Between September 26-29, 2017, the World Youth and Student Travel Conference will be held in Montreal. I and Joel hope to visit the event. This is the third time the event has been held in Canada. The first time was in 1994 in Vancouver, the second in Toronto in 2006. The return of WYSTC to Canada allowed me to reminisce about its origins.

1. How it Came About

I believe Peter de Jong had been appointed FIYTO Secretary General in January of 1991. I became Director General of the International Student Travel Confederation in September of the same year. Both offices were located in Copenhagen but in different parts of the city.

I had very limited experience in the youth travel industry. My first travel conference was the FIYTO conference of that year in Munich which took place a few weeks after I started.

Although both organisations were based in the same city and had mutual membership, there was no official interaction between the two organisations. The focus was quite different with the ISTC concentrating almost exclusively on student and youth travel and the supporting servies (eg. ISIC and insurance, banking)) and FIYTO including language schools, travel agencies etc. In short ISTC was a bit more focused although financially it was the larger organisation.

It seemed illogical to me that the two organisations did not speak to each other, particularly as they were both in the same city. As a consequence Peter de Jong and I began meeting and discussing synergies. The ISTC held its conference in the spring, FIYTO in the fall. The FIYTO conference was a trade conference and larger. The ISTC conference was primarily a political conference and less than half the size. Nor did ISTC rely on the conference for revenues like FIYTO did. It therefore made sense that ISTC would subsume its conference into the FIYTO conference and that was how WYSTC was born, starting in Rio in September, 1992.

2. What were the main gains?

Until the joint conference, the idea of merging the two organisations was never considered. The conference gave the impetus to start the discussions about a merger which included the organisations moving to offices beside each other in Copenhagen while respecting each other’s independence.

3. What was my role?

I was the new and first Director General of ISTC and drove the joint initiative from the ISTC perspective. It must be said the Executive Board of ISTC was broadly supportive of the direction and the conceptual idea of ultimately a merger. The conference details, themselves were left primarily to Peter de Jong and Jose Carlos Hauer to set up. ISTC’s business was more focused on airline tickets, the International Student Identity Card, insurance and student work exchanges. The ISTC’s role was to help coordinate or produce the products and services that supported the members’ business activities.

4. Favourite Memory of WYSTC 1992

Peter de Jong who had lived in Brazil, was very concerned about the risk of violence or robbery in Rio. So every effort was made to protect the delegates. Consequently many of the social events were quite controlled. In my memory, the best of these events was the dinner hosted by the Goudse Insurance company. The one thing no one had expected was that the weather during the conference was quite awful. But on this evening, by the pool of the Intercontinental Hotel, the weather was magical. An Xavier Cugat type band played. There were candles floating in the pool and the moon shone down on the delegates with mountains as a backdrop. It was like a Fred Astaire Ginger Rogers Hollywood musical. One of the most of evenings I ever had at my WYSTC events.

5. Changes since 1992

The changes are primarily of a technological nature. The internet was in its infancy and social media did not exist so organizing a conference involved more face to face effort than in theory is required today. But the fundamentals of organizing a conference (eg. Negotiating contracts, laying out schedules, managing the details) have not changed over time.

6. My mentors

I had very limited experience on youth and student travel when I was hired. I was therefore dependent upon my Executive Board, Borge Faaborg – Kilroy Travel, Gordon Colleary -, Jack Egle –CIEE, Rod Hurd of Travel CUTS. However the two most helpful individuals at the time were Dick Porter of STA Travel and Roberto Corbella from CTS.

7. Brazilian Culture

This was the first WYSTC and having it Brazil was a great way to launch WYSTC as the vast majority of delegates had never been to Brazil. Notwithstanding the weather, I believe everyone enjoyed themselves. I believe the highlight for many was the visit to the Samba School.

8. Trade Shows

The fact trade shows still flourish indicates that technology has not yet supplanted the importance of face to face interaction and the essence of sales at the wholesale level.

9. Travel Trade Association

At the heart of the debate about Brexit is whether or not the UK is better off being inside the European club or outside the club. Belonging to a trade association has the same underpinnings. There are costs to being a member of any group and one has to calculate that the benefits arising from the group outweigh the costs. As a general rule, I strongly believe a group is stronger the bigger and more cohesive it is. It is why I drove the start of WYSTC. I do not believe that the fundamentals aligned with those principles have changed although the measure of what the accruing benefits are might well have changed.

10. Youth Travel Motivation change

I believe the biggest difference in understanding youth travel motivation today versus 25 years ago is social media. I believe the desire to see the world (ie. The independent traveller) is as strong today as it ever was and perhaps even stronger as the world is more broadly wealthier today than it was 25 years ago. Hence a much greater demand from Asia and in particular China than existed in 1992. But the global immediacy of social media and the mobile phone have, in my view, increased the spontaneity of popularity for certain destinations and patterns of behaviour that were not possible 25 years ago.

11. The future of travel agents

In 1992 the internet was really starting to come into its own. The ISTC and WYSTC presented a variety of workshops on the future of the travel agent. Many of the prognostications about the future role of travel agents were pretty dire. However travel agencies still exist in an environment where almost everything can be done on the internet. Whether it is because someone doesn’t have a credit card ( internet shopping is useless without a credit card) or insurance risk or the need for the personal touch, the role of the travel agent will continue. According to a recent article in the New York Times, people are returning to travel agents because it is more cost effective than doing the work oneself. Obviously, for students this is less a cost issue than a time issue. While the channels of distribution are likely to continue to multiply which will continue to put a squeeze on travel agent margins, I do believe there remains an important role for the travel agent for the foreseeable future.

12. Memories of WYSTC

When Peter and I first started working on WYSTC, there was no certainty that the two organisations would ever fit comfortably together. I remember sitting at breakfast at the first WYSTC conference in 1992 with an ISTC colleague who was looking out over a sea of new faces that had never been to an ISTC meeting. She lamented that the intimacy of the old ISTC meetings was gone but she recognized the need to go forward in a bigger way. I am glad to see that 25 years on, this still holds true.

EBI Group Consulting and WYSTC

As the president of EBI Group Consulting, I am still in the travel business. Our team does extensive consultation on a range of issues impacting the youth and student travel business, ranging from risk management assessment to teaching university students about the tourism industry with a particular focus on the youth and student travel sector. Youth and student travel remains critical for its experiential lessons for the future leadership of the world as we face profound changes, be they climatic, political or economic. It is why EBI remains committed to its promotion.