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During the 48th AIEST Congress in Marrakech (Morocco) our organisation made an extensive study of destination marketing, its possibilities and its limitations. The many members who attended were unanimous in the opinion that complementary and cooperative marketing need considerable development and stimulation at the destination level. As a result of global competition tourism organisations no longer find it possible to confine their activities to core tasks in market communication and public relations. In the context of positioning and branding policy they must increasingly make use of all the instruments of the marketing mix. Given the expectations of today's customers and the latest developments in the area of information technology it is no longer possible to separate activities in such fields as promotion, information, distribution and sales, if one wishes to remain effective. New concepts and organisational developments are therefore required that will make it possible to carry out destination marketing in a consistent manner. In this context, the marketing of destination‐like products such as leisure parks and resort corporations (consolidates) offers a rare opportunity for benchmarking. At the AIEST Congress we took note of the fact that, in cases where the supply is fragmented, there is no real alternative to vertical cooperation at the destination level. We discussed ways in which to bypass obstacles to cooperation. Government incentives play a major role in this context. Indeed without government support it will be just as difficult in the future as at present to carry out any kind of destination marketing.

It is all too easy in the hectic world of business to get too involved with the day‐to‐day managing of processes and events. When this happens it is difficult to see the wood for the trees and the automatic pilot syndrome takes over. This does not suggest that you do not know what you are doing ‐ on the contrary you are probably as switched on to whatever activity you are managing as anyone could be. What you could be missing, however, is the explanation as to why you are doing it. If this sounds familiar to you, what might be needed is a detached period from your work. By this I mean stay on the high ground for a while so you can get an overview of what you are doing and, more importantly, why you are doing it. How many managers, I wonder, get the opportunity to question what they are doing? If you allow yourself to slip into complacency then you and your organization will soon lose competitive advantage.

Highly restrictive commercial lease audit clauses have come into vogue in commercial leases over the past decade or so. Their original purpose was to provide a means by which the tenant could verify that the landlord’s accounting was reasonable and proper. The reason for its popularity with landlords is that it has evolved into a tool that allows landlords to capture funds in excess of the agreed‐upon deal based on the intent of a lease contract. Audit clauses typically relate to operating expense statements ‐ sometimes referred to as either OPE (operating expense) or CAM (common area maintenance) statements. Audit clauses have also been used, but with less frequency, by landlords for other billing categories, including electricity surveys and other tenancy‐related charges. Landlords have a fiduciary responsibility to bill their tenants properly. There should be full disclosure and transparency of the detail relating to a landlord’s calculations behind any and all bills rendered to a tenant. Lease audit clauses that limit tenant rights to transparency in a landlord’s billing system should not be allowable. Lease audit clauses are viewed by savvy end‐user tenants as a landlord’s ‘licence to steal’. Time‐limited lease audit clauses motivate landlords to overcharge their tenants: once the audit time limits have passed, the landlord may capture improper payments made by trusting and unsuspecting tenants. The audit clause is generally unfair to a tenant and as such should not be allowed in leases. If one must be present in a commercial lease, then it should at least be tied to a reasonable time frame ‐ such as the local jurisdiction’s statute of limitation, or a minimum of three years. Whether or not an audit clause exists in a lease, a tenant should make every effort to have a specialist lease audit firm review the lease and billings regularly to ensure compliance with specific lease language.