I’m thankful for my cool job

 As the New Year begins I think about how thankful I feel for the job I have in tourism. Tourism in Alabama is an especially close knit group of professionals who participate together throughout the entire year. We work on projects together, we meet at training seminars together and we have statewide meetings quarterly that bring all of us together. At these functions the State Department of Travel and Tourism and the local and regional Destination Marketing organizations (DMO), like DeKalb Tourism attend. These gatherings help keep us abreast on each other’s activities, ideas and success stories relative to promoting our areas. The state always updates us on their marketing strategies and each DMO has a chance to share theirs too. Alabama’s growth in tourism has been phenomenal over the last decade and all during the great recession tourism has grown. Our growth in DeKalb has been exceptional and has out ranked the state average doubling our expenditures in tourism in less than ten years. We have grown from 35 million in visitor expenditures to more than 71 million. This is a testimony to our area. People love to visit with us. We give them the highest scenic value in the state, with a low cost visit. In addition we hear constantly from our visitors who always complement how friendly and helpful everyone is to them when they are here. This is one of the reasons our visitors return year after year. Our retention rate for return visitors is something to brag about. This all makes me very thankful to have a job in an industry where everyone knows each other and works with each other to improve each areas result. Many of the DMO’s in Alabama also maintain a close relationship with Southeast Tourism Society (STS), who offers tourism education in the form of two annual three day training seminars and they host a three year nationally certified Travel Marketing Professional (TMP) industry education program. I am honored this year to be the Vice Chair of STS representing Alabama on the STS board of directors.

Here is how tourism works in DeKalb County Alabama and in most parts of the country the organization chart is similar.

Local DMO’s promote and manage information for their dedicated local areas, for us DeKalb County. Alabama Mountain Lakes Tourist Association (AMLA) promotes and handles information for the northern sixteen counties in Alabama. We promote specifically visits to DeKalb; AMLA promotes visits to all northern sixteen counties. The state of Alabama Travel and Tourism promotes tourism to the state of Alabama including DeKalb Tourism and AMLA to get people from outside the state to travel to Alabama on vacation. The Southeast Tourism Society does the same thing but does it for twelve southern states. Finally, there is Brand USA and the National Travel Association and they promote our entire country domestically and internationally. All tourism organizations are doing about the same thing; the difference is the layering of marketing for each organization. It is this layering of local, state, regional and federal that gives all the more visitor impressions. All of these layers help DeKalb grow.

John Dersham