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"TOURISM TIDBITS" FROM TOURISM & MORE, INC.

The goal of "Tourism Tidbits" is to provide travel professionals with a monthly, easy-to-read overview of creative ideas. With proper referencing, we invite you to quote or reproduce

"Tourism Tidbits" and to pass it along to a friend.

"Tourism Tidbits" is published monthly in English and Spanish, Portuguese and Turkish. Mtra. Patricia Koalska of Mexico does the Spanish translation, Ericka Amorim of Lisbon, Portugal provides the Portuguese translation, and Dr. Turgut Var provides the Turkish translation.

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TOURISM & MORE'S "TOURISM TIDBITS" for February 2010

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the people of Haiti.

May they soon be able to rebuild their nation.

Reassessing Tourism Security

The recent tourism near travel tragedy and terrorism attacks against hotels around the world serve to underline once again the importance of tourism security. The unsuccessful attempt to blow up a an airplane on December 25th not only garnered a great deal of publicity but also ought to serve to remind us that no matter how we may try to ignore the issue of tourism security both from within the tourism industry and from without, the issue of tourism and travel security is very much with us. In fact historians of tourism may someday call our reaction to the tourism security and our ability (or inability) to protect the traveling public tourism's defining moment. Despite what many people think Tourism security is a great deal more than merely adding extra regulations onto an already frustrated traveling public. Tourism security is a complicated subject that combines both passive elements such as CCTV (closed circuit television) cameras, psychological and sociological knowledge and active public policy development. Because travel and tourism cross national borders, what affects one nation may well impact the entire world.

Unfortunately due to too many knee jerk reactions many in the traveling public increasingly are beginning to wonder if these newest travel hassles accomplish much more than making travel difficult. All too often it appears that governments agencies around the world tend to be reactive to the last incident rather than being proactive. The almost Christmas day bombing ought to teach us all a number of important lessons:

-Terrorism is a chronic problem that will most likely be with us for a long time. Despite what the politicians say, and the public may demand, travel and tourism can never be made 100% terrorism proof. The most we can hope to do is develop smart and creative ways to frustrate terrorism. The Israelis have offered the world an important lesson that has not yet been learned: tourism security is not about focusing on bad things but rather intercepting bad people.

-Terrorists are not stupid and know how to be innovative. The Christmas Day terrorism attack should be seen as another example that counter security cannot simply relay on the same security measures. Tourism security requires both creativity and innovation.

-Crime and terrorism are not the same. In travel and tourism criminals need the tourism industry with which they maintain a parasitic relationship. While crime gnaws at the heart of a tourism industry, it does not seek to destroy it. Indeed, many forms of organized crime have traditionally found tourism to be a convenient way to lauder money. Terrorism, on the other hand seeks to destroy tourism. Its goal is to separate people and inflict as much economic damage as possible in order to destroy a locale's economic viability as part of an overall war strategy against modernity.

-Overreactions are the terrorists' best friends. Despite the fact that the airplane landed safety from a tourism perspective the terrorist still won. He succeeded in frightening the public and making travel less desirable and more difficult. Terrorism is different than a criminal act. The goal of terrorism is the destruction of national economies. Because tourism is a major world industry and provides numerous job opportunities around the world travel and tourism are and will continue to be prime terrorism targets. Terrorists know that an attack against travel and tourism will not only hurt multiple economies but will also receive a great deal of publicity, thus further damaging the victim's economy.

In the wake of the current reality here are several things that tourism professionals can do at relatively low cost:

-Understand what tourism security is all about. There are far too many security professionals who know security but do not know how to "translate" security concepts into tourism needs. On the other side of the ledger, tourism professional are often woefully ignorant of how tourism security, surety and safety work. Because most tourism professionals have been trained in marketing, they are often confused as to what steps they should and should not take, and how they should interact with security professional. Many tourism professionals know so little about the subject that they do not know even the correct questions to ask.

-Never hold a tourism security conference in which at least one or two sessions is devoted to the inter-relationship between tourism and marketing. Simply put good tourism security is an essential part of twenty-first century marketing. Tourism professionals need to demand that their conference organizers provide them with the basics of tourism security if they are to compete in the twenty-first century. Simply put if there is no tourism security then eventually there will be nothing left to market.

-Attend one of the tourism security conferences around the world. Las Vegas will hold its yearly tourism security on May 9-11 and at the end of the month, Aruba will be holding its third bi-annual conference. These conferences permit tourism officials, police officers and other security professionals to learn about the newest trends and dynamics within the tourism industry and to exchange ideas and concepts. As often security professional budgets are tight, consider giving a scholarship a police officer or other tourism security professional's registration and/or airfare.

-Learn to do more and speak less. One of the problems with tourism security is that we publicize what we are and are not doing. While a certain amount of publicity is needed to reassure the traveling public, a lot more needs to be done to stop bad people rather than merely looking for bad things.

-Learn from others and then adapt to your local needs. There is much that we can learn from Israeli security techniques when it comes to travel. For example airline passengers traveling to and from Israel do not have to go through many of the indignities that Western fliers must endure, and yet these same passengers are considered a lot safer, both on the ground and in the air. Part of Israel's success comes from studying what others do and then adapting these techniques to local needs. Good tourism security provides travelers with a high level of professionalism, the best of interrogation techniques coupled with the best of high tech and good training. Tourism industries around the world need to learn how to follow suit.

-Never forget that no cost savings is worth a life. Tourism security is not just about safe travel. It is about saving lives. When developing a tourism-marketing plan, never forget that we can pull a bad promotion campaign, change a ad, or find a new slogan, but we can never replace a life. Tourism is about hospitality and good hospitality comes from taking care of our guests.

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What topics would you like to see discussed in Tourism Tidbits?

Please send us a list of topics of interest to you and we will do our best to dedicate future issues of Tourism Tidbits to your needs/desires.

TOURISM AND MORE'S WIDE RANGE OF SPEECHES AND TRAINING SEMINARS

For a complete listing of topics and information, please check our web page http://www.tourismandmore.com/contact or e-mail us at ptarlow@tourismandmore.com
Please note our all-new special course: Tourism Confronts Terrorism: What You Need to Know to Maintain a Viable Industry in the Face of Terrorism.
Here is a partial list of some of our other most popular topics. All seminars and speeches can be presented in English or Spanish.

Brand New Lectures concerning the World's Economic and Health Crisis:

1) Smoothing out rocky economic roads: What tourism needs to do stay in front of these economically challenging times!

2) Surviving Economically Challenging Times: Best Practice from Far and Wide.

3) Developping H1N1 Travel and Tourism Policies: What Tourism Needs to Do in a Potential Age of Pandemics.

Additionally:
3) Our trained staff of professionals are ready to meet with your board and you to discuss specific strategic planning in this most difficult of times.

Please contact us at ptarlow@tourismandmore.com for more information regarding costs and available dates.

Also New!!!! How to tourism communities need to work to prevent and recover from natural disasters.

Other lectures include:
-Tourism Confronts Terrorism: What You Need to Know to Maintain a Viable Industry in the Face of Terrorism.

-Training Your Police: Tourism Oriented Policing (TOPs), how it works and why it is essential for a viable tourism industry.

-Getting On Board: Helping Your Police and Other City Employees to be Part of the Tourism Industry.

-Marketing to the Baby-boom Generation, Generation X and beyond.

-New Trends in Tourism Marketing and International Tourism.

-When the Market is Tight and the Economy Is Slow: New Ideas in Marketing.

-Developing a Successful Agricultural and Rural Tourism Industry.

-Something from Nothing: The Art of Creating New Attractions.

-Tourism Ethics: Linking the Wisdom of Moses to Your Tourism Product.

-Understanding Tourism Statistics: When is a fact a fact and when is it not? How to present data to the media.

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TOURISM ON-LINE/EDUCATION

1) TOURISM SECURITY. The George Washington University's Tourism Destination Management and Marketing Certificate Program announces the launch of "Safety and Security for Tourism Destinations: Achieving a Safe and Secure Tourism Environment". This is a course designed to help tourism professionals understand the importance of safety and security within a destination, as well as provide them with the "tools" needed to create a secure environment for both visitors and residents. World-renowned travel safety and security expert, Dr. Peter E. Tarlow, has developed this course by drawing on his wealth of experience and the growing number of publications in this area. The course is available worldwide via Internet-based distance learning. For more information please contact Kristin Lamoureux at klam@gwu.edu.

2) Interested in doing research in the area of tourism security? Announcing Our New Subscription Service!; The Tourism & Security Control Panel

Tourism & More, working with our technology partners at Mnemotrix Systems, Inc., is now offering subscribers an enhanced and indispensable online service. Here is a new part of the "More" in Tourism & More. This new service offers its subscribers full access to the last 18+ years of our Tidbits Newsletter archives, our News and Newsgroup realtime feed, and our Global Security Research Database for Tourism.

This all-new approach to research provides much more than the usual keyword search, with our Strategic Data Fusion research capability, and a simple manual for how to make use of it. All this is available for a modest annual subscriber fee of only $99.99 per year. Corporate memberships are also available. The aim is to give you best-of-class in strategic data fusion research tools. It is not enough anymore to list a hierarchy of subjects we once wrote about. This new service will allow you to be able to get into the content directly by idea or concept.

The cost for this service is US$99.00 per year. To subscribe to this service, please go to our website at <www.tourismandmore.com> and click on where it says: "subscribe".

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BOOKS OF INTEREST TO TOURISM PROFESSIONALS

1) Event Risk Management and Safety (ISBN 0-471-40168-4) by Peter E. Tarlow, published by John Wiley & Sons. Presenting theory and practical applications. To purchase this book, visit http://www.wiley.com/ or http://www.amazon.com/. If you would like Dr. Tarlow to speak or train people in this area, please contact him at ptarlow@tourismandmore.com

2) Restoring Tourism Destinations in Crisis by Dr David Beirman: Published By Allen & Unwin (Australia & SE Asia) and CABI Publishing North America/ Europe 2003. For more information contact the author at mailto:david@aicc.org.au.

3) Leisure Travel: A Marketing Handbook, by Stanley Plog, Pearson Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2004. It's available through the website of Pearson Prentice-Hall for $25.

4) Tourism in Turbulent Times. Toward Safe Experiences for Visitors. Edited by Jeff Wilks, Donna Pendergast, and Peter Leggart. Published by Elsevier.

5) Tourism Security & Safety, from Theory to Practice. Edited by Yoel Mansfeld and Abraham Pizam, published by Elsevier.

6) The Economics of Tourism Destinations, by Norbert Vanhove, Published by Elsevier

7) Beach Safety and the Law, Edited by Jeff Wilks published by Queensland
(Australia) Law Society

8) Media Strategies for Marketing Places in Crisis, by Eli Avraham and Eran ketter Published by Elsevier

9) Tourism Development: Growth, Myths and Inequalities. Burns, P. and Novelli M. eds. (2008). Wallingford: CABI

10) Tourism Management: Analysis, Behavior and Strategy, edited by Woodside and Martin, published by Cabi, London, England

11) Tourism and Mobility, Burns, P. and Novelli M. eds. (2008). Wallingford: CABI.

12) Two new books for Spanish readers: (1) Inversión Hotelera, by Alfredo Ascanio and Turismo Sustentable both by Alfredo Ascanio and Marcus Vinicius Campos, You can purchase both of these books at http://etrillas.com.mx/trillas/busqueda/php

13) "The Ethics of Terrorism. Innovative Approaches from an International Perspective." Eds Thomas Albert: Publisher: Charles C. Thomas, Springfield, Il; USA Mailing Orders may be obtained directly to use: PO Box 19265 Springfield, Illinois, 62794 - 9265. USA or by calling (800) 258-8980); ask for customer service, at "www.ccthomas.com" or a books@ccthomas.com.

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Student Safety Abroad, www.studentsafetyabroad.org, is a leader in study abroad security consulting and crisis management. SSA is now offering a safety course online to prepare students who travel abroad on study abroad programs. Please contact one of our staff at +1 979-492-1345 to learn about the services offered by Student Safety Abroad or contact us at <wise@wiseabroad.org>

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Some Upcoming Tourism Conferences

We invite you to submit your conferences to Tourism Tidbits. Please submit request in the form found below. If you do not tells us, then, we cannot list the conference. We are happy to list all conferences about which we are informed. Please follow the below format when sending us a conference announcement. Thank you!
Unless otherwise stated, English is the conference language.

Feb 18-21 2010
Plymouth, UK
2nd International Cruise Conference
University of Plymouth
For details please visit: http://www.pbs.plymouth.ac.uk/icc2/

March 17-19 2010
Miami, USA
THE WORK EXPERIENCE TRAVEL MARKET AND IAPA ANNUAL CONFERENCE
For more information, please go to: www.wetm-iac.org

March 22-24, 2010
Nashville, Tenn.
STS Spring Meeting & SETTRA Symposium
Contact Neville Bhada Neville@southeasttourism.org or go to http://www.southeasttourism.org/spring/ and <http://settra.org/>http://settra.org/

March 23-26, 2010
Atlanta, Georgia
2010 Food Safety Education Conference
Hyatt Regency Atlanta

For more information please go to www.fsis.usda.gov/Atlanta2010

March 30-April 1
Sitka, Alaska
4th Annual Heritage and Cultural Tourism Conference
For more information please go to: http://www.sitka.org/public.html

April 17-20, 2010
Mulu, Sarawak, Borneo, Malaysia
Second Global Geotourism Conference
Royal Mulu Resort
For details, please visit http://www.globalgeotourism.com

April 21-23
Budapest, Hungry
TTRA 2010 European Chapter Conference
For more information please go to web: http://www.ttra-europeconference.com/!

April 22-25, 2010
Crete and Santorini, Greece
International Conference on Sustainable Tourism: Issues, Debates & Challenges For more information please to: http://sustainablecrete.com

May 3-5
Havana, Cuba
Turicencia (in Spanish)
For more information please contact: 5238-7765/ 5238-7766 or email info@turiciencia.org

May 5-7, 2010
Surrey, England
Council for Hospitality Management Education (CHME) Research Conference
For more information please go to <http://www.surrey.ac.uk/chme2010>www.surrey.ac.uk/chme2010

May 5-7, 2010
Portsmouth, New Hampshire
N.H. Governor's Conference on Tourism
Sheraton Portsmouth Harborside Hotel
For details, please visit; www.nhtravelcouncil.com

May 10-12, 2010
Las Vegas Tourism Security Conference
Please note May 10 offers a pre-conference tour followed by the formal conference on May 11 and 12. For more information, contact Sherry Watson at swatson@lvcva.com or Peter Tarlow at ptarlow@tourismandmore.com

May 30-June 2
Aruba
III Biannual Caribbean Tourism Security Conference
For more information, please contact Roland Peterson at allamanda@setarnet.aw.

June 14-17, 2009
International Tourism Security Conference
Kuala Lumpur, Maylasia
For more information, please contact Muneeb Bin Yousuf at
<muneeb@egnatia-group.com>

June 27-30, 2010
Vienna, Austria
Best En Think Tank X: Networking for Sustainable Tourism
For more information, please contact Anja Hergesell at anja.hergesell@modul.ac.at or call +43 (1) 320-355-5419

July 25 - 30, 2010
Dahlonega, Ga.
STS Marketing College
Contact Neville Bhada at: Neville@southeasttourism.org

Or go to http://www.southeasttourism.org/education/

Aug. 22-28, 2010
Amsterdam. Holland
TRAVEL AS A FORCE OF HISTORICAL CHANGE
For more information, please go to: ICHTT - International Commission for the History of Travel and Tourism at <http://www.ichtt.org>www.ichtt.org

Oct 18-22
Charlotte, North Carolina
TEAMS (Travel, Events & Management in Sport)
For more information please contact: Timothy Schneider at Timothy_Schneider_rvvzrrg@cmpgnr.com

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About the Author:

Dr. Peter E. Tarlow is the President of T&M, is a popular author and speaker on tourism. Tarlow is a specialist in the areas of sociology of tourism, economic development, tourism safety and security. Tarlow speaks at governors' and state conferences on tourism and conducts seminars throughout the world and for numerous agencies and universities.

If you know of anyone else who might enjoy "Tourism Tidbits," please send his/her email address to ptarlow@tourismandmore.com, Please let us know of any topic that you would like to see covered by "Tourism Tidbits." We invite others to submit articles for consideration for publication.

You are welcome to reproduce "Tourism Tidbits" or any part of "Tourism Tidbits" with proper citing. We hope that you will see "Tourism Tidbits" as a place where tourism, visitor, and travel professionals exchange ideas and information. "Tourism Tidbits" does not offer or provide specific legal or financial advice. Our goal is to provide a "review" for industry personnel and discuss provocative issues. We remind all readers that every specific business decision should be made only after you have done the proper research. The author(s) accept(s) no responsibility for any loss due to any information published in "Tourism Tidbits."

All articles sent to "Tourism Tidbits" and accepted for publication are owned by "Tourism Tidbits" and may be subjected to editorial review and rewriting (with permission of the author). All questions about "Tourism Tidbits", suggestions, or cancellations should be addressed to Dr. Peter E. Tarlow at ptarlow@tourismandmore.com

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Dr. Peter Tarlow
1218 Merry Oaks,
College Station, Texas, 77840-2609, USA.
Telephone: +1 (979) 764-8402.

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