Remarks by Dexter Koehl, Vice President, Public Relations & Communications, Travel Industry Association of America at TOURCOM, Madrid, Spain, Friday, January 30, 2004

Every one of us in the U.S. travel industry remembers where we were on September 11th, what it felt like to see the terrible attacks, and what it was like to manage a travel organization in the immediate aftermath.

While much of the nation could wait for the shock to subside, we had to move immediately into crisis management mode. I am going to share with you how Travel Industry Association of America staff assembled the travel industry's troops and launched a ten-week counter offensive literally before the smoke had cleared.

Almost immediately after the news had set in on September 11th TIA President and CEO Bill Norman began to consult with members of TIA's 15-person executive committee and a Travel Industry Recovery Coalition was formed representing 26 sectors of the U.S. travel and tourism industry. A message and battle plan quickly followed. We knew where we had to go and we had a plan to get there.

Week One By September 17th the TIA senior staff team had created and begun to execute a recovery plan with two major goals: Ensure safe, secure travel. And restore travelers' confidence. We needed to be unified as an industry. And we needed to bring as many other industry groups and the federal government on board with us.

Our first target was the news media. We had...