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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, Marcus Vinicius Campos of Brazil provides the Portuguese translation, and Dr. Turgut Var provides the Turkish translation.
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TOURISM & MORE'S "TOURISM TIDBITS" for May 2008
Dealing with Festival Security: Part 1/ the planning stage

The summer and fall months are often filled with festivals and out-of-doors events. These can be wonderful opportunities to showcase a community and to produce added revenue. Festivals, however, require a tremendous amount of work in order for them to be safe and secure. No festival committee should ever permit a festival to take place without the cooperation of the local law enforcement agency (ies). All too often law enforcement is "told" about a festival rather than "consulted" about a festival, and the negative result can be anything from a disorderly conduct complaint to too much alcohol to a tragedy. The moment your festival or event committee sets the date make sure to involve law enforcement. Because festivals and events are such an important component of the tourism industry, the May edition of Tourism Tidbits will be one of a two part series. To help you prepare for a successful and safe festival consider the following well before the event is to take place:

1) In your pre-event planning sessions make to remember that Successful events start with good event planning. While many event planners and organizers are excellent at thinking about the type of event that they wish to hold and where it is to be held there are often key considerations that are overlooked. Develop a timeline for your event at least one year prior to the event. Make sure to include in the initial meeting all of the major stakeholders. Stakeholders include not only the city organizations monitoring the event but also law enforcement, traffic control, local businesses, marketers, and of course the local convention and visitors bureau/tourism office.

2) Determine what type of festival and where will it be held. Both the style of the festival and the venue have a major impact. How will you deal with unstable weather conditions? How close is parking? Are there snakes in the area? Is this a festival in which alcohol is served or is it a "dry" festival? What problems are close by? For example is there a problem with gangs or other people who might interrupt or spill over onto the festival?

3) Do a full threat and risk assessment. One of the areas of festival and event planning that too often is overlooked is that of threat and risk assessment. In order to do a good risk assessment you have to determine what your risks are. For example, what are the demographics of your events? If you attract manly senior citizens then you have one set of risks, families produce other risks and young people or teenagers produce a completely different type of risk. In a like manner, the terrain on which you are to hold your event, the season in which it will be held and whether it will be an in-door or out-door event all impact the type of risks for which you must be prepared. Do you know who will be working at the festival? If money is to be exchanged, how will the money be secured?

4) Consider the issue of alcohol. The selling (giving away) of alcoholic drinks is always a problem. In fact the best policy (although often impossible to implement) is to not serve alcohol. When alcoholic drinks are served you will want to worry about such things as (1) how will you control someone who has had one drink too many? (2) how will you control underage drinking and passing drinks from one person to another? How will you control drivers who leave the festival with slight intoxication and then cause an accident? While these are not insurmountable questions, they must be addressed prior to the festival and with the help of law enforcement.

5) Know who will have what access to the event and its booths One of the most difficult parts of running a festival is to determine who has access to what and how those with proper access are to be identified. Not only do festivals managers have to worry about money and where it is to be stored, but also such items as alcohol, arts and crafts, merchandise and equipment. If the festival is to be out-of-doors and is to take place over several days, then a safe storage place must be found to protect goods not only from potential thieves but also from the weather. Remember that not only the festival's guests may be involved in pilferage, the same can occur from people working at the booths.

6) Determine which types of security best meet your event's needs. Security is essential for any successful festival. Security starts with police, fire fighters and emergency first aid squads along with public health officials. As police have limited budgets and manpower consider supplementing your professional first responders with private security. In such cases, make sure that both coordinate and work together. Do a joint evacuation or tabletop exercise so that everyone knows his/her role.

7) Consider all issues of crowd control. While each festival or event has different crowd control issues here are a few things to remember. If the event is out-of-doors and people are not seated, the best crowd control is on horseback. If not, try to create a situation where at least some of your security team is above the crowd. Crowds tend to take on lives of their own. To assure an orderly crowd try to keep the crowd moving at a slow and steady pace. Crowds tend to turn into riots when they move too quickly, are at a standstill and there is no simple and clear evacuation system in place. Remember that most people react better to the spoken word than to the written word.

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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 mailto:tourism@bihs.net.
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.

-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 a 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

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 email mailto:dmpdl@gwu.edu.

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SOME 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 mailto:tourism@bihs.net.

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.

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

New Tourism Journal

The Journal of Tourism History, an international refereed journal under the auspices of the International Commission for the History of Travel and Tourism (<http://www.ichtt.org) and published by Routledge, will begin publication early in 2009.

It is edited by Professor John K. Walton of Leeds Metropolitan University, UK, and is interested in all aspects of the history of tourism, from the literary to the economic, across the globe. The Reviews Editor is Dr Robert Perrins of Acadia University, Canada.
We hope to publish high quality articles with the broadest possible geographical range and chronological spread. Papers should be submitted through our online submission and peer review system which can be found at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/cvp-th
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Upcoming Tourism Conferences

We invite you to submit your conferences to Tourism Tidbits. Please submit request in the form found below. Please note, Tourism Tidbits has received a number of complaints asking why '"My conference" was not listed.

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 format below when sending us a conference announcement. Thank you!

May 1, 2008
Palestine Civic Center, Palestine, TX
Tourism: Thinking Through the Development of a Regional Plan
Texas Municipal League. Contact Lee Van Gundy" vangundy@tml.org for more information

May 1, 2008
Anaheim, California
9th annual California Tourism Safety & Security Conference
Hilton Anaheim, for more information please contact DWiggins@anaheim.net The web site is:
<http://anaheimoc.org/securityconference2008.asp>

May 14-16
Glasgow, Scottland
CHME Research Conference
For more information please contact <chme2008@strath.ac.uk>

June 5-6, 2008
Aruba
II Annual Caribbean Tourism Security Conference
For more information, please contact Peter Tarlow at <tourism@bihs.net> or "Dario Soemers" <dariosoemers@gmail.com> or got to: http://www.arubasecurityfoundation.org/conference/index.html

June 15-17, 2008
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania USA
Freedom to Travel
Travel & Tourism Research Association (TTRA) Annual Convention
For more information: http://www.ttra.com.

June 21-25
Washington, DC
Annual Caribbean Tourism Summit(ACTS)

International Trade Center at Ronald Reagan Building
For more information please contact: Sylma Brown @ <sbrown@caribtourism.com>

July 2-5, 2008
Brighton, England
SELLING OR TELLING? PARADOXES IN TOURISM, CULTURE AND HERITAGE
ATLAS (Association for Tourism and Leisure Education) Annual Conference 2008

University of Brighton, Grand Parade Campus, United Kingdom
Contact: ATLAS secretariat (admin@atlas-euro.org)
Web: http://www.atlas-euro.org/pages/content/pgbrighton.htm

July 21-24, 2008
Washington, DC, 2008
2008 Aviation & Maritime International Security Conference
For more conference information, please take a moment to view the brochure at the following links: <http://www.e-pages.dk/usportpolice/9/>Attendee : and http://www.usportpolice.org/2007_security_conference/default.aspx

July 27 - Aug. 1, 2008
Dahlonega, GA
Marketing College
Neville Bhada, (404) 364-9847

July 27-30, 2008
Destination Marketing Association International (formerly IACVB)
94th Annual Convention
Caesars Palace
Las Vegas, Nevada
For further information, go to www.destinationmarketing.org

August 6-8
Orlando, Florida
FFEA Convention and Trade Show
For more information please visit <http://www.ffea.com> or call +1 -561-736-7071

August 17-20, 2008
Inaugural Global Geotourism Conference
Perth, Western Australia
Australia
For more information, please contact Professor Ross Dowling: r.dowling@ecu.edu.au

September 24-27, 2008
Buenos Aires, Argentian (Conference language: Spanish)
TURICIENCIA 2008, 3er Congreso de Ciencias Aplicadas al Turismo

Contactar a: Ing. Marcelo Sonemblum Tel.: (54) (11) 52387765 / 52387766

Oct. 6-10, 2008
Quebec City, Quebec, Canada
10th Annual Convention of the World Leisure Congress. To learn more please go to: www.loisirquebec.com.

Nov. 5-9, 2008
Alanya, Turkey
"Cultural and Event Tourism: Issues & Debates"
For more information please go to: <http://www.akdeniz.edu.tr/alanya/conference08>.

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About the Author:

Dr. Peter E. Tarlow is the President of T&M, a founder of the Texas chapter of TTRA and 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 tourism@bihs.net. 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 tourism@bihs.net.

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