A Big Summer in DeKalb by John Dersham

According to the National Travel Agency July 4^th this year had the largest number of people on the road for this holiday since 2005. Some of this is due to the sudden drop in gas prices earlier in the summer and much is due to the gradual overall economic recovery. With that said it is still noted that our economy is fragile and the slightest downward trend could put the economy in recession again. None the less people are traveling this summer. Thus far here in DeKalb County our summer has been very strong. The numbers we have seen at our information center and are witnessed at hotels, campgrounds, B&B’s, parks and restaurants, all are indicating a really good season. Last weekend was Julyfest in Mentone. Julyfest is the re-establishment of a festival held years ago in Mentone. Many of you are already familiar with the Rhododendron festival in May and Colorfest in October which have been Mentone’s two annual festivals in recent years. I was very pleased with the combination of people and organizations promoting Julyfest in cooperation with each other. The Mentone Area Arts Council put forth a great venue of artists, entertainment and food at Julyfest which was held as a two day event in Mason Park in Mentone but that was only the focal point.  The festival had many sponsors and events were all over town. The Mentone Inn and Mentone Springs Hotel and all the local merchants and restaurants participated with special events and incentives and advertising to attract visitors. My family and I spent a number of hours at the festival on Saturday and I was very pleased to see how well people scattered all over town. I also talked to some people to find out where they were from. It appears we had an exceptional out of town response to this. Tourists are known to be the ones who buy art when they travel. They like to have some pieces that represent the area they visit. Tourists plan their trips to have extra money to spend on shopping, food and entertainment. The average tourist saves money so they won’t have to scrimp while on vacation.

Julyfest was well promoted via rack cards, websites, Facebook, press releases and newspaper articles. Social media has become a major advertising format for the travel industry. It is an easy way to get information distributed to a lot of people at low or no cost. This festival is a great example of how working together leads to a much better result than going at it alone. It delighted me to see so many people involved in developing and promoting this event. If you were there this weekend you know what I am talking about…and what about all that great art. We have hundreds of high quality artists of varying mediums living and working in our area. They are incredibly talented.

Other well attended and supported events this summer have been the Sand Mountain Potato festival and the first Fort Payne Third Saturday. Thanks everybody for the wonderful fellowship and team efforts that have gone into all of these events. It is hard work but has a big payoff to the communities and patrons involved.

Marketing DeKalb to Chattanooga by John Dersham

It has always been a challenge here at DeKalb Tourism to distinguish our area of northeast Alabama and the Lookout Mountain attractions from Chattanooga and the Lookout Mountain attractions in Tennessee and Northwest Georgia. 

Nearly every day someone will come in our information center thinking they are already in Tennessee. They see Lookout Mountain signs as they drive up I-59 and get confused because somewhere along the way they learned to associate Lookout Mountain with Chattanooga Tennessee. It is easy to understand this since one of our nation’s most prolific outdoor advertising is for See Rock City and Ruby Falls. These same billboards say Lookout Mountain Tennessee on them, even though Rock City is actually in Georgia.

We have felt for a long time that we had the potential of increasing tourism to our area by finding a way to attract our Chattanooga friends to make a trip further south on Lookout Mountain. The trick is to promote our attractions, shopping, eating and lodging in a way that attracts our potential visitor to a weekend leisurely vacation to our area. Some of the attractive selling points is the fact we are a short inexpensive drive to get out of traffic and into a more leisurely environment of less crowded scenic venues, restaurants, B&B’s, cabins, campgrounds and hotels. We promote via the idea of getting away from it all but not having to travel far to do it.

This year we have a booth at Chattanooga Riverbend Festival. This nine day event is heavily attended and gives us an opportunity to clarify who we are and why patrons should consider us for a vacation.  Our booth at Riverbend is a partnership with Lookout Mountain Parkway Association, DeKalb Tourism and Etowah Tourism. This gives us the opportunity to speak to our visitors at the booth and review all the aspects of our areas. This way we can help them plan their vacation.  We have brochures for Sequoyah Caverns, Little River Canyon National Preserve, Noccalula Falls, Lookout Mountain Parkway, DeSoto State Park, High Falls Park and Bucks Pocket as well as information about our rental cabins, B&B’s, campgrounds, hotels, shopping, restaurants, museums, antiques and flea markets, Worlds Longest Yard Sale and Antique Alley. We cover the arts, music and crafts. The key is getting to talk to our potential visitors and finding out what they like to do and what their specific interests are. At that point we can customize a set of brochures to fit their needs. Now that we have a mobile website many people can have a more detailed look at us while standing there at our booth. Riverbend Festival is currently underway and goes through this Saturday.

                           

International Travel Update by John Dersham

In recent years tourism has been a bright spot in the economy. During our recession of 2008 and the continued slow economy, tourism has in most areas of the country maintained itself at former numbers and in many areas there has been modest growth. Alabama has showed some growth throughout this period. Due to the success of tourism our federal government has decided to focus on growing the International travel market to the US. The last time the United States had an International travel advertising campaign was 1992. This year a series of very well done TV ads can be seen in 18 countries. Our International travelers tend to stay here longer and spend more money than do tourist traveling within the US. Tourism in the US is a $3.1 Trillion dollar business and it employees 750 million Americans. Tourism jobs cannot be outsourced to another country. Think about it. Our friends that work in the tourism industry here in DeKalb in hotels or at attractions like Sequoyah Caverns, DeSoto State Park or Little River Canyon National Preserve… there is no moving those to China. Gaining more international travel will greatly help our economy. I encourage you to go to the Brand USA website and view these very well done commercials.  www.thebrandUSA.com

In addition to the Obama administration and the National Travel Council there are regional and state tourism departments that are working in conjunction with Brand USA to bring international visitors into the more rural parts of the US. This November, Travel South USA will host its first international travel showcase in Atlanta. This event will bring in tourism departments, travel planners, group tour promoters, hotels and attractions from all over the world to work with travel planners in the US to formulate interesting international trips to the US. We are encouraged by the focus on international travel and feel our area will be a side excursion for international travelers coming to the southeast looking for the more rural “Americana” experience. There is some work being done to offer our National Parks as travel gateways to the more rural areas of the US.

Even without a government sanctioned international travel plan we have still been getting international travelers to our area. In the late winter and early spring we see quite a few people coming through our information center that are snowbirds or they are visiting from the UK, Germany or other middle and northern European countries. We are also getting quite a few people from South America and some from Japan and other Asian countries.

            

Tourism has outperformed the general economy by John Dersham

Last week I attended a conference hosted by Alabama Mountain Lakes Tourist Association. Their guest speaker was renowned travel and tourism consultant, Judy Randall from Randall Travel Marketing in Charlotte N.C.  Judy is well known throughout our industry as a leading voice in forecasting travel and tourism trends. In addition to attending her seminar, I also scheduled a one hour private consultation with her.

Judy spoke about the 2008 economy downturn and its effects on the tourism industry over the four years that have followed. She spoke about the slow recovery we are currently in and how the culture of travel and tourism has changed during this period.

Some of the things Judy mentioned is the fact that tourism as an industry faired extremely well compared to other industries during this period with most southeastern destinations showing numbers that were equal to or better than pre recession numbers. The areas hurt most were the bigger destinations like Disney and Vegas. The lower cost destinations such as North Alabama have weathered the downturn quite well and in our case showed small growth three out of the last four years and were flat one year.  Judy talked about the current trend of travel which includes people traveling less distance and going to lower cost destinations, like us. The desire to travel and have a vacation has increased as people feel stressed at work and they feel they are working longer and harder with incomes that are not growing to match their efforts. This has spawned the desire to take more frequent, shorter vacations usually done over weekends plus a Friday or Monday. Our particular area is extremely conducive to this type of travel since we have 11 million people living within a one tank of gas trip to get here. In fact all of North Alabama fits perfectly into Judy’s forecast of destinations that will show a solid trend toward growth despite high gas prices, time starvation and changing consumer spending habits. Judy said all of the current travel trends in the US favor us. She says our time has come. Judy also said many people are looking for quieter more relaxing get-a-ways to offset their more hectic metro life styles. Again we are a perfect fit. Judy also mentioned that the days of double digit growth are over for the foreseeable future. We are in an economic environment that does not support much growth in any segment. We are moving out of the recession but, very, very slowly and she feels that will continue into the foreseeable future.

DeKalb Tourism…What we do! By Kayla Worthey

I am sure a lot of you wonder…Who is DeKalb Tourism?, What do they do?, or maybe you have never heard of us before at all. Well, we are a small non-profit organization that was founded more than 50 years ago for the purpose of promoting tourism for DeKalb County. Our office is open to the general public seven days a week. On average we greet anywhere from 10 to 50 visitors a day in the “slow” season and anywhere from 50 to 150 a day in the “busy” season. Our small staff fields emails and phone calls from all over the country, answering questions about our area and fulfilling vacation guide requests.
DeKalb Tourism creates and prints numerous brochures and maps that are distributed throughout the southeast area. We create advertisements for printed publications, such as magazines, newspapers, state guides, etc. We have a website and a mobile website (coming soon!) with multiple domain names that is updated daily with the most current information. We maintain multiple social media sites that are updated daily or weekly. We create press releases regularly and distribute them to media contacts all over the southeast in hopes of generating an article.
We use all of the promotional materials to help lure visitors to this area. If you have a business that is tourism related and would like for us to help promote you, please come by and see us at the Visitor’s Center located at 1503 Glenn Boulevard SW. We are here to support you!
Did you know…
That our website had more than 172,000 unique visitors in 2011?
That our Visitor’s Center greeted over 10,000 people?
That we received over 1,700 phone calls requesting information?
That we received over 9,100 emails requesting more information about this area?
That of those calls and emails, almost 500 of them were interested in the World’s Longest Yard Sale?
That we mailed out almost 3,800 visitor guides to potential visitors?
For more information about us or to keep up with what is going on in the area, you can visit our website at www.DiscoverLookoutMountain.com, find us on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/LookoutMountainAlabama, and read our blog on LookoutMountainAlabama.blogspot.com

The Times Journal is a Fantastic Tourism Promoter and Partner by John Dersham

It has been my pleasure to work closely with the Times Journal from the beginning of my career in tourism here in DeKalb County. Time and time again the Times Journal has reached out to partner with DeKalb Tourism to deliver the amazing story of tourism as a major economic developer for our county. Last year nearly 65 million dollars were paid into the economy of DeKalb County by tourists. This makes Tourism the largest industry in the county for tax revenue. It also ranks as one of the top employers in the county.

The Times Journal has recognized our industry and is always coming up with new ideas to support our local economy through tourism. The latest addition to this effort is an all new 8.5”x5.5” full color publication called the DeKalb County Guide to Dining, Lodging, Attractions and Entertainment. Once complete DeKalb Tourism will make these guides available in our information center and we will pass them out at trade shows. In addition, our two Chamber offices in Fort Payne and Rainsville will have them available, as will the I-59 Welcome Center. This guide is going to serve as an ideal tool for those visitors that have already arrived in our county or are planning a trip here. The guide will be a beautifully produced color book full of where to go, where to eat, and where to stay when here. This guide will highlight your attraction, lodging facility, park, restaurant or entertainment venue.

This undertaking is the first of its kind in DeKalb and it is the first time I have seen this venue used by a newspaper publisher. This will be a real opportunity for your business to help capture your share of tourist dollars spent in DeKalb County. If you are a cabin owner, hotel, campground, restaurant, attraction, antique store, flea market, artist, craftsman, gift shop, produce farmer or any other kind of business that attracts our visitors then I highly recommend buying an ad in this publication. This is your chance to be included in the guide that will be in the visitor’s hands when they are making their buying decisions.

To be included in this guide please contact Sharon Beene at the Times Journal at 256-304-0064 or 256-630-8895. She can also be reached at sbeene@times-journal.com

Get Ready, Antique Alley Is Coming by John Dersham

Get Ready, Antique Alley is coming! Beginning on Thursday and running through Sunday May 17-20 Antique Alley Yard Sale hosts its annual event in our area. The yard sale sometimes known as the Highway 11 Yard Sale runs 502 miles along H-11. The two yard sales that pass through our area each year are the two most popular events of which we get calls and emails at the DeKalb Tourism. Antique Alley and the World’s Longest Yard sale in August keep our phones ringing and email inquiries coming year around. H&G TV runs a special on the World’s Longest Yard sale each year. When the show runs we get inquires that are nonstop for a few weeks. These events bring thousands of people through our area each year. This is important to our communities since tourist dollars are spent on food, gas, shopping, attractions and overnight stays in Hotels, campgrounds, B&B’s and cabins. If weather is good we could see as many as 30,000 additional cars coming through our area during the upcoming four day event. Antique Alley runs on H-11 all the way from Meridian Mississippi to Bristol Virginia, it includes five states, 23 counties and 77 towns. In terms of consumer spending the business model works like this; For our traveler to be a tourist they cannot live in DeKalb County. Their travel means they are spending their money in an economy they do not live it, thus paying us taxes, earning us tax revenue we would not get if they were not here. When they are here many of them stay overnight spending $85-150 per night. They buy food $15-150 per day based on family size. They buy gas and retail items at our stores. They go to movies or other entertainment all of which we collect tax dollars adding to the revenue income it our cities, towns and county. For those of you whom have businesses on or near H-11 (Gault Ave) you may want to plan your advertising, promotions and specials to capitalize on the larger number of people available to you at this time. To obtain more information about Antique Alley Yard Sale visit our www.tourdekalb.com website and click on yard sales, or call us at DeKalb Tourism 256-845-3957