As NTA turns 70 this year, the Courier team has mined for association gold. We’re digging up the precious pieces of history that shine with accomplishment, from the creation of the first automated marketplace to seating women at the board table for the first time. We’re retelling those incredible stories to celebrate how NTA has paved the way for travel associations—and will continue to be innovators in the industry as we move into better, more prosperous times for travel.
It was 1974 when the then-National Tour Brokers Association’s annual convention was commencing in Virginia at the Hotel Roanoke, and the method of getting attendees their coveted meetings with the industry pros of their choice was a “dance card” appointment program called the Sales-O-Rama.
According to The Building of an Industry: The Official History of the National Tour Association, written by former NTBA president Lynn B. “Spike” Herzig, the program had, by then, seen better days. There were more people in attendance than originally thought (too many suppliers, not enough brokers), and as a result, tour brokers had to double up and share tables to meet with suppliers, known then as “allied members.” And instead of staying behind a designated rope, allied members gathered around tables in hopes of speaking with a broker. (It’s noted the room had low ceilings and no windows, so the lack of natural light and, apparently, fresh air, made things even more tense—and hot.) By the end of it all, everyone was crammed into one small area of the room, called the “bullpen.”


Former NTA Board President (and then-president of Beckham Tours) Bruce Beckham’s recollection of his first NTBA convention in 1972 in St. Augustine, Florida, was a similar story.
“It was chaotic. They had all of the tour operators at 4-foot tables in a convention room. People would stand in a bullpen, all the sellers. They would ring a bell, and it was like a cattle drive, people rushing over to the tables, pushing each other out of the way,” he said. “It worked because tour operators appreciated the fact that they could get some info, but the frustration level on the part of suppliers was high.”
Many complaints rolled in about how the marketplace was being conducted, so at the board meeting in February 1975, Board President Joseph A. Casser put Rick Etherson, who was convention chairman, in charge of finding a solution. He recruited the help of his friend, Dr. Oscar Fowler, a professor of computer science at the University of Tennessee.
“He was a computer expert in 1974, 1975. You didn’t run across those guys often,” Beckham said. “They were few and far between—people of great knowledge of computerization at the time.”
Fowler had said a program could be developed “that would put the choices of both active and allied members together and from that could come a dance card similar to the old Sales-O-Rama—except it would be done ahead of time, it would be accurate, and each participant would know where and what time appointments were scheduled.”