Good afternoon, Laura, and welcome to Tripatini! It's great to have you with us -- and we think you'll find our site productive as well as interesting and enjoyable.

To get the most out of Tripatini, we recommend you take a moment to join several of our many groups which you may find of particular use, such as Cruising; Canada; Australia; Budget Travel; Backpackers/Hostels; Indonesia; Adventure Travel; Eco/Sustainable Tourism; The Caribbean and the individual island groups; Eating/Drinking the World; whichever hospitality groups are appropriate (Hotels/Motels, Resorts Corner); and plenty of others covering many other topics and most destinations across the globe.

FYI, on your profile you'll see a green bar marked "Text Box," which you can turn into a box containing not just text but also photos and even videos about yourself, your travels, your work and activities, and more. You help both yourself and our other members tremendously by being specific about your company or activities in the hospitality profession.

Finally, if you would, please be so kind as to spread the word among your travel-interested friends, family, colleagues, associates, and audience. It's fast and easy to use our "INVITE" function above left on the navigation bar to enter e-mails (even your whole list at once!). Finally, please join our Facebook fan page and follow us on Twitter (see front page info box); we'll be happy to reciprocate!

Thanks much for joining us; we wish you an outstanding rest of 2010, and it goes without saying that we look forward to seeing you online.

Cheers!