Member of Travel Tourism

Conventions, in the guise of trade shows, may be one of the earliest forms of capitalism. Ever since people have started to trade with each other there has been the need to gather together, exchange ideas and find new ways to present products, services or ideas. In today's world, conventions are big business. Ever since Biblical days, people have understood that selling a product means more than simply having a good product, it must also be presented well and in an accessible manner. One of the major mistakes of exhibits and trade shows is to crowd the room or have it so noisy that people simply stop thinking. Delegates not only attend the trade show part of the convention, now called the exhibit hall, but also often use their convention dollars as a way to turn a business trip into a semi-vacation. In fact it is not uncommon now for convention delegates to bring family members along with the idea of mixing business with pleasure.

From the perspective of the travel and tourism industries conventions provide major economic boosts to the host community. Those working at convention/or attending them need a great many services, from hotels to electricians, from good restaurants to transportation. Additionally exhibitors may need freight services, in-house coordinators, and service personnel to set up and breakdown exhibits.   In today's world, conventions also need a great deal of security not only to stop any pilferage but also to protect both those exhibiting at the convention and those attending it.

In order to gain conventions and to get the most from your convention business, Tourism & More offers you the following ideas and suggestions:

-Determine if your city/locale is appropriate for a convention. What makes your locale special? What types of conventions would work for your community? What types of conventions might not match with the sociology of your community?

-Know who your competition is and what it offers. For example if you claim your location is centrally located then determine to what? The reality is that all communities are centrally located to someone else. What makes your location special? How good are your transportation arteries and how cooperative is local law enforcement in aiding needy travelers? Remember that almost every city states that if offers old-fashion hospitality and that its people are special. Most meeting planners interpret these statements to mean that your community has nothing special to offer.

-Do not seek conventions that are bigger (or smaller) than your city can handle.   Often communities do not think through the logistics of a convention. If you are going to seek to attract a convention be sure to know what types of hotels you offer, how close restaurants are to the convention center and what services a convention center has. For example, is your convention center equipped with a communication center, does it offer land telephone lines or must both delegates and others depend on cell phones? How well do taxis service the center?

-Never promise a potential convention what you cannot deliver. Remind those seeking convention business for your community to make sure that what they promise is real and do-able. Meeting planners knows all too well how to separate honest offers from the con artists. Always put your best foot forward and place a smile on your face. The reality is that you may never know what will win (or lose) you a convention's business.   Treat each person as if this is the convention that will make or break your community.

-If your convention center is close to a less than safe neighborhood, develop a safety plan with the local police department. It can take as little as one well publicized incident to destroy a convention city's reputation. Work carefully with your local police department so that security is provided in a timely and courteous manner. In a similar fashion, do everything that is possible to enhance the landscaping and environmental beauty of the convention center's neighborhood. Remember that the neighborhood that surrounds your convention center is the one that makes the greatest impression on your visitors.

-Develop a cadre of local businesses, services and citizens who are willing to turn your community into a convention community. Remember that conventions make you money when delegates leave the convention center and go into the community. If your community has poor customer service or simply is not tourism friendly, then conventioneers will speak poorly of you rather than of the convention itself. The more delegates enjoy your community the more likely they are to return as leisure visitors or recommend it to their family and friends.

-Encourage members of the local community to give away free-bees to all conventioneers. Especially in a challenging economy free-bees are a good source of advertising and permit local business owners to interface with new and potential customers. Often out-of-towners will provide the sort of feedback that locals never give. Encourage convention exhibitors to use simple yet eye catching colors and designs to attract people to their booth and if the show requires personal discussions then make sure that the booth has sufficient personnel in it at all times. The basic rules of customer service are even more necessary when your community is hosting a convention. Thus make your convention center cost effective. For example meeting planners will remember that fact that you provided free table set-ups and the conventioneers will be pleased if your provide free computer access.

Provide activities, restaurants and attraction lists for before, during and after a convention Conventions are your community's chance to show off. Remember that everyone at the trade show may be a visitor and is a potential source for future revenue.

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) Developing 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.

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".

_______________________________________________________________________

BOOKS ON TOURISM

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.

____________________________________________________________________

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.

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

Sept. 8-10, 2010
Greenville, S.C.
STS Fall Meeting & Shining Example Awards
Contact Neville Bhada Neville@southeasttourism.org or go to http://www.southeasttourism.org/fall

September 17, 2010
Zurich, Switzerland
2nd European Symposium on Gay & Lesbian Tourism
For more info please visit: http://www.communitymarketinginc.com/mkt_int_glms.php
Contact: tom@CommunityMarketingInc.com

Oct 18-22, 2010
Charlotte, North Carolina
TEAMS (Travel, Events & Management in Sport)
For more information please contact: Timothy Schneider at Timothy_Schneider_rvvzrrg@cmpgnr.com

Oct 24-26, 2010
Las Vegas
CMI's 11th International Conference on Gay & Lesbian Tourism
For more information please contact David@communitymarketiInginc.com

Octubre 26-30, 2010
Bucaramanga, Colombia
XX Congreso Panamericano de Escuelas de Hotelería, Gastronomía y Turismo COPEHT Colombia 2010
Para mayor información favor de contactar a mluna3@unab.edu.co

November 12 - November 14, 2010
Hanhgzhou Sunny Hotel, Hangzhou, China
11th International Joint World Cultural Tourism Conference
For more information please go to: http://www.kasct.co.kr
Contact Person: Prof. Jung, Sung-chae

Nov. 15-19
Mbombela-Nelspruit. South Africa
Global Sustainable Tourism
For more information please go to http://www.mbombela.gov.za/International%20Conference1.html

April 11-13, 2011
Archamps, France
European TTRA conference
"Creativity and Innovation in Tourism", , For more information go to:
http://www.ttra-europeconference-2011.com

April 27-30, 2011
International Conference on Tourism (ICOT 2011)
Rhodes Island, Greece
Tourism in an Era of Uncertainty
http://www.cut.ac.cy/icot