Tourism Professionals Can Solve Problems
To the Editor:

Knowing that in today's world, this letter is far too long, I sincerely hope it will be of help to everybody. In your recent edition's story stating the "experts are seeking new ideas to solve the state's tourism problems," it appears there will be public meetings to get input from those suffering in the throes of slowing business, and I have to ask, how many of the experts make a living in the actual business activity of the industry? Everybody is entitled to opinions, but experience is another thing.

Your article stated that the project is an "industry supported" one, and regardless of the fact that tourism has been in movement since 1945, it will finally come to fruition and this project now will solve the state's tourism problems. Who is actually "the industry" supporting this?

An essential missing ingredient in discussing our tourism problem is leader experience. For the interviewing group of experts to hope that listening to the needs of the industry's businesses, expressed in desperate measures at public meetings, will result in a meaningful solution is naive. Recording these needs in organized, written form is redundant and indicative of a lack of depth in the understanding of this business.

When you are a professional in any business, you have to do things that work the first time, rather than proposing an endless series of trials that cost money and do not improve the bottom line in reasonably helpful time frames. Professionals are not hired to simply try things out; anybody can do that.

Not too long ago, I wrote to some of Michigan's travel authorities, offering my services as a field consultant to help solve the state's tourism difficulties and I am not hiding the fact that I do this for a living. I was told they were, because of the state's situation, cutting down rather than expanding staff at the time.

There were probably many reasons they were doing this, but, typically, when business is bad, it is not the time for any agency trying to stimulate it to cut down, to fade away and leave everybody to their own means. This is the time when the assisting agency systems are supposed to kick in to help the situation.

Computers do not change the basic principles of business, and neither does the current whim of the public change the basic principles of tourism. Healthy tourism is more about how money is being spent than about how much is being spent.

In this changing world, you must sell to all markets at the same time to attract enough volume to meet the competition. With the state project, there is no way to simply offer an "easy fix," or in terms of an old standard industry saying, "there is no such thing as a free lunch."

A number of years ago, in another letter to the editor, I

suggested the key to solving the state's tourism problems lay in utilizing hands-on, experienced professionals and advised the state to spend some money and time in recruiting professional talent directly from the management bank of the industry.

I would also ask the committee to accept written input, in addition to the needed public hearings, to analyze and subsequently offer counter-suggestions to those attending the sessions, or maybe even take action to solve some of the problems prior to the hearings. In my opinion as a professional consultant, this would be more productive and give people a chance to express their thoughts more clearly and productively.

Also, it might save valuable time. It is costing those in the industry a lot of money every day that nothing is actually being done to alleviate their losses.

Leonard Trankina,

Mackinac Island

Editor's Note: Mr. Trankina is former director of the Mackinac Island Tourism Bureau.