readers in Travel & Leisure’s World Best poll.

Tauck is a past president of United States Tour Operators Association
(USTOA) and the National Tour Association. Currently he a trustee and vice
chairman of the Institute of Certified Travel Agents and serves on the board
of TIA.

He is also a dedicated pioneer in the area of conservation, and chairs
the Traveler’s Conservation Foundation of USTOA and the family’s
philanthropic entity, Tauck Foundation.

In accepting his award, Tauck explained that a tour operator "is nothing
more than a marketing organization. We don’t have a product. We take the
component of the hotel, an attraction, we put a restaurant with it, a bus and
an airplane. And in that process, we metamorphose each of those components
into a different product that has its own marketing idiosyncrasies."
Since Tauck Sr. began the company, its marketing approach has been based
on service and knowing its customers.

"We minimize marketing schemes and high advertising campaigns and sales
gifts," Tauck Jr. explains. "We maximize product quality and service
levels." That philosophy, which originates from Tauck Sr., has provided Tauck
Worldwide with 55 percent repeat customers and 30 percent referred customers.

In June 2000, Tauck Tours was officially renamed Tauck Worldwide Discovery.