Hospitality Newfoundland & Labrador's LOOKOUT! Tourism Summit 2008

In mid-February I had the pleasure of traveling to Gander, NL for Hospitality Newfoundland & Labrador's (HNL) annual LOOKOUT! Tourism Summit. While my counterpart, Craig Foley, was busy ensuring the the technology side of the conference was working flawlessly, I was manning our TourismTechnology.com booth. I was referred to as the "Craig Foley of Nova Scotia" on a number of occassions and spoke with many conference attendees as well as suppliers taking part in the tradeshow portion of the conference. Many of the operators I spoke with asked the same questions that I get here in Nova Scotia:

- Do I need a website?
- How important/expensive is online booking on a website?
- Should I be able to update my website myself and how can I do it?
- Should I have a blog?
- How do I make my site appear higher in the search results?

I talked about what the mentoring sessions cover and showed operators the manual that they will receive and the PowerPoint Presentation that summarizes the manual. I also provided them with Craig's contact information so that they could speak to him further about the project and to set up mentoring sessions.

The technology session held during the conference featured an introduction to TourismTechnology.com by Craig, the experiences of an operator that had recently added the ability to book online to his tourism business website, and a representative from the Adventure Tourism Association who spoke highly of an online booking engine designed specifically for tour operator websites. It was a very informative session which showed how these additions to websites have been creating more business opportunities for operators in the province.

The hospitality in Gander was amazing and I look forward to returning again someday... preferably when there is not 5 feet of snow on the ground!