Business Lexington welcomes Hank Phillips to our pages, covering the world of tourism and travel from a local perspective.
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Phillips is uniquely qualified to offer observations and insights in this important sector of our regional economy. He is the former president of the National Tour Association, an organization of nearly 4,000 members including tour companies and a full range of packaged travel suppliers, such as hotels, restaurants, attractions and transportation providers as well as destination marketing organizations such as convention and visitors bureaus and state, provincial and international tourism offices.
Phillips began his work with the NTA in 1985 as director of education, and in 1986, he became director of government and industry relations. Since 1988, he has served as the senior staff member at NTA's Lexington headquarters. Phillips has served as a member of the Travel Industry Association of America Board of Directors and member of the Tourism Cares Board of Directors.
He was honored by Travel Agent Magazine as the 2002 Association Person of the Year.
Less than two days after I became a Business Lexington columnist on travel and tourism, Comair flight 5191 crashed, snuffing lives and plunging a community into grief. It is awfully difficult for me to write about the business aspects of travel or the economic importance of tourism in the aftermath of a travel-related tragedy. So I won't. I'm really not able to right now. But what I will share with you are some thoughts about how travel can play into some of the feelings that we have shared as a community.
Tragedies such as the plane crash temporarily elevate us above the clutter and pressures of our daily routines. From that elevated perspective, we see and feel with painful clarity the importance and fragility of life. We also gain another insight from that perspective. How amazing was the number of compelling life stories that came from a random collection of travelers on a routine commuter flight departing early on a Sunday morning from Lexington, Kentucky? The newlyweds, the Habitat for Humanity international leader, the man who met his future wife when he delivered a pizza to her, the people delivering uniforms to police in New Orleans, and all the rest of the wonderful and interesting life stories that were brought together on Flight 5191.
I remember having the same amazement as the life stories began to be told about the victims of 9-11. How was it that so many interesting and wonderful people found themselves working in those New York City office buildings?
While the lives of Flight 5191 victims' families and loved ones will never be the same, for the rest of us we are encountering that natural pull known as moving on; a gentle but unwavering slipping back into the organized chaos of daily living. As I feel that happening to me, it comes with a sense of added loss. I want to keep fresh in my mind how special, even extraordinary, ordinary people are. And I am frustrated by how it seems that only in tragedy do we have that vivid clarity. But life interrupts. Life goes on.
Over the past twenty plus years, I have worked in the travel industry. When you work in travel, it means that you travel. I have booked over two million miles of flying, stayed in countless hotels, and sat in hundreds of boring meetings. My traveling has also allowed me to visit many amazing places and meet even more amazing people. In all of that, I have made a discovery. Travel can offer the opportunity to capture that sense of awe about how special people are, and how wonderful their "stories" can be.
There was the butcher in Budapest who told my wife and me how proud he was to be sending his daughter to college in America. There was the fishing guide in Montana who explained to my son and me that where he lives is so beautiful that some days he just has to skip work. Those were days he "called in well." There was the shopkeeper in Cairo whose small, sculpted silver giraffe was so adored by my wife that he gave it to her as a gift. There was the Savannah woman who sat with us in her restaurant and told us about being left by her husband with two boys and how she and her sons had built her business. Years later, that woman blazed onto the national scene as Paula Deen, the renowned southern cooking celebrity. There were the giggling Portuguese girl scouts on the Lisbon train, gathering around us and asking what it is like where we live. And there was Apalonia, the 90 year-old woman from San Diego. We met her on a bus in Dubrovnic as she traveled alone, enjoying life on the road.
All of these encounters with regular people who in their own ways turned out to be very special, came about not from a tragedy, but from travel. Through traveling we are offered an opportunity to escape from our routines. It gives us the time and a comfort level to strike up a conversation with a total stranger and to discover that person's story. And the travel doesn't have to involve some sort of far-flung destination. The same encounters and discoveries can happen in a line at Disney World, or around a hotel pool or at a state park.
People are indeed amazing and have amazing life stories. Perhaps in a small and personal way of remembering those amazing people on Flight 5191, the next time you travel, you might strike up a conversation with that person standing in line with you, or in the seat beside you or at the next table. There are some amazing stories out there, just as there were on Flight 5191.
Hank Phillips can be contacted by phone at (859) 806-7291 or via e-mail
hankaphillips@aol.com