A key element of a successful tourism industry is the ability to recognize and deal with change across a wide range of key factors and the way they interact. Key drivers of global change can be classified as Economic, Social, Political, Technological and Environmental. This paper explores the way in which these key drivers could affect the global tourism industry to the year 2020. An exploration of these trends allows important change agents, on both the supply side and the demand side of tourism, to be highlighted and discussed. In response, innovative strategies can be formulated by destination managers and tourism operators to avoid strategic drift for their organisations and to develop tourism in a sustainable way.

Governments are often asked to provide financial support for special events and conventions to be held within particular destinations. The major problem is: what degree of support, if any, is warranted? The answer to this question varies according to the perceived public benefits and costs associated with the event. Clearly, there is needed some framework of analysis that can be used to help determine which events should be supported, and to what extent, and which should not be supported with public funds. In late 1998 Tourism New South Wales commissioned the development of a framework for assessing the economic impacts of events and conventions (exhibitions, conferences) by type and by location. This framework was expected to serve as a device for discerning trends in economic impacts of events and conventions, and also serve as a guide to projecting the likely economic impacts of future events and conventions by type and by location. The focus of this article is on the usefulness of the framework for assessing the impacts of events and conventions. First, the aims of the project undertaken for Tourism New South Wales are specified, and the method outlined. Second, the framework that was developed for assessing the economic and other impacts of events and conventions is presented and discussed.

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Tourism is especially vulnerable to disasters and, being fragmented, often its response is difficult to initiate and coordinate. It is also information intensive and when in chaos its information needs are exacerbated. The paper aims to develop a knowledge management system for disasters in a tourist destination in terms of a knowledge framework for tourism disaster management at the public sector level. Knowledge is a powerful resource to help governments, organisations and communities prevent, mitigate, plan for and recover from disasters and crises. Destinations need knowledge in the three stages of disaster management-pre disaster prevention and planning, disaster situation management and post disaster phases of resolution and return to normality. The paper creates a tourism destination's public sector model of a knowledge management system for the first two stages of preventative planning and management of disasters-knowledge framework for disaster management in a learning destination. It includes recommendations about the various types of knowledge and information needed and the specifics of the information system architecture.

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