Editorial: Tourism Makes Good (Dollars and) Cents

Mike Browning, Managing Editor

The Logan Banner, July 24, 2005

I received a lot of comments about my two tourism columns last week, most of which agreed with what I said and only one that said I was totally wrong about my views on the efforts being made to draw tourists into our area.

We say we want more tourists coming into our area. Tourists bring in dollars and that helps our economy. When the economy is good, we all benefit. But, if we don't have the dollars and cents from outside people coming into our economy, our money just keeps on circulating. The same dollars from the same people.

So, what we need are outside dollars.

Williamson native Frank G. Tsutras called me from his home in Virginia last week and we talked tourism. Frank's the one who told me "Inside dollars keep circulating. It's the outside dollars we want."

Frank's right. And it got me to thinking about methods to get the outside dollars coming into the coalfield counties of southern West Virginia.

Okay, if we want outside dollars to come into the area, which means we want tourists to come here from other places and spend their hard-earned cash, why are we only promoting our area in OUR AREA?

Take for example this: Tourism meetings are held on what Logan County has to offer, but the official holds the meetings in nearby Matewan and Gilbert.

Now, isn't that like telling the people of of Matewan and Gilbert to come on over to Logan County and see what we have to offer? Chances are, they already come into Logan and know what we've got here.

It doesn't help us one bit to promote ourselves inside the area. We want people to come into the coalfields. We can't get people to come into our county and those surrounding us if we don't go outside of the immediate area.

See what I mean?

You can hold all the seminars in the surrounding counties that you want. Chances are, these people already know what's here and know what we have to offer.

If we want those outside dollars, why aren't we advertising outside our area or telling the people in other states to come see what we have to offer?

It makes better sense to go outside the area to promote the coalfields than it does to promote it here in the coalfields.

Promotion and advertisting is all about bringing in new people to your store or attraction and it pays to go outside your state when promoting tourism.

Maybe we could do a co-op advertising deal with the whitewater rafting people. We'll promote them if they'll promote the Hatfield-McCoy Trails. Then, we both could feed off of each others' business. It would be beneficial to both the whitewater rafting industry and the trail system.

We could run advertisements in other state's magazines telling a new audience to come see for themselves that we've got the greatest mountains in the nation. Or, we could put up posters at other states' tourist attractions that would help us get the word out that we've got a lot to offer here in the coalfields.

We should definitely have a coalfields set-up at Tamarack. There are countless people visiting that center every single day and we need those people to see some literature or posters about the trails, the Freedom Festival, The Aracoma Story, the Hatfield-McCoy Feud, the Battle of Blair Mountain and any other attractions we've got.

We also need a professional-looking booth at all the state's fairs and festivals, and a booth set up in the bigger fairs and festivals from our bordering states. Hillbilly Days in Pikeville would be a great place to start because that festival draws 120,000 a year to little Pikeville. That's 120,000 people we could get the word out to that we've got hills and Billies here in Logan County.

Our tourism officials also need to contact other states that have similar attractions and try to learn as much as they can from those organizations. New ideas should always be welcome when it comes to bringing in people. We need to contact tourism organizations in other states, ask them what they did to bring tourists to their areas and put those ideas to work here in Logan, Mingo, Boone, Lincoln and Wyoming counties. Go to Pigeon Forge, Tenn., and ask their tourism officials how to jumpstart the tourism industry here. There are so many tourist attractions throughout this country and they all had to start small and get bigger and bigger. So, we should ask for some ideas from those tourism areas to help us grow.

Our tourism leaders also need to work together. There seems to be a great divide separating many of our tourism leaders and that's bad for business.

We all need to work together to diversify the economy of southern West Virginia and to bring in as many tourists as we can possibly handle. Many times, it becomes an ego trip where one person is wanting to take credit for something several people worked on or one group wants to be be in charge of a project to which many are contributing. We all need to work together for the betterment of southern West Virginia.

I don't think we've even touched the tip of the iceberg, yet, and I know there are bigger things to come. We've just got to get in gear and do our best to bring in those outside dollars. That makes good cents to me.