The Road Ahead: AAA's TripTik for 2006

As I begin my second year as your Chairman, I am pleased to report that our Club is on course to continue to provide members with the highest quality services and support for all your auto and travel needs. Whether it’s roadside assistance, expert travel planning, maps and directions, driver education programs, financial services or legislative support, AAA is there with what you need, when you need it. In addition, our Show Your Card & Save^® program offers great discounts at more than 150,000 hotels, restaurants and retail stores, so you can save money wherever you go.

2005 Review
Looking back, 2005 was a year of solid accomplishments. Led by Tom Chestnut, our new President and CEO, the Club introduced a number of key initiatives, including moving the Greece and Niagara Falls offices to better locations, rolling out our Club-owned Emergency Road Service Fleet in Syracuse, revamping our AAA.com website to make it more user-friendly, and expanding our driving education programs. We also began a sponsorship relationship with NASCAR as the Official Auto Club of Watkins Glen International, and developed a new marketing campaign with the tagline “AAA—Join The Club.”

What’s New For 2006
As event-filled as last year was, our plans for 2006 are even more exciting. To begin with, later this month in the Syracuse area, we will be moving our Liverpool office to Cicero, so look for our new AAA branch in the Marketplace Mall at the corner of East Circle Drive and Route 11. In the Rochester area, a brand-new office will be opened in April on Monroe Avenue in Pittsford, which we will tell you more about in our next issue. Also, we are expanding our Amherst headquarters and retail office in the Buffalo area in an effort to serve you better. (Don’t worry, the current Amherst office will remain open during construction.)

To further our pledge to offer the best in roadside assistance, we are expanding our Club-owned Emergency Road Service Fleet into the Buffalo area. Pretty soon, you will be seeing our white fleet vehicles, which offer mobile battery replacement as well as towing services, to get you back “On The Go” whenever possible.

In addition, the AAA Driving School’s “Licensed To Learn” program, currently in the Buffalo area, will be incorporated in Rochester and Syracuse in 2006, providing novice drivers with the skills and techniques they need to become safe and responsible behind the wheel.

What’s On Your Mind?
At AAA, our primary goal is to serve our members as well as we possibly can. After all, our Club is your Club. We are interested in knowing what potential new services are of interest to you and how you feel about some new product offerings we are considering. Please take a few minutes to fill out the Member Survey (on page 3 of the magazine), and return it to us by mail or fill it out online at AAA.com. Your feedback is very important to us.

In conclusion, we are very excited about what’s in store for AAA members in the year ahead. I wish all our members and their families a Happy and Safe New Year in 2006!

R. Carlos Carballada
Chair, Board of Directors