Lodging Election Kicks Off

The spring lodging election for representatives on the Board of Directors of the Williamson County Tourism Bureau kicked off today.

WCTB Board Secretary Judy Attebury and I opened the nominations that came into the office last month. The following were nominated and will appear on the ballot:

• James Baker, manager of America’s Best Inn
  
• Anna Bordenave, co-owner of Oakridge Manor Bed and Breakfast
  
• Barb Lomax, Barb Lomax, manager of Hampton Inn
  
• Ashok Patel, co-owner of America’s Best Inn
  
• Robert Toupal, former owner of Toupal’s Country Inn

Ann Hindman and Greg Triplett were also nominated, but since they are already on the board as lodging representatives and their terms are not up they will not be listed on the ballot.

All lodging facilities in Williamson County who are current on their county bed tax will receive ballots. A check was made this afternoon. Ballots will go into the mail tomorrow morning and are due back in the office by May 27, 2008.

The ballots will be opened during the regular board meeting scheduled for noon on May 28, 2008. The new terms begin at the June meeting.

Two seats are up this year among the seven lodging representatives on the 19-member board. Those two seats are currently filled by Anna Bordenave and Barb Lomax.

Two Elected to Tourism Board

Patricia "Tricia" Hadfield, manager of the Comfort Inn and Comfort Suites will join Judy Attebury, manager of Fairfield Inn, as two of the seven lodging representatives on the Williamson County Tourism Board.

Two of the seven seats were up at this election. Hadfield and Attebury will serve three year terms. Thirteen of the county's lodging operators participated in the election. Ballots were opened at today's board meeting.

Hadfield replaces Katy Lockwood of the Olde Squat Inn.

The new terms begin at the regular June meeting of the tourism board which is set for noon, Wednesday, June 27 at the Williamson County Pavilion in Marion.

Fun With Web Stats... and Squirrels!

Thanks to a report we have to fill out for the Illinois Bureau of Tourism I've been on our stats page for this website today.

I'm impressed with our most recent stats on our site visitation and highly amused at one in particular.

The new WCTB.org website went active in late September. For those last few days we had 1,277 unique users.

In October it grew to 12,037, then declined some in November to 10,790 before shooting up to 33,283 last month in December. Already, we've had 1,529 users on our website yesterday, including eight people at the first hour of the New Year.

What's amusing to me is how one person found our website. They searched for best eating squirrels on Google and our Outdoor Hunting Guide came up as the fourth listing.

Apparently the following bit of text is found in our hunting guide:

While fewer people hunt during early October, some of the most enjoyable hunts and best eating young squirrels are taken during this time of year. ...

Tourism Town Meetings Set For Input

The Williamson County Tourism Bureau is calling on area residents and business owners to participate in a series of town meetings beginning next month to help develop a county-wide tourism development plan.

The meetings will start in Marion on Jan. 11, and continue with town meetings in Johnston City, Carterville and Herrin. The tourism bureau will follow-up the four community meetings with a county-wide meeting in March at the Pavilion.

"This is about creating new jobs, improving our quality of life, community development, historic preservation, whatever," explained Jon Musgrave, Williamson County’s new tourism director. "These meetings will be as broad or as focused as the people of this county want them to be."

"You see, there’s not much difference between tourism development and community development. For the first we are putting together a plan to get people to come visit our communities. For the second, we’re trying to get people to stay and settle," said Musgrave.

The Williamson County Tourism Board set a goal in November for a 50 percent increase in tourism expenditures over the next five years.

In 2005, the latest year the statistics are available, tourists spent $84 million in the county. In terms of employment tourists already support 840 jobs in Williamson County according to state estimates.

"There’s a number of new developments taking place in the region and educating everyone about those will be the first part of the community meetings," said Musgrave. "Next we'll break into small groups and brainstorm, both to identify existing problems hampering or preventing tourism development, as well as generate ideas for new proposals."

"We won't be looking at feasibility or costs in the first round. At this point we're just looking for ideas, and that’s something in which everybody can participate," Musgrave added.

While the tourism bureau will be especially working to attract representatives of the area’s tourist service providers – lodging operators, restaurants, tour guides, artists, etc. – to the meetings, Musgrave stressed members of the general public should feel welcome to attend.

"We need that. We need input from everyone," said Musgrave. "The bike trail we might propose for tourism is also the bike trail that would be used and enjoyed by local residents every day."

Meeting dates and locations are as follows:

• Jan. 11 – Marion, at the Williamson County Pavilion.
  
• Jan. 25 – Johnston City at the Johnston City Community Building.
  
• Feb. 1 – Carterville at the Carterville Community Center in Cannon Park.
  
• Feb. 15 – Herrin at the Herrin Civic Center.
  
• March 1 – County-wide meeting in Marion at the Williamson County Pavilion.

Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. with the meetings to start at 7 p.m. Everyone is welcome.

Following the first county-wide meeting a committee will be formed to help pull the proposals together for the overall tourism development plan. Once that is finished a second county-wide meeting will be held to unveil the proposals.

I Converse With The MDR

First off I want to swear I was not making a grand pronouncement when this photo was taken.

Really. I mean it.

Seriously.

Tom Kane took this photo on my first day on the job. Cherri Flinn and I participated in the conversation last week.

I'm serious about this job, but just ask the folks who work here at the tourism bureau. They know I don't normally wave my arms.

Seriously though, the Marion Daily Republican printed today their weekly conversation with someone. This week it was me.

At one point during the interview Cherri asked how many destinations or attractions we have in Williamson County. It's a good question and one I'm ashamed to say we can't answer.

We haven't done a very good job of engaging with the local public over the last few years and keeping track of what's been developing here in our own backyard. Instead, the bureau has focused the vast majority of its attention toward the operations of the Williamson County Pavilion.

We let too many basic tourism bureau functions slip to a secondary position as the staff stretched to keep up with the day-to-day operations of the Pavilion, but things are changing.

This summer the Williamson County Tourism Board created the position of a full-time Events Coordinator which despite a broader job description generally focuses on the day-to-day operations of the Pavilion.

Stacey Pearce, who previously worked part-time doing just that, now handles the full-time position; and from what I've seen these last few weeks she does it well. She's the person to contact if you're interested in renting a small conference, a ballroom or the Expo Hall.

In the next few days I'll be announcing our next step as we reach out to the residents and local businesses here in Williamson County as we ask them to become active with us to develop tourism here.

In a conversation today with the folks from the Arthur Agency in Carbondale, I outlined my goals and made clear my position.

I am not satisfied with the job we've done with tourism in Southern Illinois. I'm not satisfied with the job we've accomplished in this office.

I write these words now not to be harsh, but to be honest.

If we can't see the truth, if we can't speak it. We can't get the job done.

Southern Illinois has seen a number of accomplishments in tourism over the decades. It's my desire to build on top of those even greater accomplishments for us as residents of this region.

We deserve better.

But if we want to get it done, it's time to roll up our sleeves and start.

First Day On The Job

The day started at 7:57 a.m. when I pulled into the Pavilion parking lot.

Almost 13 hours later it ended when I pulled out at 8:53 p.m.

Welcome to the life of the new executive director of the Williamson County Tourism Bureau, which would, uh, be me!

Actually, it was a very good day. Jeanette Sollami has been acting as interim director for the last two-and-a-half months will stay on for another couple of months to help with the transition.

The Williamson County Tourism Board held their annual Thanksgiving meeting for lunch with turkey and all the trimmings. Tonight for dinner Jeanette and I attended a meeting at Giant City Lodge where we had the family style chicken dinner.

Of course the meals did put us in a fowl mood.

Sorry, I've been making that lame joke all day. I hesitate to think how many times Jeanette has heard me use it.

Tonight's meeting dealt with the new Illinois Travel Guide with Joan Sharp, a representative of Madden Preprint Media on hand to highlight their offerings.

Had a chance to sit down and speak with Vickie Cummiskey, Harrisburg's new economic development director; Stephanie Rhodes, executive director of the Southern Illinois Tourism Development Office; Sheryl Durham, coordinator of the Illinois section of the Ohio River Scenic Byway; and Angelo and Janice Fiorino, owners of Murphysboro's Apple Tree Inn, which I learned tonight they purchased from Southern Illinois tourism pioneer Wayman Presley.

Earlier today the tourism board approved three main goals for me during the first year:

• Bring the Williamson County Pavilion into the black (or at least very dark gray). We're close to breaking even, just not close enough some months.
  
  
• Bring the website up-to-date and expand it.
  
  
• Develop new attractions and events to expand Williamson County tourism.

I also made a short presentation on how we might go about accomplishing the third goal. Information on that will be announced next month, but I'll offer one hint now. We won't do it alone. It's going to require grassroots efforts.

In terms of the first goal the tourism board approved a proposal by Dwight Hoffard, John A. Logan College's representative on the board to co-sponsor a new late winter boat show the first weekend in March at the Pavilion.

I'll have more on the new Southern Illinois Boat & Fishing Show as details are announced. The Youth Outdoor Education Foundation will be the lead co-sponsor of the event.

The dates are March 3 and 4, which is the weekend after the Motorcycle Show (last weekend of February) and the weekend before the Home Builders Expo (the second weekend of March).

UPDATE: The newspapers have now covered the hiring. Cherri Flinn's for the Marion Daily Republican is here and Ashley Wiehle's for the Southern Illinoisan can be found here.

Alton Tourism Finds Slots Off Riverboat

St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Amanda St. Amand writes about Brett Stawar's job and work as president of the Alton Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Ask the man whose job is luring visitors to the Alton area what there is to do, and he recites a laundry list of events and attractions. Ask Missouri residents what there is in Alton, and they likely will say a casino.

Amand focuses on Stawar's efforts to develop and promote other sites in the northern St. Louis Metro-East area.

We've got some of the same issues here in Williamson County and Southern Illinois.

Fulton Co. Tourism Summit Offers Blueprint

Today's Canton Daily Ledger includes a story on last Friday's tourism summit for Fulton County, home of the celebrated Spoon River.

Participants listed to speakers, gathered in small groups and hashed out ideas for tourism branding and development.

Having read the story I'm not that impressed with the summit's results, but I recognize the need behind it. Local residents and businesses have to buy into the idea of tourism. It's also something that can't be implemented top-down. It has to have grassroots support if it is to stick and spread.

About a decade ago Hartzel Black, then of Southeastern Illinois College, helped coordinate a series of four-county meetings for the Saline, Gallatin, Hardin and Pope County areas. I took an active part in those meetings and helped draft the tourism development plan that was generated from the discussion at those meetings.

Regrettably, little of those plans ever took effect, though the state did finally purchase the Old Slave House three years later.

Hartzel left SIC for greener pastures and Pope County decided to join the Southernmost Illinois Tourism Bureau. Hardin County and Gallatin County remain unalighted and left out of the state's CVB program and Saline County loosely affiliated with Williamson in order to receive state help.

I found an article in Google's cache of stories from The Daily Register that outlines the history of "Tourism Promotion Activity Since the 1920s" that mentions some of the problems that had to be overcome.

New Blog on the Street

Hello,

For reasons that will become clear in the next few weeks I've decided to start this blog to cover the changes and happenings in the tourism industry of Southern Illinois, particularly Williamson County, where I live.

I've long been active in tourism development efforts, most particularly with the Old Slave House near Equality. For the latest updates check out a few of my recent posts on the house.

• Ballroom Doors Gone at Hickory Hill
  
• A Hidden Floor and a Forgotten Window
  
• Old Slave House Closed 10 Years Ago

Much of what I've done falls under the category of heritage tourism, but I also was one of the original board members of the River-to-River Trail Society when it organized back in the early 1990s.

About that same I also published The Goshen Traveler in 1991 and early 1992. It was a monthly tourism newspaper that serviced the southern 15 counties of Illinois.

There's a lot going on right now in the region, but we're just scratching the surface of all that can be done here.

Meanwhile, check out the Williamson County Tourism Bureau's new website at www.wctb.org.