American Tourism Society’s (ATS) Chairman, Alex Harris, CTC, and Chairman, General Tours, following a meeting of the ATS Executive Committee, announced the Committee’s decision to create a Strategic Planning Committee and retain Henry “Hank” Phillips, former President of the National Tour Association, as a consultant.

ATS is a professional travel industry association dedicated to promoting, developing and expanding high-quality, reliable travel between North America and the ATS destination areas: the Baltics, Central and Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean / Red Sea Region and Russia. Its mission reflects the ATS motto “Bringing the World Together.”

In making the announcement, Harris said “In ATS’s ever-increasing marketing efforts to assist countries in the regions where developing tourism is a key to the growth of the local economy, we have created a Strategic Planning Committee whose objective is to focus and create strategies to enhance these efforts. We seized the opportunity to enlist the consulting services of Hank Phillips, whose record of accomplishments, coupled with his energy and expertise, will substantiate and assist us in our mission. We welcome Hank Phillips to ATS and look forward to a fruitful and meaningful cooperation.”

According to Don Reynolds, ATS Executive VP, ATS has attracted great interest in the past few years as a result of its high profile conferences in destinations that are in a growth pattern – Hungary, the Czech Republic, Jordan and Israel. “ATS now has an established track record of utilizing its senior government tourism connections and the extensive expertise of its collective membership in promoting developing destinations,” said Reynolds.

“The Strategic Planning Committee is a logical next step in the creation of a 3-5 year plan that takes ATS to the next level. On our agenda is to further develop our tourism training programs, membership development and benefits, corporate partnerships and government relations. We are very fortunate to now be able to draw on the broad knowledge and industry contacts that Hank Phillips brings to the table in development and strategic planning and expanding ATS’ marketing alliances and partnerships.”

Hank Phillips recently stepped down as President of the National Tour Association (NTA), an approximately 3,000 corporate member travel trade association, where he held that position for the past eight years. One of his many major accomplishments in his 21- year career at NTA was to work with NTA’s volunteer leadership to set a new strategic direction, initiated in 2001, transforming NTA into a more diversified and expansive global package travel association and moving beyond, but not abandoning, its traditional roots as a domestic group motor coach association. In 2001 there were two countries represented in the NTA membership. Today there are 27.

Other members of the ATS Executive Committee, In addition to Alex Harris, are Michael Stolowitzky, President and CEO; Don Reynolds, Executive Vice President; Jan Rudomina, Vice President and Secretary/Treasurer and Director, Polish National Tourist Office, New York; and Phil Otterson, ATS Board Director and Executive VP, External Affairs, Tauck World Discovery.