March 19, 2009
Dear Tour Operator Member,
The NTA Board of Directors is proposing a change to the NTA Bylaws that would enable arts and cultural entities, such as ballets, museums and symphonies that hold nonprofit status, to share a single membership in the association. As it stands, the NTA Bylaws currently forbid the sharing of memberships by separate legal entities. The proposed change would enable these small, nonprofit suppliers to join together to promote themselves to our tour operators through NTA.
For instance, while an orchestra, ballet and art museum might not independently have the funds to join NTA, through this proposed amendment, they could combine funding and align themselves to join as one tour supplier membership.
This issue was the basis for a recent bylaw vote, which was narrowly defeated. The NTA Board requested a redo of the vote, requesting that I better explain the perceived need for this bylaw change and how it could actually benefit a tour operator’s product development.
The NTA Board feels that this change, if adopted by a two-thirds vote of member tour operators, would enable further diversification of the NTA membership and open up new worlds of opportunity for our tour operators. Currently, these arts and cultural entities are broadly under-represented in our membership. Bringing them under the NTA umbrella would make their products and services readily available to NTA operators.
The bylaw vote will begin April 1 and end May 1. An announcement of the voting period will appear in the March 24 and March 31 issues of the Tuesday newsletter. I hope you will vote on this important issue, and please do not hesitate to contact Matt Grayson at NTA Headquarters if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
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