Are We There Yet? Places to go, people to see and souvenirs to buy

Consumers enjoy collecting proof they've "been thereand done that"--that's why there's a gift shop at thetop of the Empire State Building and poised cameras capturingterrified expressions on the last dip of every famous rollercoaster. And with the strong economy putting more vacationers onthe highway, researchers have tallied Americans spending $1.17billion on souvenirs and novelties in the past year, a 20 percentincrease from the year before. Americans' love for regionallyflavored items, in particular, gives entrepreneurs the chance tocounteract the homogeny of huge corporate retail outlets.

"When people travel, they really want to experience theregional flavor of particular places," says Pam Danziger,president and CEO of Unity Marketing in Stevens, Pennsylvania."But today, if you go down any superhighway in the country,it's as though you could be anywhere because the malls andstores are all the same."

Assuming consumers also eschew this monotony, Danziger seesgreat potential for businesses that create gifts offering someregional flavor. "Small businesses can, in fact, compete veryeffectively if they bring that sense of local or historical flavor[to their businesses]," she says. "Here at the end of themillennium, it's time for us to look back on our history andrealize there's an awful lot we can learn from tapping intothat historical heritage, and people want to do that when theytravel."