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November 13, 2001 California Represents Western States' Best Hopes To Weather Economy This Winter California has more residents than many countries, some 33.9 million. And it looks like California will once again power domestic tourism in the Western states, because everyone targets California--where the people and the dollars are. New advertising being rushed into California's major markets echoes the strategies tourism agencies typically rely on as the national economy slows. Inasmuch as Californians account for 85% of the domestic travel completed inside the Golden State, a new advertising campaign is urging residents to "rediscover California" rather than head out of state. But other states clearly hope to woo Californians during the winter. Nearly a quarter of Arizona's 26.7 million visitors last year came from California. Nevada and Hawaii are the two states with the heaviest dependence upon tourism dollars on a per capita basis, with Southern California regularly generating 25% of Las Vegas' tourist traffic. And Los Angeles and San Francisco are the top two markets for Hawaii. Accommodations available on barter are plentiful, and although there's a growing interest in barter--new companies joining trade exchanges--existing members are still reluctant to travel, and not taking advantage of the travel availabilities within the barter marketplace. World Trade Organization Reports Severe Contractionary Pressures According to David Orr, chief economist for Wachovia Securities in Charlotte (NC), "This is about the worst global situation since 1973, we've never had a situation since then when all the regions of the world were either in recession or headed toward a recession at the same time." The Geneva-based WTO, which oversees trade among its 142 member nations, says the total volume of merchandise trade is expected to rise just 2% this year, a sharp reduction from last year's 12% growth rate. The new estimates are based on levels of international commerce during the first half of the year, and may not fully reflect the effects of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The
technology sector has slowed considerably, with worldwide sales
of personal computers falling this year for the first time in the
industry's history. Other factors contributing to the slowdown are
higher energy prices and tight monetary policies in the leading
industrial economies during most of 2000. Strong Pro-Spam Lobby Big Spenders According to CIO magazine, don't expect legislation barring spam to be passed into law anytime soon, despite the fact that spam bedevils almost everyone in corporate American today. The reasons for that are complex. According to Everett-Church, who is a member of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail, anti-spam activists are sorely out-funded by the pro-spam lobby, which includes large financial-services companies and the Direct Marketing Association. And, even though an estimated 30% of the 30 million messages coming through the AOL network every day are spam, AOL Time Warner is not backing anti-spam legislation because it wants to reserve the right to send its own commercial messages, according to Everett-Church. Most of the other large ISPs feel the same, he says. Everett-Church points out that it costs next to nothing to set up shop online, justifying the estimated positive spam response rate of well under 1 percent. "All the spammer needs is one or two hit rates per spam run and he'll be happy. Sadly, there are at least one or two idiots per million people." Executives
of public companies don't like to talk about spam, he says, because
they don't want the world to know just how much it costs them. "When
part of your IT budget depends on whether Billy Bob in accounting
signed up for a pyramid scheme, that's not something they like to
talk about," Everett-Church says. "With spam, it's an
ongoing guerrilla war." Here And There. . .
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