Does anyone use the smaller cards? Same ratio of height to width but they are maybe 1/6th the size of the regular cards...looks like an extra large business card.

Whilst I do all my research for trips/vacations online nowadays, I am another person who will scan the brochure rack at hotels/motels, just in case something has "slipped under the radar".
Have found a few attractions like that in the US - The Fire Museum of Maryland (Lutherville) being one that springs to mind.

Exactly, and it was clear that a lot of people do that. New attractions pop up all the time, so people check to see what's available. Also, many of the theme parks and the like offer discounts either through the hotel or online, so you not only avoid the ticket lines, but save money. That encourages folks to browse the rack, and that may help them see your card.

One thing that's only been briefly mentioned. I am of the impression that many of these racks are tightly controlled now. There's a company that comes by on a regular basis, and refills them. They'll put your cards in (for a fee of course), but they will also remove any cards that aren't paying them to be there. So it's possible that your volunteer puts 20 cards in on Sunday and the brochure guy chucks them in the trash on Monday. Obviously, it depends on the location and arrangement, but it's something you need to research.

Yes, only put out your brochures/cards in racks that actually belong to the facility. Many hotels and tourist attractions maintain their own displays near or on the front desk or information counter. Always good to ask first, rather than do a dump 'n run.

Good point. The related post to this on the "TIMING" thread is the brochure for a depot museum that I picked up in the lobby of a Hampton. There's a brochure rack there, but this one was out, in a small pile, on the little table next to the USA TODAY newspapers. There were none in the actual rack. So I suspect that's exactly what was going on, but the depot museum still had permission from the Hampton to place it where they did.

Had a project a couple years ago where a city-owned excursion railroad got in a kerfuffle with the city, one of the issues was cross-promotion with the downtown, which was hip-deep in antique stores. You could go into almost any store and NOT find a railroad brochure, and the railroad operator would only put brochures of downtown businesses in their station or on the train if the businesses paid for placement. That was the first mutual agreement, that had to stop when the railroad was being maintained with city tax money. The ridership survey proved that the cross-promotion was disturbingly nonexistent.

Learned long ago:

You do NOT just sneak in, drop brochures/flyers, and run. You ALWAYS find management or authority, initiate a face-to-face conversation, and have a productive back-and-forth on promotion.

The best laugh I had with this was talking to a manager of a Korean supermarket trying to ask permission to post a poster and flyers for a Japanese anime convention. Now, imagine Han from the show "2 Broke Girls." It could have been his twin brother. He was completely befuddled about the entire thing--what the heck anime is, whys is there a convention, why is there a poster with these weird cartoons on them?--but then one of the bag boys walked by, saw the poster I was holding, said "OTAKON!!!!! Hey, Ken, it's Otakon!!! July!!!!" to a co-worker, snatched a flyer from me, and in thirty seconds there was a madcap crush of young employees all petitioning the shift manager a couple yards away from us for that specific long-off weekend off work. As the shift manager was holding the flyer and screaming "NO ONE is getting any day off yet until I review this!" and the employees continued their "I was first!!!" chaos, the frowning manager looked on stoically, then finally turned to me and said, "Okay, put it up...." and walked into the fray.

Paid brochure racks have always been around. If you see a fancy, clean, well-maintained brochure rack with every slot filled (and not the same brochure in 6 slots), it is almost certainly a paid brochure rack.

They all have a small emblem or placard indicating the firm which owns the rack and their phone number. You'll spot it instantly if you look at the rack (rather than the brochures in it).



Your volunteer should not have that problem if he's remotely ethical.

First, he should be asking for permission to set out the brochure. The staffer will tell him it's a paid rack.

Second, paid brochure racks are usually full, with a different brochure in every slot. So if your volunteer puts your brochure on those racks, he is burying someone else's.

What about those stand alone displays of discount card brochures for amusement parks or ski resorts that are sometimes placed on Fast Food outlet counters? At the same time, the attractions are displaying at their ticket office coupons for a free small bag of french fried potatoes, good only at that particular outlet. These are not deals with the international corporation, since they're not at every outlet. Which way does the money flow?

You have far more faith in the night/weekend desk clerk's interest in and knowledge of the situation than I do. The brochure rack probably isn't in his/her job description and I suspect you'd get "Yeah, sure, I don't care..." fairly often.