Evolving ORLA (part 2): Accommodating the new paradigm

In the last blog post I spoke about how the demographic of our industry is changing as Baby Boomers are retiring. ORLA needs to remain viable as a membership option, and as the representative of the hospitality industry, the leadership and staff need to ensure the association offers valuable programs and services for the emerging owners and operators in the hospitality industry.

How will your association staff and board deal with this paradigm? Well, we’ve taken the first step by commissioning a telephone survey of the membership, which is being conducted this month. As I relayed to you in last month’s Main Ingredient, we’ll use this information to identify areas we need to improve on or add to and use the survey as a baseline to determine our performance moving forward. We’ll also begin a thorough review of every program we offer to determine their current and future relevance. We’ll reach out to the various age groups of members and non-members in the industry to find out what they feel the association’s mission should be and how we can improve our programs and services to meet those expectations. We’ll also be asking representatives of the various industry segments we represent the same questions. We’ll look at fine-tuning our mission statement making sure to apply our financial resources in the most impactful, effective manner possible. In short, the staff and board are embarking on a long term planning process to reinvent the association to meet the needs of our multi-generational membership.

This is a very large and vitally important initiative that the staff and board are undertaking. I invite your feedback at any point in the process beginning with this editorial. We need to know what you think of our work and how you would like to see it altered, added to or redesigned. Please make the time to answer our surveys, questions or requests for information if and when you receive them in the future. This is your association and we need your assistance in building the association model of tomorrow. I’m confident that with your input and support along with the experience and passion of the ORLA staff and board, we will get this done and emerge as the acknowledged leader and representative of our new multi-generational industry of owners and operators. | Steve McCoid