PATA CEO’s Reflections on Travels
PATA CEO, Liz Ortiguera (right), with Terry Dale (left), United States Tour Operators Association (USTOA) at USTOA Annual Conference.
PATA CEO Liz Ortiguera shared a message with the PATA community on Dec 9, 2021, with updates about PATA’s recent and upcoming activities. The full message has been reposted below:
Dear PATA Members and Industry Colleagues,
At the end of October, I embarked on my first overseas trip in 22 months and first trip overseas as PATA CEO. My chance to finally meet and connect with PATA members, partners, and industry colleagues face-to-face versus the day-to-day carousel of Zoom meetings. The itinerary was aggressive but efficient- an extended journey, multi-purpose and multi-conference within a single round-the-world tour. Eight destinations, 12 cities, eight conferences within six weeks, ambitious even by pre-COVID standards.
This was clearly tempting fate- especially after continuously being in the highly controlled environment of Singapore for the past two years. When I departed Singapore, the dining-out policy was still limited to dining in pairs of two and here I was entering a series of crowded conferences, large dinners and multiple travel journeys. Needless to say, I succumbed to a virus after four countries/ four conferences - thankfully testing negative for COVID-19. Nonetheless, it was a bad virus and what followed was nine days of unanticipated bed rest and a complete halt and change to my travel plans. I self-quarantined in my room in Seville, taking food trays at the door and avoiding staff contact as much as possible to protect others. I wondered how many travellers like myself fall ill (particularly in this COVID era) and are forced to find solace in their hotel room versus their own home.
This experience underscored for me a couple of things: 1) the high importance of protecting all travel frontliners who interact with a high volume of travellers every day and 2) the value of a slower travel. With the suddenly curtailed itinerary which followed my recovery, I had the silver-lining of doing slower travel and got a more in-depth orientation to destinations that remained on my itinerary and had more time with the people I did meet. This is one positive thing that we hope emerges in post-COVID travel - slower, more meaningful and in-depth travel experiences.
As for the front-liners, PATA continues to advocate support for vaccine equity (Point #5 in PATA's 8 Point Recovery Plan) and the use of other health and safety protocols as critical to combatting the virus globally and enabling the safe broad-based restart of travel.
Complement webinar “COVID-19 Impacts on the Thai Tourism Supply Chain” to the PATA - focusright research.
In addition, we now have in progress a small but critical pilot project in Thailand working with the most impacted and vulnerable segment in travel - the informal workers such as tour guides, drivers, and vendors. This programme builds upon the previous research that PATA conducted with focusright between December 2020 and March 2021. The goal is to support upwards of 500 informal workers and assist them in preparing to safely and effectively welcome back international visitors - and get their livelihoods back on track. You can read more about the project in progress here:
PATA Reaching Out to Tourism’s Forgotten People
Informal Thai Tourism Worker Project- “PATA Reaching Out to Tourism’s Forgotten People- The Informal Workers.“
It's now the second week of December and I'm pleased to have recovered and continued on my global journey. Currently I'm writing this from the USTOA Annual Conference in San Diego where I've had the pleasure to connect with CEO Terry Dale and many delegates. PATA's roots are in connecting East and West, and this forum is one more great opportunity to reinforce PATA's relationships with North American colleagues and strengthen the PATA global community (Point #6 in PATA's 8 Point Recovery Plan). I received a lovely comment about PATA from a conference delegate I met today who's an industry veteran and an early certified-B Corp. He said “I've known the PATA name for years, don't know much about it in detail but my impression is that it advocates for all that's right in the world”. I was really pleased to hear that comment. Let's all continue to carry that torch and make it burn brighter.
