Ed Dresel and Jim Warren served as NTA chair nearly two decades apart. Neither could have anticipated what would happen during their year in leadership.
Dresel was chair in 2001, when the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks brought air travel to a halt and sent shock waves through the tourism industry. Warren held the position in 2020, when COVID-19 closed borders, canceled trips, emptied airports, and made gathering in person nearly impossible.
The crises were fundamentally different, but the two former chairs remember NTA members asking many of the same questions: What happens next? How do we keep our businesses going? And how can we help one another get through it?
For Dresel and Warren, the answers weren’t always available.
What mattered was making sure NTA’s members didn’t have to search for them alone.
2001: Responding before there were answers
Dresel had returned from a product development trip to France just one day before Sept. 11. He remembers his wife calling and telling him to turn on the television. Soon afterward, then-NTA President Hank Phillips called.
“We knew very little about what was going on,” Dresel recalled.
NTA immediately activated its crisis-management team. Dresel remembers receiving updates every two hours as the association contacted members in New York and Washington, D.C., and tried to determine who needed help.
Board members were contacted, too, and asked whether they would be willing to take calls from members looking for advice or guidance.
“We needed to do this as a family, and they all said yes,” Dresel said. “What I remember most was how NTA responded with very little knowledge, immediately.”
As the scale of the disruption became clearer, members increasingly looked to the association for information. Questions ranged from what assistance might be available to businesses to the much more difficult question of what the future of travel would look like.
“The association was always there for them,” Dresel said. “Even without the answers, we shared the crisis with them.”
When airports reopened, Dresel and Phillips took that response on the road, traveling to meet members and hear directly what they needed.
“We would land in these cities to hear from them,” Dresel said. “There was a lot of crying and tears. We came together as an NTA family to work through it.”
2020: Finding connection when no one could gather
Nearly two decades later, Warren found himself leading NTA through a crisis that once again brought travel to a standstill.
“I was honored to be the NTA chair during the COVID pandemic,” Warren said. “Without a doubt, it was one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my travel career.”
As the worldwide effects of COVID-19 became clear, Warren watched NTA’s Board of Directors and staff shift their attention toward helping members navigate both the professional and personal consequences of the pandemic.
From Warren’s perspective, one of the association’s biggest challenges—and accomplishments—was maintaining a constant flow of information while giving members opportunities to continue seeing and talking with one another.
Even if that meant doing it through a screen.
Members gathered virtually to examine new information, exchange ideas, vent frustrations, and offer one another encouragement. Warren remembers people sharing information about government assistance, COVID-19 regulations, operations, staffing, and planning for the future.
Smaller groups developed organically, giving members a place to simply meet and talk. Others shared ideas for new products, alternative revenue sources, and ways their businesses could help their communities.
“The resilience, creativity, selflessness, and compassion shared by members was remarkable,” Warren said.
Behind that response, Warren said, was the leadership of NTA President Catherine Prather and the commitment of the NTA team.
Creating vTREX
For Warren, perhaps no experience better captures 2020 than NTA’s decision to create a virtual Travel Exchange.
He remembers boarding a Delta flight in Denver with only 14 other travelers and arriving at the Atlanta airport that looked nothing like the bustling hub he knew.
“The usually crowded terminal was eerily empty,” Warren recalled. “There was only one visible person standing at the end of the terminal hallway—it was Catherine.”
Over the next three days, the teams from NTA and M Squared OnStage (the association’s longtime production partner) worked together to execute vTREX.
None of them had ever done anything quite like it.
At the end of the online conference, the small crew gathered on a couch in the M Squared office—flutes of champagne in hand— and watched the closing event taking place from the Grand Ole Opry. The theater was empty except for two performers and a few technicians.
As the performance unfolded, jubilant, congratulatory comments began scrolling on the screen as NTA members from around the world praised the overall experience and such a fitting finale.
“It was sobering, emotional, and exhilarating to see how much the conference meant to so many members,” Warren said.
Two crises, one association
Dresel’s 2001 and Warren’s 2020 were separated by nearly 20 years, different threats, and vastly different technologies.
In 2001, NTA leaders relied on phone calls and got on airplanes as soon as they could to meet members where they were.
In 2020, technology allowed members scattered across the country and around the world to see one another without leaving home.
But underneath those differences was something remarkably similar.
Members needed information. They needed their businesses represented and supported. And sometimes, they simply needed another person in the travel industry who understood what they were experiencing.
For Dresel, his years with NTA ultimately affected much more than his business.
“Being a member of NTA and being involved as I was enhanced my life professionally and personally,” he said. “It’s not just the business. It’s the advocacy and the connections that expand your horizons.”
Warren feels much the same way about the year he spent leading the association through the pandemic.
“I have been a member of NTA for over 40 years and have experienced many great events and moments of satisfaction and joy,” Warren said. “None will ever surpass my year as NTA chair in 2020.”
By Evan Bentley
NTA Manager, Marketing and Communication
