Skal Double Confirmed a New World President: Burcin Turkkan

After a failed first round of elections and a technical disaster a week ago, a second three-day round of elections at SKAL, and a day of an Annual General Meeting took place today. Burcin Turkkan, member of the Atlanta, Georgia, USA SKAL Club was confirmed as the incoming SKAL World President of SKAL International.

She received 197 yes votes, and 90 no votes, making her to be the only SKAL International President winning 2 elections.

Juan Ignacio Steta of Mexico City was elected incoming vice President. He received 205 yes votes, and 76 no.

Unfortunately, most of the 13,000 SKAL members worldwide had no idea how to watch or virtually attend this event that took place today. Only 327 members attended over time virtually on YouTube over the 3 hour event. Less than 100 were on the zoom call. The YouTube number also included those tuning into the archive on Monday.

Only voting delegates were allowed on the live zoom session; other members had to rely on the hardly known YouTube Livestream. Out of 13,000+ members, 385 took the time to watch.

The Assembly is valid if one-third, plus one, of the total number of member Clubs of Skål International, is represented.

Last week after the failed AGA, SKAL members received this email saying:

The Annual General Assembly will be held on Monday 20 December 2021 at 1400 hours CET on Zoom Webinar and live-streamed via the organization’s YouTube channel. 

• Only the voting delegates will be allowed to join the AGA on Zoom and be recognized to speak. To avoid any security breach, only the Skål Club voting delegates will get the Zoom invitation link and they will be required to create a Zoom account, this way “Only authenticated users can join”. This is the only possible option from a technical point of view, as anyone registering to Zoom would have the possibility to vote, therefore, access can only be given to the voting delegates to ensure the correct voting procedure.
• Voting delegates will not be permitted to share the link with anyone to avoid any security breach. Access control will verify that the user requesting entry is entitled to do so based on the registered e-mails list.
• Make sure you download and install the Zoom application in your computer. 
• Due to the exceptional circumstances, simultaneous translations will only be available in English and Spanish.
• All other members will be able to follow the virtual AGA via the Skål International YouTube channel. Instructions will be sent to all members and posted on social media shortly.

This email was not found on the SKAL International website. The annual meeting today was an event of top SKAL leaders and less of a General Assembly. Ordinary members had to be quiet and were not allowed to participate in any way. This explains the extremely low participation rate on YouTube.

Every club had the opportunity to accredit 2 voting members. Such voting members were allowed to join the live Zoom event. Many clubs were no-shows.

Not all 6 seats of the Executive Committee were filled. Only 5 EC members were elected.

The new SKAL President was a guest on eTurboNews and World Tourism Network before the election.

The first failed attempt for the SKAL Annual Meeting in December 2021