Donna Tuttle’s Traveling Balancing Act

Donna Tuttle, undersecretary of commerce for travel and tourism, is a loyalist. She supports President Reagan’s efforts to trim the budget even though he wants to abolish the agency she heads, the United States Travel and Tourism Administration, one of the tiniest in Washington with a budget of $12 million. Reagan appointed her, and she has testified on Capitol Hill, supporting his views.

Wouldn’t that infuriate the travel industry? Hardly. It seems to adore the 38-year-old undersecretary, considered one of the four highest-ranking women appointees in the Reagan Administration. But that wasn’t true a year and a half ago. It lobbied against her appointment. Wasn’t she just another rich Californian? What did she know about travel? Besides, wasn’t she the daughter-in-law of Kitchen Cabinet member Holmes Tuttle and, thus, a “favorite daughter”? The industry would prefer one of its own.

Scenario: Los Angeles hometown girl sets her strategy. She’s a USC graduate in history. She’s taught five years in Watts at Samuel Gompers Junior High School. She’s placed an interview on the Rev. Jesse Jackson in the Junior League News, raising a few eyebrows. She’s taken two Coro classes (through the Junior League), which prepare students for careers in public life. She’s raised $5 million as head of finance for Mike Curb’s (unsuccessful) primary campaign for governor, then raised funds for Carol Hallett’s (also unsuccessful) general campaign for lieutenant governor. At this point, her husband, Bob Tuttle, is a presidential assistant and they have two daughters. (Now he is deputy assistant to the President and director of presidential personnel, away from the family business, which includes Ford dealerships in Irvine and Tucson.)

In retrospect, “I knew this job was coming up. I called the Office of Presidential Personnel and asked for an appointment.”

She had already mustered her Coro tools to investigate and glean information. “I did a great deal of research. I went to the Library of Congress and said I wanted every hearing that the agency had been involved in. . . , because I wanted to know the issues. In reading the testimonies, I found out the issues, the problems, the past history. I found out what industry leaders felt.” That was the summer of 1983.

Got the Appointment

She got the presidential nomination, then congressional approval. In December that year she got the appointment, a job now paying $73,600 a year.

“Then,” she said, “I decided to go out and meet people in the industry and calm their fears. I started calling them out of my home. I must have taken 50 people to lunch. It cost me so much. I think I gained four pounds. But I was seeking their views. . . . I had done my homework, and it paid off. Setting a strategy--a lot came from Coro. How do you do something? What questions do you ask? I almost felt I could take on anything based on the Coro training I had.”

Vivian Deuschl, Secretary Tuttle’s special assistant and a powerhouse in the travel public relations world, said, “She has taken an agency, always a bit of a stepchild, neglected and overlooked, not always effective, and convinced industry leaders we can make our programs stretch further if we get private industry to work for and with us--the Pan Ams, the Marriotts and the Hiltons.

“Our agency’s job,” Deuschl said, “is to bring in foreign visitors into the United States, because that means revenues and taxes and big business. You cannot sit down with her in a room and walk out and say no when she asks for assistance, because she knows her stuff and she is very persuasive. She has a natural instinct for marketing. Beneath that exterior is a tough lady. She holds her own. She surprised everybody. Partly, though, the doubt arose because of her famous last name.”

Joseph Hallissey has converted to being a Tuttle admirer. But as chairman of the American Society of Travel Agents, he is distressed because of the threats to the USTTA: “We don’t want it cut. If anything, we want the budget increased, because every dollar we spend we get back $18.” He’s conducting a campaign to have 27 chapter presidents representing 13,000 firms write to Congress.

Restoring the Market

Another fan is Bill Edwards, vice chairman of Hilton Corp. and a member of a blue-ribbon committee of 25 top travel leaders hoping to restore the total international tourism market (foreigners coming to the United States) to 13%, what it was in the Bicentennial year of 1976 (it has dropped to 10.9%).

Edwards calls the secretary “a miracle” appointment. “She has been able to coordinate with the industry and get a feeling of cooperation . . . she has given to the industry an imagination and dedication that has been needed for some time, and the private sector is hungry for this.”

If the undersecretary is now popular, she planned it that way. She works 10 1/2 hours daily.

When the tension gets too great, she puts on her jogging shorts.

“Running helps. It gives you a lot of energy, relieves the pressure.” She strives for five miles three times a week, sometimes runs at lunch or the end of the day. “I run up to the Capitol, to the Jefferson. There are two or three of us at Commerce (who run). Washington is a good jogging town. Bob will jog from the White House and meet me. Sometimes we go home from there in jogging clothes, or I take a taxi home, and he goes back to the office, or I go back to Commerce, shower and we go out for dinner. It’s an easy life: You’ve got to plan and be very adaptable.”

In Los Angeles for the recent Pow Wow ‘85, the Travel Industry Assn. of America international confab, and for her Marlborough 20th reunion, Donna Tuttle talked tourism and family, 50-50.

Which does she put first? “To tell you the truth, I don’t put anything first. I do a juggling act. It would not be true if I told you I always put my children first. My kids are always on my mind--you have to be a good organizer to be good to both your job and your kids.

“It’s a balancing act. The problem with Washington is that business is conducted not only during daytime hours, but evening as well, and dinners are usually for a purpose, to get business done.

“We are very picky about what we accept, because we could go out every night. We are very, very picky. Maybe out only two nights a week. I am not going out every night--no way. And the great thing about Washington is that it is a weekday town. The weekends are your own. I personally would never have a party on a weekend. I am very possessive about my weekends. That is really family time.”

She has priorities. They don’t include gardening at all, and not much cooking. Mrs. Gail Hyde lives with them and takes the children to extracurricular events and cooks. “I entertain about once a month, 10 around the dining room table. I usually cook for that. If people come from California, we go out to dinner. We try to do a lot of lunches.” This summer she will entertain a former Watts student as a house guest: “We are very close.”

A Full Schedule

Saturdays are packed. “We start off early with ballet lessons (for daughters Tiffany, 8, and Alexandra, 6), and then we go out to Maryland for 1 1/2 hours of gymnastics, and then we race to Virginia for piano recitals and lessons. Sometimes there is time for errands while the girls have their lessons, but usually I watch them. And maybe there’s a birthday party in the afternoon.

“We all walk into Georgetown on Saturday night for dinner. And Sundays we go somewhere.”

Where does a travel secretary travel?

“On Sunday we may rent a canoe on the Potomac, or bicycle ride in old Alexandria, like we did recently, and end up with a picnic (which she purchased). Or we might take the train to Philadelphia or go to Baltimore.

“Several weekends ago we went to a bed and breakfast home on a working farm in Pennsylvania. We had a superb experience. Stayed on a dairy farm. Bob and I were above the kitchen and the kids in a loft above us. Everything we ate was raised on the farm.”

They had wanted to go to Lancaster County. “No one recommended it (the farm). I just called out of the blue from a book, I think, ‘Farms in Pennsylvania.’ We had fresh milk, watched a cow artificially inseminated. They had a new-born calf two days old, a new litter of dogs, a new litter of cats. Alexandra had a little animal in her hands the whole time.

“We talked about what the farmer was facing. He was upset that America imports milk from other countries and there is an excess of milk. He told us, ‘I don’t know if you have anything to do with politics. . .’ and we asked the dumbest questions. It was $25 a night and $7 extra for the loft, and that included breakfast. They must have lost money on us.”

She said: “I keep telling international visitors we have so many things to do in the United States. We’re trying to take advantage of the East Coast while we’re in Washington.” In July, they will go to Nashville, Tenn., for a weekend at the Opryland Hotel and “the best of country music.” They’ll rent a house at Martha’s Vineyard for a week in August, and are planning a weekend in Kansas, taking a two-day wagon-train ride, pitching tents, sleeping outdoors, barbecuing. And they’ll also make another trip to California this month to celebrate Holmes Tuttle’s 80th birthday and find time to see her mother, Mrs. William Simpson, and possibly her sisters, Diane (Mrs. Patrick) Colee and Deborah DeGooyer.

Working in Washington

When Undersecretary Tuttle makes out-of-town speeches, she tries to schedule them so that she may return to Washington the same day, even if on the midnight red eye. She spends 70% of her time working in Washington, the rest traveling and visiting overseas offices--Japan, France, Germany, England, Canada and Mexico. Also, an office just opened in Australia; this summer the Netherlands and Italy open offices, a seemingly incongruent situation considering the efforts to close the agency.

Although they plan eventually to return to California, the Tuttles recently sold their home in Southern California and purchased the four-story new town house they had been living in. It’s on the site of the old Georgetown fire station.

In these private confines, do they talk about their jobs? “Not as much as people would think. I tell Bob more than he tells me. First of all, his work is a little more sensitive, because you’re talking about jobs that haven’t been announced. . . . I don’t probe. And Bob comes home at 11:30 p.m. and I know what kind of pressure he has. The last thing he wants to do is rehash the day. We do talk about the issues that are going on in Washington, though.”

Donna Tuttle doesn’t apologize for testifying to eliminate her own agency. “I work for the President. This was a decision put out by the Administration. I had a chance to fight when it was appropriate six months ago--the appeal process, and, yes, I lost. They put together the package and did not want any unraveling. I really admire the strong stand the President is trying to take on the budget.”

And she equally boosts the travel business. “The industry is a $225-billion industry, the third largest retail industry following food and automobiles. . . . We benefit tremendously from international tourism--$14 billion.”

If her agency is eliminated, what happens? “The Department of Commerce would have to pick up a lot of the program (through commercial offices overseas).” And private industry, she said, would have to do more, and that is why she has pushed joint public-private ventures such as the “America. Catch the Spirit” campaign newly devised by New York advertising agency N. W. Ayer, which did “It’s Better in the Bahamas,” and “The Wonder Down Under” campaign for Australia.

Inbound tourism, which has dropped the past three years, is expected to increase 4% this year, she said, and that reflects more effective methods of marketing the United States in advertising campaigns.

“We have done a good job of getting the research about foreign visitors overseas into the hands of cities and states in order to market ourselves better.”

However, she believes states such as California (edged out only by Florida in international visitors) need to do more to bolster international tourism, particularly in depressed areas. “I would like to take my experience in Watts and think about bringing in tourism. Bob and I love the Watts Towers. You know they have weddings down there, and they were talking about building a school of art, and then the next thing you would need would be restaurants and shops and hotels. If I were a mayor, I would be looking at ways to revive depressed areas.” Harlem, she adds, has a very strong tourism program.