by Marty Brown
Northern News Services

NNSL (DEC 11/96) - Melissa Daoust is photocopying brochures on Yellowknife.

She's the manager of the Frontier Visitors Association and she's not very happy about it.

When Daoust finishes duplicating the out-of- date and limited copies, she'll send them to prospective visitors, along with brochures begged from the Prince of Wales Heritage Centre or the legislature.

The centre ran out of Yellowknife visitors guides last summer and with the diamond mine announcement in the news, the request for relocation information has increased.

The problem is money. The Northern Frontier Visitors Centre was bailed out by the city last year and it is operating on a bare bones budget.

Partnerships is the way to go, Daoust says.

Although the visitors centre was never asked to contribute material for the city's Internet site, Daoust is hoping to form a partnership with Yellowknife's economic development department and get out of the photocopying business.

The NWT 1997 Explorer's Guide is beautiful, but Yellowknife only has one column, Daoust said.

One option she's thought of is publishing an in-house brochure, but that takes money and the little "pot of money" left at the end of this year is earmarked to fix the building.

"Visitors spent more than $45 million in this region in 1994. Tourism has to be encouraged," she said.