Darrell Tutty, Director Tourism Development and Marketing of Northern Territory Australia said this in his working paper entitled "Sustainable Eco Tourism".

He said a successful business in this line depends much on the product they offer to their clients.

"Before you embark on your respective eco-tourism business endeavour, you need to identify first what you want to offer to the prospective clients and the product must be of something unusual, beautiful, spectacular, interesting and culturally different than other tourism products," he said.

He said several countries may offer similar eco-tourism products but can never be the same in some aspects.

To this he said, the operators need to look far beyond than just offering the product to the clients.

Citing the proboscis monkey and wetland marsh in Sukau, Darrell, who spent 30 years in the NT tourism industry, said these two are examples of eco-tourism products.

He said while the wetland marshes are similar with marshes in other countries, there's something unique about the Lower Kinabatangan marshes and that the tour operators should identify the distinctive differences.

"When developing the eco-tourism product ask yourself, what makes it so beautiful, why is it spectacular and why is it interesting.

"You can have monkeys here and monkeys in other parts of the world, but what is it that is so unique about the monkeys here?" he asked.

Darrell said asking these questions alone is not sufficient and, so, a survey on the areas which include, town, attraction, roads, power and water supplies, transport system, accommodations, type of restaurants and marketing is vital as backup data to develop the product.

Among others ways to gather information, Darrell said competitor's product can be a source of market intelligence followed by general markets, market surveys and most importantly – awareness or intuitions.

Following this, he said there is also a need to develop sustainable nature-based tourism through good business practices.

"Keep a balance in your strategic plan particularly in ecological balance, cultural balance, religious balance, financial balance and experiential integrity balance," he said.

In some areas, he said the operators must observe strictly the local ceremonial significance or areas of totemic or religious significance to avoid disturbances on the locals.

"Balance is ever-changing and to achieve this you must have mechanisms in place to be able to adjust both sides to reach an equilibrium,' he said.

To changes, Darrell said while changes are imminent, the operators should first recognise if there's really a need of the changes.

He said once they have come to conclusion, they must be committed with the changes.

On marketing plans, Darrell said there are various ways to market the products - direct selling, groups, packages and retail or wholesale.

Further on marketing, he said it could be divided into ethnic background, nationality, socio-economic groups and special interest while payment procedures are usually associated with credit facilities, voucher systems and other modes of payment.

He advised the participants to concentrate on sustainability, low impact development and renewable resources.