The Georgia Institute of Technology’s unit that helps promote tourism throughout Georgia seeks nominations for “best tourism and destination management practices” to be published in a guidebook next year.
“We want to receive nominations from all types of private and public sector enterprises ranging anywhere from small tourism industries to Disney,” Rich Harrill, senior business associate of the university’s Tourism and Regional Assistance Centers, told GlobalFax last week.
“And we want nominations from outside the U.S. since tourism is the world’s number one industry.”
Dr. Harrill said that this year the tourism unit was seeking more international nominations because it received only a few for the first edition of the guidebook published by the Educational Institute of the American Hotel and Lodging Association.
A tourism database developed by the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration in Austria, was the only international entry among 16 case studies appearing in last year’s edition.
Dr. Harrill is looking for nominations this year in such categories as advocacy, information technology, funding, professional development, research and Web marketing. He also said that there should be many examples of sustainable projects from Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America featuring heritage and eco-tourism projects.
The U.S. Economic Development Administration, the Georgia Department of Community Affairs and the governor’s office funds the unit, which is part of Georgia Tech’s Economic Development Institute.
“One reason the unit was created in 2000,” he said, “is because there have more requests from communities affected by globalization and free trade that have lost companies to other countries. They now are looking for tourism opportunities that they may not have thought of before.”
Georgia communities are seeking ways that it may bring more revenue to them in the same way that communities throughout the world also are doing, he added.
The nominations are open to public, private and nonprofit-sector organizations. They may be nominated by another party or by themselves.
For more information, contact Dr. Harrill at HYPERLINK mailto:rich.harrill@edi.gatech.edu rich.harrill@edi.gatech.edu