Increase profits through our extensive list of training courses

Some of our offerings include:

  1. Surviving economically challenging times/gaining momentum in a good economy: Best practice from far and side
  2. How tourism can profit from currency fluctuations
  3. New forms of tourism: from agro-tourism to dark tourism
  4. How well can you survive a crisis?
  5. Avoiding tourism crises by using good risk management techniques
  6. Should the crisis occur, how to overcome it and go beyond it
  7. Dealing with travel advisories
  8. Tourism confronts terrorism: What you need to know to maintain a viable industry in the face of terrorism
  9. Generational marketing: How to market tourism to diverse age groups
  10. The health threats to tourism
  11. Something from nothing: The art of creating new attractions
  12. Tourism ethics: Linking the moral to your tourism product
  13. Successful and failed tourism marketing strategies
  14. Dealing with the media: Transforming the media into your friend
  15. Selling to the Asian market
  16. Selling to the Latin American tourism market: No, they are not all the same!
  17. Selling to the US market:  One country and lots of niche groups

Assessing the state of tour tourist industry

This innovative program will offer the participant several techniques on how to analyze the state of a community’s tourist industry. The seminar’s purpose is to give the local professional the necessary sociological and statistical tools needed in the identification of basic strengths and weaknesses within a local tourist system. Ideas will also be offered on how to correct problems and build on local strengths.

Benchmarking and tourism

Benchmarking is the science that allows businesses to compare themselves to the best in their area/field. This seminar teaches you not only how to benchmark but how to decide with whom/what to benchmark. The seminar provides both a theoretical and applied framework for benchmarking and its applications.

Brochures: Expectations versus reality

This seminar will present a psychological and sociological analysis of good and bad points common to brochures. What are the consequences of false expectations? What does color theory have to say about brochures? How can the success or failure of a brochure be measured?

Business retention, tourism, and economic development

This seminar is designed for communities that seek long-term steady growth. The seminar focuses on how tourism and tourism skills are an essential part in not only retaining already existing businesses in your community, but how it can help those business become part of the economic development program through expansion and greater success.

Creating greater profitability through trust:

  • How to use trust to create employee loyalty
  • How to use trust to create a credible tourism product
  • How to use trust to win new customers and clients
  • How to create trust with the media
  • How to use trust as a recovery tool during a crisis

Cultural tourism: Can it work? How to make it succeed

This seminar focuses in on the effects of tourism on culture, and how cultural uniqueness impacts on the tourist industry. The seminar uses both a functionalist and conflict theory approach to show areas of potential compatibility and flash-points. This seminar is designed to increase awareness of the effects of tourism within the total societal environment.

Dealing with change

Tourism often provokes a changing demographic, economic, political, and sociological profile in a community. These changes, if not managed properly, can create havoc within a community’s social structure. This course examines:

  • Why change is hard
  • How to introduce change
  • What not to do
  • The politics and psychology of change

Doing research on a tight budget

This seminar discusses the pros and cons of qualitative and quantitative research. It demonstrates when to use each form of research, what are its economic advantages and disadvantages, and what forms of qualitative and quantitative research work best for different communities. The seminar presents:

  • Time lines and time tables for research
  • Research costs and how to keep them low
  • How to explain your research to the community at large
  • How to use theory as an inexpensive way to avoid expensive survey research
  • How to turn your research into action

Ethnic tourism: How to market it while being sensitive to the socio-ecological issues

This seminar focuses on how minority cultures can play a major role in a community’s tourism industry while at the same time, how governments need to be sensitive to these people’s rights to preserve their culture and not be overwhelmed by insensitive tourists.

Extraterrestrial tourism from angels to extraterrestrial: New concepts in out-of-this-world travel

This course is designed to help communities take advantage of the extra-terrestrial tourism fad. The course looks at

  • Who is interested in extra-terrestrials
  • How to advertise
  • Services needed
  • Extra-terrestrial tourism as a form of postmodernism
  • How to use extra-terrestrial as a means for economic development

The course also discusses what other communities are doing, types of people extraterrestrial tourism attracts, and types of services needed.

Facing issues of crime and terrorism

This seminar will investigate the impact of the police on a community’s tourist industry. The seminar will cover:

  • How the police can have a positive impact on tourism
  • Police as information sources
  • Police as goodwill ambassadors
  • Police as front-line medical personnel
  • How police may be a negative factor on tourism
  • Flash-points between the police and the tourist industry
  • The threat of terrorism

This seminar will also to discuss ways to develop interactive alliances between the travel and law enforcement industries. The seminar looks at the costs of crime and the steps CVBs can take to help protect the industry.

Getting started: An overview for the tourist professional

This seminar provides an introduction to the methodologies and theories of tourism. This seminar, conducted in a workshop format, provides the “how-to’s and do’s and don’ts” of tourism research and development. The seminar is designed for small communities whose staff member(s) must be multifaceted, and who seek guidance in the following areas:

  • How to seek grants
  • The basic concepts of qualitative research
  • The basic concepts of quantitative research
  • The basic concepts of promotion
  • The tools of tourism

Goal achievement: Encouraging sub organizational cooperation

Components within an organization often work toward individual rather than a common agenda. This seminar will discuss various ways to create an atmosphere for teamwork among the various agencies within a large organizational structure. The seminar will look at:

  • Potential obstacles to cooperation
  • Techniques for feedback analysis
  • Methods to create higher levels of cooperation

How to select the proper target group for your community’s tourist industry

This seminar is designed to delineate types of tourist groups. This seminar will focus on such questions as: What segment mix should a community target? What needs do tourists/visitors have? What is the sociology of the business traveler? What is the sociology of the transient leisure traveler? What is the sociology of the resort leisure traveler? This seminar will cover:

  • Principles of market segmentation
  • Creation of demographic profiles
  • Development of questionnaires
  • Distribution of questionnaires
  • Stratification by socio-economic groups
  • Attraction analysis

How to survive in a CVB or chamber job through self-promotion: What’s OK to do, What’s wrong to do, What’s moral and What’s not

This seminar is perfect for major conferences. It provides attendees with the fundamentals of community power, how to use, how to identify it, and how to promote your tourism industry agenda.

International tourism

This seminar provides insights into the complex world of marketing an American product to the outside world. The seminar focuses on issues such as:

  • Special problems of the foreign tourist
  • Differences in the social make-up of the European, Asian, and Latin American tourist
  • Handling foreign currencies
  • Issues of language
  • Issues of culture
  • Preparing one’s community for the foreign visitor

LGBT community: How and why to connect and engage? 

LGBTQs comprise a “slice” of the world’s population. There are markets for singles, couples, and families across ethnicity, age, and gender. We are citizens, consumers, influencers, students, seniors, business owners, and employees. Based on research, this workshop will discover diverse interests, matching products or services to viable LGBTQ market segments.
Making the tourist feel comfortable and desirous of returning

This seminar combines the best of tourism-oriented policing with the ideas of hospitality and customer service. It is meant as a guide so that tourism professionals can create a hospitable tourism environment so that the community can benefit from repeat tourism. The seminar gives information on material such as:

  • The art of giving directions
  • How to develop a tourism policing manual
  • How to deal with multi-cultural tourism
  • How to work with non-English-speaking international visitors

Making tourism profitable

This seminar helps you to design a tourism business strategy by understanding such questions as:

  • Who are your tourism customers?
  • What do your customers want?
  • How is tourism like a business and how does it differ?
  • Who should and should not be a “customer”?
  • Why should someone chopse my community to visit over another community?
  • Is market share important?

This seminar is tailored so that each participant will take home a specific business plan for his/her community.

Rural tourism

This seminar focuses on how rural communities can use their resources to create a viable tourism industry while being sensitive to the local ecology and culture of a community. Among the topics to be covered are:

  • County-side publicity
  • Developing rural attractions
  • Selecting the right market
  • Working within the local political framework

Listening: The key to successful service

This seminar will cover such topics as: How can service personnel be inspired to become community representatives? This seminar is appropriate not only for people in the tourism/visitor industry but also for communities that wish to treat their citizens as guests. Some of the topics that are addressed are:

  • Keeping your service personnel current on local happenings
  • Deciding on which type of service best fits the needs of those visiting a specific community
  • Understanding the sociology of good manners
  • A multi-cultural look at how ethnicity may define “politeness”

Sociology of the baby boomers for tourism: How tourism can make it a baby boom or baby bust

This seminar will cover the sociology of those born during the baby boom and compare them to the generation which follows. The seminar will look at:

  • Women in the workforce and how it pertains to tourism
  • The interaction between vacation and child care
  • The effect of two-income households on vacation time
  • Yuppy travel patterns
  • The use of snob appeal in the tourist industry

Some tools for marketing your products

This seminar is designed to highlight the potentials and pitfalls of common advertising techniques. This seminar will cover:

Brochure analysis –

  • Matching expectations with reality
  • Color analysis – what messages colors send
  • Font and print selection
  • How to select the right advertising vehicles

Statistics and tourism: The art of collecting information and knowing how to utilize it

This seminar will focus on how to measure a tourist’s reaction to a community. Emphasis will be placed on the art of the questionnaire. The seminar will cover such topics as:

  • What can be asked of a tourist
  • What cannot be asked
  • How a questionnaire can be constructed so as to yield the greatest amount of useful information
  • What are the proper ways to distribute a questionnaire?

Targeting the right convention

This seminar is designed to delineate types of conventions. It will present a taxonomy of the convention industry illustrating the social and economic realities of each type of convention. This seminar will focus on such topics as:

  • What is the sociology of the convention participant?
  • What needs do participants have?
  • How can the demographic profile of the participant be determined?
  • How can convention business be an entry into greater tourist revenue?
  • What type of convention is best for your community: Economically and politically?

The critique: How to diagnose the state of your tourist/visitor industry

This innovative program will offer the participant several techniques on how to analyze the state of a community’s tourist/visitor industry. This seminar’s purpose is to give the local professional the necessary sociological and statistical tools needed in the identification of basic strengths and weaknesses within a local tourist system. Ideas will be offered on how to correct problems and build on local strengths.

The Group Tour’s Social Structure

This seminar looks at the composition of people who take group tours. Who are they, what special needs do they have. The seminar covers topics such as:

  • the US versus European group tourist
  • caring for the group tourist
  • getting the group tourist to want to return
  • selling to the group tourist: the art of the souvenir
  • the culture of the group tourist

The Interrelationship between Police Departments and Tourism Cities

This seminar shows how important a police department is to the success of a tourism product. The seminar also demonstrates how much policing can learn from tourism, Some of the topics covered are:

  • how tourism can help police departments improve customer service
  • how tourism can help police departments to increase salaries
  • how police departments and tourism entities can create meaningful dialogue
  • how police departments can play a significant role in improving the community’s quality of life
  • how police departments can become attractions and how tourism units can become a part of law enforcement.

Tourism as a Community Player: Its Direct and Indirect Benefits

This seminar provides insights into tourism’s multifaceted community roles. Among the subjects discussed are:

  • the direct economic benefits of tourism
  • the direct social benefits of tourism
  • tourism’s role as a tool in the attraction of other industries
  • tourism’s role in the development of local pride
  • how tourist and political leaders can work together

Tourism in the First Half of the Twenty-first Century: Preparing Now for Your Future

This seminar gives food for thought on how present trends will impact on the tourist industry of tomorrow. Among the trends to be discussed are:

  • new technologies in the field of transportation
  • new technologies in the field of communication
  • demographic patterns
  • the allocation of time between work and play
  • the lengthening of the public school year and its impact on the family vacation

Tourism and Retirement – Can They Co-Exist?

This seminar will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the tourist and retirement models. How do these two models interact? What are the positive ramifications from them working together? What are the negative consequences inherent from competition between these two industries? This seminar will present a socio-statistical outline of the tools needed to make a proper decision concerning the coexistence of these two industries.

Tourism’s Big Picture: Learning How All its Parts Fit and Work Together

This seminar will seek to provide an overview of the industry’s major “players.” Emphasis will be placed on the ways that the actions of one segment in the industry affects all other segments. Some examples are:

  • the effect of hotel marketing on local attractions
  • the effect of transportation arteries on restaurants
  • the effect of destination development on local businesses

The seminar is designed to encourage cooperation between tourism’s various segments.

Tourism Faces The Issue Of Gaming and How to Judge Its Effects on Your Community

This seminar will teach a community to determine casinos gaming’s effects on such key issues as:

  • casinos’ effects on crime
  • casinos’ effects on hotel occupancy
  • casinos’ effects on local attraction attendance
  • casinos’ effects on local restaurants
  • casinos’ effects on service industry employment

It then guidelines for individual communality research and plans for action.

Tourism Is Economic Development

This seminar will define how and why tourism is economic development. It discusses a broad range of topics such as:

  • generating new money in the community
  • tax revenues
  • job creation
  • economic preservation
  • tourism’s role in quality of life
  • tourism as an ally for economic development in other industries

Trends in Niche Marketing for the 21st Century

This seminar is designed to help a community delineate which tourist groups it has the best chance of attracting in the early parts of the next century. This seminar will focus on such questions as: (1) How to determine which future trends will most effect your community, (2) What segment mix should a community target? What needs will tourists/visitors have? What will be the sociology of tomorrow’s travelers? What role will such participatory sports, as golf, play in future travel marketing? Among the items this seminar will cover (given in alphabetical order) are:

  • attraction analysis by sociological groups
  • demographic patterns and niche marketing
  • how the issue of an aging population will effect leisure activities
  • how we will allocate our time between work and play
  • marketing to the Twenty-First century traveler
  • types of travelers and their needs
  • participatory sports such as golf
  • new technologies in the field of communication
  • principles of market segmentation
  • the lengthening of the public school year and its impact on the family vacation
  • Twenty-First century market segmentation

Understanding Tourism: How Teaching Tourism to All City Employees Impacts a Community’s Economic Development, Improves Public Services and Promotes Racial And Cultural Understanding.

This seminar focuses on a unique program that was first developed for police departments and then extended to other city agencies. The program discusses how public employees can be trained through tourism education such skills as:

  • Being community hosts,
  • Law enforcement’s role in being hospitable to tourists, why the police,
  • Insights into the sociology of tourism,
  • The special needs and issues of such groups as: the elderly tourist, the woman tourist, or the international tourist,
  • Dealing with tourism gender issues: male to male, male to female, female to female, and female to male,
  • The role of refuse collection, electrical companies, etc. in tourism,
  • Psychological strategies for dealing with problems caused by tourists,
  • Understanding and creating positive speech patterns,
  • Tourism’s role in racial/cultural issues,
  • How to deal with an angry tourist;
  • How to develop cooperation between city departments and local CVBs.

Using What You Have: How to Make the Most of Your Community

This seminar explains how a community can utilize its facilities to the best of its advantage. The seminar looks at how communities can target populations that will appreciate what they currently have. The seminar also provides ideas on how to turn the pedestrian into the unique. This seminar is especially valuable for small communities, many of which have negative self-perceptions of what they have to offer a visitor.

Welcome Centers: What Works-What Doesn’t

This seminar examines different types of welcome centers. It provides a cross-cultural look at welcome centers around the world, This seminar can be given as a one or two-part course.

Part 1 deals with the theories and concepts of good service:

  • Defining good service:
  • Who uses welcome centers and for what reasons
  • Different needs of the foreign and local (national) tourist
  • Language difficulties

Lecture 2 looks at:

  • Looking at brochures at welcome centers
  • Police as tourism promoters
  • Training tourism center staffs
  • Making a geographic area tourism sensitive:
  • How welcome centers need to work with government officials, waiters and waitresses, restauranteurs and hoteliers, and the local press

Year-round Schooling: Tourism’s Newest Challenge

This seminar examines the challenge of alternative school calendars to the tourism industry. With over 4,000 school districts having abolished some form of the traditional summer, the tourism industry needs to know how to react and what to do. This seminar touches upon:

  • types of alternative educational calendars
  • who wins, who loses
  • how to prepare a document for your legislature
  • with whom to form a coalition
  • should tourism sacrifice itself for the good of our children?
  • does year-round education help children?
  • how can tourism become help our children to learn?

Surviving Economically Uncertain Times: How will the current state of the economy impact your business.

This seminar will address what the tourism professional needs to know about the current state of the US economy, from how the changes in health care will impact tourism to issues concerning the stock market. It will segment the economy by groups and look at both past economic history as it pertains to tourism and future trends.

How much of a threat to tourism is terrorism? Deciding how best to spend your tourism budget? Sales development

Terrorism is a double threat to tourism, not only from a physical standpoint but also from a media standpoint. This seminar looks at how tourism’s different component parts are impacted by terrorism and counterterrorism policy. This lecture will examine which parts of the industry are most impacted and how to or not react to an ever-evolving situation.

Successful and failed tourism marketing strategies.

This seminar focuses in on tourism marketing strategies vis-à-vis tourism sectors, such as age, ethnic grouping and sociological factors. It examines why some strategies have worked in the past and others have failed. It then asks the question do past successes or failures indicate the same results under different circumstances?

Avoiding tourism crises by using good risk management techniques

The best way to avoid the cost of a crisis recovery is to have good risk management and thereby avoid the crisis. This seminar looks at the many ways to do risk management even on a low budget and then how to save money in every aspect of one’s business.

Recovering from bad publicity

Unfortunately, bad things do happen, and when they happen often the media can make a bad situation worse. This seminar provides suggestions on how to speak or not speak with the media, how to turn the media into an ally and what to do before a crisis occurs.

The Art of Listening

We have two ears and one mouth as a sign that we need to learn how to listen more and carefully. Good listening does not mean winning every argument. It does mean understanding what the other person is saying on both an overt and covert level. This seminar addresses the issues of how to be still and discern what the other person is really saying. What is a client trying to express and when should we answer and when is the best course of action providing our clients with a sounding board. The art of listening is not only useful in client relations but is also used within an organization so that all members know what the organization’s policy is.

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

Not all marketing works for every segment of the tourism population. This seminar looks at what attracts different segments of the tourism population, what do push and what not to push. The session wil segment the US tourism population not only by age and sex but by likes and dislikes. The material will then be presented in a way that a business can use this knowledge to increase its clientele in a way that turns first time customers into satisfied customers who wish to return.

Marketing to the International Tourist

The US is fast becoming one of the world’s great destinations. Tourism to this country however is not uni-dimensional and there are great differences in what a Latin American desires and what someone from Eastern or South Asia desires in a visit to the US. This seminar focuses on different major cultural groups, issues of language, and the need to understand each nation’s concept of time and cultural demands.

Understanding cultural differences in tourism

Know the law is not enough. Although all Americans are equal in the eyes of the law, equality does not means return business. Not all American tourists are alike and understand ethnic differences, by region and by cultural and ethnic groups allows not only a particular tourism industry to expand, but also can avoid sensitivity and diversity issues. This seminar also looks at the special needs of LGBT tourists and the needs of such overlooked groups as the traveling single-dad.

Tourism Ethics: Linking the Wisdom to Your Tourism Product

A major problem in tourism is that many parts of the industry are not seen as credible in the eyes of its clients. This seminar distinguishes between what is legal and what is ethical. It concentrates on how we can increase our business by the building of reputation in which we do the right thing rather than merely giving the legally necessary response.

Getting along with angry/upset/negative co-workers.

Everyone has a bad day and some people seem to have a continuous angry or bad day. In a customer service industry such as tourism, rude and angry behavior is more than an annoyance it is a liability. This seminar focuses on how do we turn frowns into smiles and turn a difficult personal experience into a positive one.

Touring your police department into a tourism economic generator

Security in today’s world is a top priority. Most police officers have little or no understanding of their role in economic development. This course in TOPPs (Toursm Oriented Policing/Protection Services) transforms police officers into both security specialists and tourism promoters. The course teaches both tourism professionals and police officers how the police can add to the bottom line rather than being negatively impacting the bottom line.
occur, how to overcome it and go beyond it.

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?