Delroy A. Whyte-Hall, of the Jamaican tourism public relations firm Whyte-Hall Communications Network, has issued a call for a reduction in the island's overseas tourism advertising budget, meanwhile supporting the bulk of the tourism promotion dollar goes to public relations, i.e. educational study trips for retail agents, press trips, special events promotions.

"Some industry players talk as if advertising is the life blood for the island ailing tourism sector," says Mr. Whyte-Hall, speaking against the background of the recent public row that sought to blame the Jamaica Tourist Board for not doing enough to advertise the island's tourism product overseas.

"But consider this.... A four-color full-page advertisement in The New York Times that runs in only one issue costs approximately US$80,000 ? US$100,000. Therefore, a destination featured in a three-page article in The New York Times would earn themselves $240,000 "US$300,000 worth of advertising.

David Ogilvy, of the advertising agency Ogilvy Benson and Mather and one of Britain's greatest exponents of advertising, Mr. Whyte-Hall argued, once declared to an audience in New York composed of senior travel industry staff that he would choose to spend US$250,000 on public relations before he spent a penny on travel advertising.

"Ogilvy's aim," he said, "was to highlight the importance of an area of communications that was all too easily overlooked by those in the industry and to make clear that in his view PR actually produced better value for money than the more traditional avenues of promotion."

One reason why PR has tended to take a lesser role in the communications mix, he pointed out, was that it was even more "difficult to quantify the benefits of PR expenditure than of other forms of promotion. Another is that the uses of the technique and what can be achieved are less well understood by the industry."

"Since the aim is to ensure credibility, PR messages, with their perceived objectivity," he said, "are more convincing than advertising and in the long run were likely to have a greater impact on sales, is a far more subtle one."

One of the principal public relations exercises in travel, he said, was the provision of educational study trips for retail agents. "Some argue that this is not a PR function at all, but rather an aspect of sales promotion, since its objective is to facilitate retail sales through improvement of retailers knowledge of the country's products," he said.

He added, however, the agency educational shares many of the characteristics of a press facility visit, and while the sales objectives are important, they tend to play a lesser role than the strengthening of relationships between the principal and his agents, and the building of goodwill. Moreover, the educational provides agents with all-round knowledge of a region, rather than focusing on a particular company's products, and principals supporting the programme often treat it as part of their PR budget.

In conclusion, he noted that consumers were becoming increasingly sophisticated, hence more immune to the messages carried by advertising, the role of PR in a region was doubly important.