A company's website is a crucial component to a successful export marketing strategy. MBITA is now planning a first-of-its-kind conference in the Spring of 2003 in Monterey, Ca. entitled 'Global Trade Meets the World Wide Web'.

"We need to have a 'rubber-meets-the road' kind of conference where a small business really understands all the factors that a web site needs to address to be successful in a global marketplace", states Shay Adams, MBITA Vice President and board member.

We are now seeking Sponsors and Presenters for this conference

Ms. Jones, founder of Jones & Tregenza Communications Group, recently returned to Monterey from Knoxville, Tenn. where she was General Manager of both a weekly newspaper and magazine publishing company. She has twenty-five years of media and event management experience. Newspaper industry experience included work as classified manager and telemarketing manager for the Monterey County Herald, classified manager and advertising director for the San Mateo Times. Her event experience includes work with the Gilroy Garlic Festival, Monterey County Wine Festival, Fremont Art Festival and exhibit promotions for Knoxville Museum of Art.

Services include revenue strategies for your web site, new business software tools to help businesses market themselves more easily, media plans that save money, employee retention programs, seminars, trade-shows and educational forums. Customized professional business papers, brochures, invitations and newsletters are key aspects of the company's focus to ensure professional image development.

Jones & Tregenza Communications Group will manage your events throughout the year. Creating an annual event planning calendar and developing a written implementation plan. Such help frees companies to concentrate on the work they do best.

MBITA welcomes to its membership Aptos-based RezKey, Inc. Developed by Santa Cruz-based Tenonline Advanced Services, Rezkey is a state-of-the-art online booking engine and distribution system which enables Convention Visitors Bureaus (CVB) web sites to host all local businesses and services, providing a "one-stop-shop" experience for convention goers, event attendees and leisure visitors.

According to a study conducted by Travel Industry of America, the number of travelers using the Internet to get information on destinations or to check prices grew from 59 million in 2000 to 65 million in 2001. 48% of travelers (31 million) who used the Internet to plan their trips in 2001 actually booked or made travel reservations online.

The online reservation system has the potential to generate more sales for hoteliers by connecting even the smallest hotel properties to the growing number of travelers who are making travel decisions and booking hotel rooms online.

From the CVC's web site, travelers can search for hotel availability, compare lodging choices and rates, and book their rooms with just a few simple clicks. Anyone with an Internet connection can search for and book a room from anywhere in the world, any time, any day. The online reservation system works with hotels' travel supply system, allows complete and secure client control of loading and managing real-time inventory and rates, and provides real-time booking confirmations via email and/or fax.

The number of travelers using the CVC web site has more than doubled in the past year, from 206,663 users in 2000-01 to 598,087 users in 2001-02. According to a recent conversion study, 70% of travelers who requested the Traveler's Guide off of the CVC's web site actually visited Santa Cruz County.

Nine local hotel properties participated in the testing period for the CVC's online reservation system. By November, the CVC plans to open up its online reservation system to all hotel properties in Santa Cruz County. The power behind the CVC's online reservation system is RezKey.

RezKey booking engine and distribution system blends seamlessly into the CVC's web site. Another local company, Santa Cruz Clicks, was responsible for creating the graphical interface to match the look and feel of the CVC's existing site. Rezkey is your key to successful internet travel distribution and procurement.

MBITA welcomes to its membership Scotts Valley-based AEIOS, Inc., a local consulting company with a focus on web marketing. Your company may have great new products or services, hot new technologies, and a cool, new Web site to show off your business to the world. You may know there are markets for your products out there somewhere in the world, but where? To better understand your worldwide market opportunities, you need answers to some questions:

• Where in the world are the best markets for your products and services?
• What products or services do they want to buy from you?
• How can you reach your international customers most effectively? What messages do they want to hear from you about your products?

How do you find out what your international customers really want from you? You ask them! AEIOS can provide you with answers to important questions about your global markets.

AEIOS designs and conducts online, interactive, multilingual surveys of high-technology global business and consumer markets via the World Wide Web. AEIOS applies state-of-the-art Internet survey research techniques and methodologies to help you uncover new global market opportunities and increase sales of your products and services worldwide.

AEIOS helps you understand what global markets want from you by communicating directly with your international customers online, in their native languages. Interactive Web sites and online surveys conducted by AEIOS give you the opportunity to receive information from, as well as provide information to, your customers and prospects worldwide, over the Internet.

AEIOS delivers global marketing research consulting services to enterprises in e-Commerce, global trade, advertising, new media, computer hardware and software, consumer products, agriculture, financial services, health care, international travel, telecommunications, and information technology markets worldwide. Small to medium sized companies that need to expand their domestic and international markets for their products and services can benefit from AEIOS global marketing research services.

• Reduce IT costs and demands on systems and personnel.
• Eliminate your communications costs with U.S. Customs.
• Protect your data with reliable, redundant, offsite backup.
• Leverage the power of the Internet to achieve new levels of productivity.

For further information or to schedule a free 'webinar' on Smartborder.com contact Tony Livoti at the MBITA office at 831-469-0148 (tlivoti@mbita.org).

CCITA's Advisory Board Is Growing!

Three new members of CCITA's Advisory Board have accepted their invitations: Dr. William Pendergast of Dean at the Cal Poly School of Business, Dennis Lavelle of DEL Industries and Tony Baird of Phillips & Associates Attorneys At Law. All have various backgrounds in international trade and we welcome their expertise and community stature.