President’s Letter – May, 2008

Greetings Fellow Skålleagues!

Our May Meeting was held at Bogart’s Bar & Grille located in the Muvico Theater in Boca Raton. Cocktail hour was complimented with a variety of cheeses and fruits during which time several of our members and guests received a tour of the “premier seating area“ of the theater. We enjoyed a sumptuous dinner in the private dinning room after the opening toast was given by Bernhard Kainer in the style he initiated in Aruba.

We were please to have as a guest Jack Brown, President of Atlas Travel Group as well as President of Gold Coast Travel. Thanks to Beth Cohen-Knott for bringing Jack to the dinner. Jack expressed to those at his table that he felt that Skal membership would be very beneficial to a significant portion of the members of Gold Coast Travel. We will be working with Jack to move forward on his suggestions.

During the dinner we inducted our newest member into the club. Cloie Morales who is the owner of Majestic Travel.

Dick Stafford gave a report to the members regarding the NAASC and SIUSA AGM Congress that he attended from May 13 – 18 in Jamaica. Of interest to our members were the following points.

• There are currently 19,409 Skal members worldwide including 3,037 in SIUSA.
• Future NAASC Meetings:
     2009 Anchorage Alaska
    2010 Quebec City
     2011 Cancun
• The new SUISA website should be up and running by June 1 which will enable us to post an up-to-date roster of our membership on our club’s website.
• A change of dates for officers to take office has been proposed so that they would assume their responsibilities on January 1st of each year with voting to be conducted between November 1st – December 15th.
• The following Skal clubs have been dissolved – Tallahassee, Sarasota absorbed into the Tampa Club and St. Louis. The San Diego club is now below 10 members.
• 45 of the 68 SIUSA clubs contributed to the Florimond Volckaert Fund in 2007 in the amount of $24,908 which represented a 40% increase over the previous year. Total contributions to the fund world wide were approximately $70,000.
• The 2007 audit of SIUSA has been completed reflecting a profit of $29,921 for the year including a $25,000 reserve for the situation surrounding the 2006 NAASC Cruise. SIUSA retained an outside auditing firm at the cost of $7,900 to conduct a full audit of the books. They have confirmed the financial results. That audit will be sent to the members in late summer once the SIUSA Board responds to their findings and recommendations.
• This year is a statute revision year for Skal International. 24 pages of suggested changes have been received and reviewed by the Skal International Executive Committee. We will be receiving, in late summer, the proposed changes to the SI Statutes which are to be voted on in Taipei.

Dick Stafford will be writing a letter to Jim Power, Secretary General of Skal International, regarding the issues that we have with the Miami club that remain unresolved and the action our club believes Skal International must take to resolve the issues. Jim Power did agree with our club’s position and will be writing a letter to SIUSA with copies to us and Miami that NO new club will be formed in Ft. Lauderdale. If you have additional questions regarding this situation and or the NAASC Congress please contact Dick Stafford.

Please log on to our club's website www.skal-ftlauderdale-palmbeaches.org, for further information and pictures from the May meeting. Pictures from the NAASC Congress will also be posted shortly. Additionally, any member wishing to have a link put on the website to their business can do so by sending a ‘live link’ to rwstaff@bellsouth.net.

Those members who have had a change in email address are requested to contact Paul Cook at travelizeme@aol.com and inform him of those changes. Skal International has had several communications sent to our members returned due to in active or incorrect e-mail addresses on our master roster. This obviously impacts information sent to members from SIUSA and our club as well. In addition any other changes (address, phone, etc.) should be made on the SKAL International website, www.skal.org with a copy to Paul Cook and Carlos Banks.

All members are invited to visit the SKAL International website to check on future conferences at www.skal.org.

The locations for our upcoming meetings are as follows:

• June 17th – we will be at Bucca di Beppo restaurant in Ft. Lauderdale which will be held jointly again this year with ASME.
• September 16th – To be announced – Boca Raton area
• October 21st – Hilton Hotel Singer Island – West Palm Beach – Outdoor Theme party with spouses and guests welcome
• November 19th – Hilton Hotel – Ft Lauderdale Beach
• December 16th – Bridge Hotel – Boca Raton – Holiday Dinner Dance

Upcoming SKAL events are:

• Region IV Summer outing and Golf Tournament will be held in Orlando July 25 – 27, 2008
• The SKAL International Annual Conference will be in Taipei, Taiwan from the 12th to the 17th of October. All are welcome.

Looking forward to seeing you at the June meeting.

SKAL!

Dick Stafford
Past President