Conferences are good for business and that’s the bottom line

YOU don’t often get to see the naked rear views of foreign visitors to Ireland in a PowerPoint slide during a presentation organised by a state-sponsored body.

Now, to be fair, it’s not such a challenge when the two people in the photograph have a narrow black spoiler across their crucial parts, but when has a narrow black spoiler prevented intellectual speculation, I ask you?

The conference was about an aspect of Ireland’s tourism offering which had passed me by. I’m still in the John Hinde-crossed- with-Newgrange era of tourism. I try hard to keep up, but every now and then, I backslide. I blame the confusion created by the way tourism breeds acronyms. Like SITE (the Society of Incentive and Travel Executives), ITOA (Incoming Tour Operators Association Ireland) and ICCA (International Conference and Congress Association). All these and many more, operating at different points in the tourism story, were present last week at a conference organised by Fáilte Ireland. None batted an eyelid at the modesty line across the naked rear ends in the pictures, concentrating instead on giving a mighty round of applause to an academic who specialises in how the human body, naked or clothed, uses energy.