Tourism Cares Refreshes Its Strategy

Tourism Cares is looking to tweak its philanthropic activities in order to more fully leverage the unique scale and diverse skills of those in the tourism industry.

Mike Rea, the organization’s new president and CEO, told Travel Market Report that his team is considering innovative ways to maximize its reach and effectiveness.

Among those moves, may be more frequent—but smaller events—and more focused individual contributions.

“There’s something very special about the travel industry and stewardship,” said Rea. “Tourism Cares is a great organization, but it had sort of hit the upper part of its first range of possibilities.”

A refresher
While a refresh of the organization’s strategy is taking place, Rea wants to mobilize more acts of philanthropy involving more players across the industry.

“We are revisiting what we bring into play from the travel industry,” said Rea.

“In terms of mobilizing, it has been big volunteer give-back events. But now we are adding pro-bono strategic volunteering.”

More opportunities for volunteers
Tourism Cares’ upcoming events will incorporate some of its new thinking.
 
An event slated for May 29 and 30 in Miami will restore historic sites including Cuban-American Hilario Candela’s Florida landmark and the Historic Virginia Key beach Park.

“We have so many professionals competent at doing different things, in terms of the value we can bring as volunteers,” said Rea.

“We’re looking at layering things, instead of doing a one-day volunteer activity. It offers more opportunities for businesses and individual volunteers to contribute.”

A third Miami event, on May 31, for instance, will be geared toward getting kids involved.  The event is nearly sold out.

Smaller but more numerous
Rea and his team have been looking at ways to expand what Tourism Cares offers to communities in the U.S. and abroad. He thinks that smaller, but more numerous, events will be the key to better serving the global community.

“We’re looking at changing up where we work, and looking to add different things for our volunteers to do,” said Rea.

The group is also reviewing whether to expand its private-label services for companies to brands interested in doing more corporate giving.

International efforts
Also being evaluated is Tourism Care’s activities abroad.

Rea’s team has examined countries with a surfeit of world heritage sites and others with deep humanitarian needs.

“If we’re not working in Egypt,” Rea asked, “where should we work?”

South Africa, Turkey and Myanmar are being considered for possible programs, he said.

Need to grow
To attract more members, Tourism Cares has introduced a sliding scale for membership fees.

“We’ve revamped our membership program and are actively seeking to dramatically expand our community,” said Rea. “Our new sliding-scale donation support is priced to scale.”

The group though hasn’t changed its goal, Rea added.

“We want tourism to become recognized as a top corporate citizen among sectors,” said Rea. “This is an industry manifesting a care for place that’s so inherent in its product.”