"Tourism" promotion vs. "destination" promotion

The trip to Grand Canyon involved a van, a tour guide, and 6 other riders. Because we were a couple hours from the Canyon, we spent a goodly amount of time talking amongst ourselves. One of the other people on the van is a high level State of Maryland Tourism Department employee, with the primary responsibility of attraction development. I would hire her to run such tourism efforts in DC in a heartbeat...

She made the point that tourism is defined as trips more than 50 miles away from your residence, so at times, a lot of what I think about in terms of DC tourism is really more about intra-regional "destination" promotion, trying to increase attractiveness to people already within the metropolitan area. (And she was also very clear about how her office is evaluated: are the initiatives bringing in more tourists, spending more money, and staying longer?)

So us visiting Baltimore (and vice versa) isn't tourism in the same way (because Baltimore is 45 miles away) as visiting further away destinations.

We need to do both, in any case, and we need to develop our local cultural heritage "offer" vis-a-vis the "National Experience" that defines the city.

One of the things she mentioned is that many years ago, local attractions in Baltimore organized the Baltimore Tourism Association to focus on the local experience, because they felt that the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association was overly focused on downtown and the Inner Harbor. In DC, CulturalTourismDC is a similar response, although I don't think that we have been as successful as yet in terms of working to define the local cultural heritage message as well as to garner the funds to plan and develop and manage our local heritage assets in an organized and systematic fashion.

In addition, Baltimore is supported by the State of Maryland Office of Tourism and other state initiatives. For example, Baltimore is a state-designated heritage area and it has two or three state-designated arts districts, each designation affords a variety of focused tax and other benefits.

I don't know if you noticed last Wednesday that Baltimore had a special insert-set of articles in the Express newspaper? They are working it...

Another good example is the Jersey Shore Alliance, which has developed out of the Summit on the Shore tourism development initiative for the shore communities of the State of New Jersey. Also see this article from the Inquirer, "Shore tries a new way to lure you," and their "edgy website" promoting the Jersey Shore.

Index Keywords: tourism