Good morning on Groundhog Day! So I've learned my lesson from last issue's mention of a certain NFC championship game - I don't think I can take anymore Bears-bashing! I will only say this: I am very pleased to see my favorite football team in the Superbowl because who knows if we'll get the same chance again next year!

Jeff, otherwise known as my boss, came back yesterday from the ABA show in Grapevine, Tex. PTM actually had a team of six manning the booth (and the bar, of course!) so you know Jeff came back full of stories and fun rumors to relay. Don't miss his full ABA report.

Speaking of reporting, our February edition of Leisure Group Travel was shipped this week, featuring our brand-new Showcase Series. Read below for more information on that.

Wishing you lots of clouds - at least for today!

The Brandywine Valley has inspired many to greatness. Let it inspire you. Tour the world renowned museums and gardens made famous by the legacy of the du Pont and Wyeth families.

Groups should also make sure to visit Longwood Gardens, the world’s premier horticultural display garden on 1,050 acres offering 40 indoor/outdoor gardens, breathtaking conservatory and spectacular illuminated fountains and fireworks.

There are many activities for groups in this beautiful area. Click below for more information.

Many Americans seem to have been stricken with the disease "quit-itis." They quit everything too soon. It is almost an epidemic from marriages and diets to jobs and exercise programs. The malady is even more acute in the sales profession.

This weekly column will help you "Become the Exception" to this sad statistic. You can become among the elite of the sales world who know how to keep a prospect and convert that prospect to a loyal client. Learning how is not going to be painful. In fact, it will be a wonderful adventure.

After a prospect first rejects a proposal, 50% of sales people stop calling. Another 25% stop calling a prospect after a second rejection. But, the vast majority of all sales (80%) happen after the fifth contact.

Is this bad news? Well, for the quitters it is. But for salespeople schooled in the art of selling, this statistic is exciting news. Why? Because 75% of your competition is quitting long before it is time to quit. All you need to do is figure out how to stay in the game through those five initial blows to your ego. Stay with me and I will teach you how to Become The Exception. Don't quit. Don't ever quit. Don't ever, ever, ever quit.

Mike Marchev
732.381.3084
www.marchev.net

Remember when you learned to drive a car? How can I ever forget seat belts weren't often used, but Dad buckled his before his rear end hit the seat. His white knuckles and wide eyes spoke volumes a highly decorated WWII veteran showed true fear, to my knowledge, for the first time in his life.

I disengaged the parking break and we were off, freedom at last! Well, sort of. Dad incessantly reminded me of the dangers we faced at every turn, which made it even more challenging to work the foot pedals and steering wheel. Years later, wearing a seatbelt became second nature.

With today's amazing technology, driving is more fun than ever it's like having a living room on wheels – a DVD player keeps the kids occupied, GPS navigation keeps your back-seat driver honest, and airbags are ready to be deployed, "just in case."

Like learning to drive, the important thing to remember is that times change, just as the experience of driving a car constantly changes. Thanks to recent shifts in the group organizer travel market, new and better ways of making money with travel insurance have come our way. It's time to sit down, buckle up, and take a spin around the block to see what I mean.

This edition, we're kicking off a new feature, the Showcase Series. In each issue we will cover a different facet of the group travel marketplace. In the Attractions/Shopping Showcase, each of these group-friendly attractions has a report of what’s new and newsworthy for them as well as contact information.

The Showcase Series may have temporarily replaced Group Travel Directory in print – but our online component is still going strong, with a site redesign in the works slated to launch this month.

Furthermore, we'll take all of our popular category directories (Attractions, Theaters, Casinos, Hotels, DMO’s) and put them into one big 2008 Group Travel Directory, organized by state/province. It will be useful throughout the year in helping you locate group-friendly suppliers.

In the meantime, enjoy this edition’s Attractions/Shopping Showcase!

For anyone who's visited Chi-town, you know that there's more to do than you can ever fit into a weekender. But you may not realize that this sprawling metropolis of nine million people has almost as many things to do!

With thirty years in the tourism industry and with Chicago as his homebase for longer than that, John Kloster brings you the best of Chicagoland in our latest Hub & Spoke.

Rarely do people travel for the sake of travel. Whether to learn, to escape, to embrace or to just enjoy, there's always something more going on in the minds of your travelers.

In this edition of "My Corner of the World," Marty Sarbey DeSouto reflects on the many reasons people travel with us.

A while back, I had asked you to send in your best travel story of 2006. Thanks so much to those who participated in the contest. Your stories were at turns funny, sad, poetic and sometimes just plain weird! But the time has come to choose a winner.

Congratulations to Janet Hogan of New Jersey for submitting the winning entry for Group Travel Blog's Best Travel Story of 2006! She wins a $500 gift certificate to Cortina Inn in Killington, Vermont!

And remember, contest or no, we always welcome you to participate in GroupTravelBlog.com. Whether you want to know where to go when you have an extra day in Richmond or have a suggestion about what tour not to do when you're traveling down Route 66, please let your fellow travelers know!

We had such a great response from our last edition of Catching Up With... that we decided to make it a regular feature.

This time we're talking with Tim Hentschel, a principal with Lexyl Travel Technologies. Lexyl powers hotel group booking engines for hundreds of websites, including our very own GroupTravelDirectory.com.

The company's mission is to provide a forum where consumers, travel agents, wholesalers, individuals and other buyers of group hotel inventory can access thousands of hotels worldwide and receive real time bids from multiple hotel providers.