Johnson, At Half Term, Outlines NBTA's Direction

<B> Johnson, At Half Term, Outlines NBTA's Direction</B>

<i>BTN editor-in-chief David Meyer and airline editor Jay Campbell spoke with NBTA president Mark Johnson during the association's annual convention in Orlando last month. The following is an excerpt from the interview, which marked the midpoint in Johnson's two-year term.</i>

BTN: Airline competition issues were at the forefront of this year's convention. How has NBTA contributed to the debate?

Johnson: NBTA hasn't been silent on that issue at all. We have voiced our opinion to the DOT in a very strong statement. In fact, when executive director Norman Sherlock threw that statement at me, I was surprised. I thought he was going to write a fairly middle of the road thing that was pretty much "We're going to do the best we can, blah, blah, blah." And it came out and said, we don't think the guidelines are strict enough, we don't think your worry is poignant enough. And I thought, "Geez Norm, you're finally getting some nerve endings here," which is pretty good. It's no secret in this industry that we walk a line. We try to support the travel managers--that's why we're here and we try to make sure that their interests are represented--but its no secret that the allieds give us our money. So, if we sit there and beat them on the heads, we may find ourselves on the street corner selling pencils. We have to walk that line between the two and it's an issue that's probably going to get more play if--and I hope they don't do it--but if they cut the commissions this year. The major airlines, and God bless them, I fly them all the time and I think their service is good and I like their safety records and everything else they do, but everybody who flies enough realizes their pricing is a little out of line. It's just not where it should be.

BTN: Tell us about the NBTA's new email list serve.

Johnson: I think that has turned out to be one of the better products we've come up with. That was started by former president Judy Shyman and it's really a great tool for everybody. Somebody puts a question out and within a matter of minutes, you get feedback that you can take into your boss and you can say, "Here's what I found out from my peers in the industry." When you see a Colgate-Palmolive or an IBM or something like that at the bottom of the e-mail, people take notice.

BTN: Do you know what the usage has been on that?

Johnson: There are about 800 people signed up, but at any one time, there are usually between 675 and 700 online. The nice thing about it is you can see the topics, so if it's something that doesn't interest you, you can just delete it right off the bat. I think it's a more sought-after tool than our Website, which is where you can research information that's maybe a little on the older side. But the interactive list serve is immediate feedback.

BTN: What else would you consider the association's major accomplishments during your first term?

Johnson: We have started about 4 or 5 regional, invitation-only roundtable discussion groups around the country. One of them, for example, was working on trying to find out what it costs to drive a ticket. Participants had been given assignments to go back into their finance departments to find out specific costs on their people and machinery. Some of them were trying to actually drive this down to what the particular savings might be worth as viewed with the value of the stock of the company. A couple of the members got up and gave full blown presentations of their company's data. The whole purpose of it was to find out which one of us does it better than anybody else and why.

BTN: What's happening with the educational foundation?

Johnson: That's probably the biggest thing this association has done this year. We keep touting it and I think a lot of people are asking "When?" It took us this first year to raise the money, now we've formed committees and the ideas are starting to gel. It's not something we're going to rush. We don't want to be just another run-of-the-mill foundation that does a couple of grants for scholarships and a little bit of research that nobody really cares about. Our biggest challenge right now is trying to find out what that project's going to be.

BTN: We understand there's going to be another meeting in October. Is that the end, or just one step?

Johnson: That's like a step in the process. We do know that by the time we get to Minneapolis next year, we have to have something up. So we're running against a deadline here. We've got maybe till the end of the year, at the very maximum, to come up with an idea. We do know the information will be available to the public as well as to travel managers as well as to allieds.

BTN: Tell us about the strategic planning process.

Johnson: This convention is kind of set in the same turf, the same mode and it's been that way for a long time. We make a little adjustment here and there about how lunches are done, or certain educational seminars, or what have you. But associations and their conventions may be threatened in the future because of the way people communicate. One possibility is what United does. They bring together customers in a solutions seminar and there's kind of like this mini-convention where they to try to educate their customers on what they are and what they do. So we're kind of thinking in this mode where "Okay, it's running good right now but what about 4 or 5 or 10 years down the road. Is there going to be a need for this thing, and will people go someplace else?" This is what Judy's task is, to find out whether we should do what we're doing here or completely erase the entire process and start it all over again, looking at the trade show mainly. That's the biggest area where we draw income in from. We've all seen major companies go down the tubes because they haven't been innovative in what they've done. And NBTA needs to do that.

BTN: Is there a deadline for a report?

Johnson: It may be in the year 2000 and beyond before we do it. We just think we need to look at this thing and maybe change it a little bit. I'll give you some examples: meet on different days, maybe on a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday instead of the Saturday, Sunday, Monday. Maybe not have the same kind of seminars that we have for education. Maybe not have a trade show floor that's open as long as it has been. I don't know, just different things that have to be thought about. So we're going to poll the membership and ask what they think.