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ANTOR
Association of National Tourist Offices Representatives
A Word from its President
n the beginning of 1976 I was reading an article about an event that took place in London when I saw, for the first time, the word ANTOR without any explanation. It seemed to be a well known name, part of the tourist vocabulary of that city.
I became intrigued and after a brief investigation I discovered that ANTOR was an association composed of Tourist Representatives of foreign countries having office in that city.
It became evident to me that a similar organization should be established in Montreal.
I started calling the Tourist Office Representatives, whom I knew pretty well, to find out whether they would be interested in forming a group with the purpose of exchanging ideas and discussing matters of common interest. The idea was received with enthusiasm. A first meeting was organized where the project took shape and was unanimously endorsed.
A Constitution and a set of by-laws, based mostly on the London model, was drawn up and approved. The first official meeting took place on September 10th, 1976. I was elected President and the founding members were, in alphabetical order:
In ourmonthly meetings many subjects of common interest were discussed, such as presentations to the travel industry, familiarization trips, questions regarding our participation in trade shows and trade congresses, as well as our relations with themedia. Our relations with government agencies were also discussedin order to obtain, for instance, official recognition by the federal authorities and free importation of our printed materials.
A recruiting drive produced excellent results: Tourist Representatives of not only foreign countries but also provinces, states and regions became ANTOR members.
The Eighties
hanks to the enthusiastic cooperation of thefirst Editor of the trade magazine Tourism Plus, Mme. Nicole Labontée association became better known. She published several articles about the association and its activities as well as its first Directory. A column entitled ANTOR NEWS saw the day and continues to be published, on a monthly basis, in the Tourism Plus magazine, now under the direction of MichelVilleneuve. Nicole Labonté later became herself a very active and dedicated member of ANTOR, representing the State of Virginia and the City ofVirginia Beach in Quebec and was elected, years later, President of ANTOR.
Once the Montreal group was consolidated, I thought it would be a good idea to give a nationalscope to the association. I thus contacted and encouraged our Toronto colleagues to form a similar group. They welcomed the suggestion and our Constitution was amended to give it a national status with two active chapters: Montreal and Toronto.
It further stated that the members of both chapters should organize joint activities at the national level, that they should meet once a year, that the minutes of the monthly meetings should be exchanged in order to profit from each other’s experiences, and that the presidency of the national association “ANTOR-CANADA” should alternate yearly between the Presidents of the two chapters.
Among other initiatives, a National Directory was printed and was distributed to newspapers, magazines, TV and radio stations, as well as to travel agencies and other organizationsacross Canada.
Another important achievement in our development took place when ACTA-CANADA and ACTA-QUEBEC accepted our request that the President of ANTOR automatically became a member of their Executive Committees.
The first joint meeting of ANTOR-CANADA was held in Ottawa in March 1977 when the Canadian Tourist Office invited both chapters to an official function. It was also an occasion tovisit their installations, particularly their folder distribution center, which included a mini-branch of the Post Office in their premises, set up to expedite the distribution of their printed materials. This historical meeting was attended by twenty-three ANTOR-CANADA members. Other joint meetings took place when ANTOR members were invited to familiarization trips to France, Italy, Greece and the U.S.S.R.
By 1986, ANTOR-CANADA had 58 members representing 45 countries. These included (in addition to those mentioned above): Antigua, Aruba, Australia, Barbados, Bermuda, Bonaire, Canada, Cayman Islands, Cuba, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Spain, Finland, Florida, Philippines, Georgia, Great-Britain, Granada, India, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Martinique, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Quebec, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago and the U.S.A. Their annual budget for advertising and promotions was twenty million dollars.
Promoting a Dream
s President — and I have had the honour and privilege of being elected on several occasions — I always repeated and emphasized one fundamental principal: even if the objectives of every Representative Member is to attract visitors to their respective destination, all members should be conscious and should adhere to the ANTOR objectives, namely, to install in the minds of the consumers that travelling is a most desirable experience and to convince them that theyshould give preference to travel when deciding how to spend their discretionary income.
“Dream merchants who have as target the imagination, the curiosity of human beings,” is what I once answered when a journalist asked me what the vocation of the Tourist Office Representatives was.
One of ANTOR’s objectives is to dispel the false impression that we are merely brochure distributors or, in the best of cases, sponsors of social functions. We want the public and the industry to be aware that the Tourist Office Representativesare true Ambassadors of their tourist destinations,motivators, travel promoters, and that their most important goal is to have everybody traveling.
Since our services are free,one immediate result of our efforts is a profit for the travel agencies.
Consumers also benefit from our services since we facilitate their trips by highlighting tourist attractions. We do research and conduct marketing and sales programs. We use all forms of communication at our disposal: advertising and press releases, interviews on the radio and on television, billboards, conferences, and film projections. We also organize art exhibitions, folkloric performances and gastronomic festivals in collaboration with hotels, department stores, social clubs and associations.
As President of ANTOR I have beenin close contact, for a long time with many members of ANTOR and I can attest to the fact that they consider themselves lucky to have as their careers, actually as their vocation, the most pleasant job of creating dreams of enchanting places in the minds of their customers and making it easy for such dreams to become a reality.
Prosperity and long life to ANTOR !
Guillermo Ponce
Founder, ex-President of ANTOR and ex-Director of the Mexican Tourist Office in Montreal.
Note: On June 2001, Nicole Labonté President of ANTOR, named Guillermo Ponce Honorary Life Member, in recognition of his support and dedication to the association.
®2004, AntorCanada.com