On Thursday, the American Bus Association (ABA) and the Ontario Motor Coach Association (OMCA) announced that the two organizations have scheduled a joint tour operator summit slated for March 30-31, 2011, to be held at the Turning Stone Resort in Verona, N.Y.

The ABA/OMCA Tour Operator Summit will feature educational seminars, business sessions, networking events and a mini-exhibit show. Tour operator members of both organizations from both sides of the border are encouraged to attend.

“We want to have a strong presence among both U.S.- and Canadian-based tour operators at this event, because we value the insights they will provide through their active participation,” said ABA President/CEO Peter Pantuso, CTIS. “This summit promises to address issues that include tour trends and demographic developments, U.S.-Canadian border crossing issues, social networking and much more.”

“To encourage as many tour operators as possible to join us, we have provided an easily accessible location close to a major motorcoach border crossing at Niagara Falls,” said OMCA President Brian Crow. “And we thank our travel partners at the Turning Stone Resort for their gracious hospitality in hosting this vital event.”

The two-day summit tentatively is scheduled to include an Operator-to-Operator Session (both OMCA and ABA tour operators), a regional trade show featuring area tour and travel partners, a roundtable and coffee talk, as well as educational seminars covering tour trends and demographic shifts in group travel. The summit will also cover border crossing issues; online business building using GroupConnect; social networking; Canadian errors and omissions insurance updates; and working with travel agents to increase sales.

As this summit is still in the developmental phase, tour operators are encouraged to provide their input to ABA’s Courtney Davis (cdavis@buses.org, 800-283-2877 x206) or OMCA’s Ann Fairley (ann@omca.com, 416-229-6622 x223).