Connect tourists with others who have shared a similar experience using stories, testimonials, discussion groups, post-tour photos/mementos, and group reunions, when appropriate. Outbound operators/tourism resellers/packagers

Potentially a very important audience for many attraction or amenities operators, and smaller inbound operators, though direct Internet sales and promotion are reducing reliance on these distribution channels.

Capture reseller's attention.

Demonstrate products and destinations.

Show products' appeal to target/geographical markets of reseller.

Demonstrate relation of your products to reseller's products or packages, as well as transportation links or facilitating services involved.

Reassure reseller of your professionalism and capability of your staff. Support these claims with testimonials from satisfied tourists.

Present marketing tools, images, and information about your products which will help reseller's to distribute your products. Government and private funders

Usually a secondary audience for tourist organizations, but an important one; particularly for tourism development projects which are dependent upon financial support.

Capture attention of potential funder.

Demonstrate that project meets social, economic, development, and environmental goals of funders and their constituency, or convince them of importance of your goals.

Introduce proposed or existing products.

Demonstrate any necessary input, participation, and approval from important constituencies within tourism host communities; and from suppliers, service providers, and distributors.

Demonstrate competency.

Address target markets of tourism products and demonstrate projected economic viability based on their demand.

List concrete outputs that will be made possible by funders' involvement.

(Seattle, USA; August 2004)

Anyway, I picked up this picturesque postcard of blessed ballyhooing buglugs. They look perfectly happy but don’t be deceived. In reality, they’re just a gang of glad-handing grasshoppers. They don’t play golf, eat burgers, or drink beer -- and none can frost a rock! Come to think of it, apart from company of bugs and elusive flop fairy, this pathetic planet has precious little going for IT!!

To put "IT" bluntly, life on “IT” is just shy of a tittynope*. The jolly green grasshoppers and carefully manicured green fairways with sand traps as far as eye can see certainly make for an utterly harmless world. Regrettably, without a pair of golf clubs, a dimpled white ball, and notion that 19th hole even exists on this planet -- ”IT” is about as fun as bag of toads!

Life Lesson 42: Remember to talk to your travel agent before ever embarking on a flight of fancy to a planet called “IT” in a galaxy named “Have-a-Nice-Day”!!

__________

*"Tittynope" for you whiffling word-peckers means "a small quantity of anything left over".

If you want to know what those green, glad-handing grasshoppers from "IT" look like -- ask any four-year old, or failing that request some help from a Flying Saucer Club member.

Theolonius McTavish is a somewhat spaced-out time-traveller (of minor relevance and importance in the great scheme of things). When not probing odd things happening somewhere in the depths of the universe, he enjoys chinwagging with all manner of merry folk at www.quippingqueen.blogspot.com