Sunday, July 26, 2009
Editorial: Continue tourism cooperation
Montgomery County and its towns should promote tourism together, but without the chamber of commerce.
From the RoundTable blog
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Montgomery County, Christians-burg and Blacksburg hit on a good idea a few years back. They pooled the money they collect from hotels to promote tourism. A single agency then promoted a unified destination.
Their mistake was trusting the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce to do the work. When the localities handed their money to a private organization, they lost the ability to monitor how fairly and effectively public tax dollars were spent.
Now there is a scandal at the chamber. It recently ousted Shane Adams, the chief executive officer under investigation for embezzlement. The towns and county are pulling back their tourism dollars as a result.
More accurately, they are yanking their money back. Before the Adams scandal even broke, the localities already were backing off, planning to spend some money to promote themselves singly.
The risk amidst the current chaos is that the three will go their separate ways. That would be a mistake.
Each has unique things to offer, but their real strength is together. If tourists see ads just about Blacksburg, they might be kind of interested. If they see ads that feature Virginia Tech, the national forest in the county and affordable hotels in Christiansburg, suddenly this becomes a place to visit that offers much more.
A coordinated tourism effort also enjoys economic advantages, not least by consolidating some expenses. It also would prevent the governments from duplicating services and working at cross-purposes.
As the town councils and county supervisors move forward, we suggest they consider an in-house tourism and marketing department. It need not be large, maybe even just one or two people working for the county but funded by all three governments. Then there would assuredly be public accountability and better communication, both of which were lacking in the deal with the chamber.
Regional cooperation on tourism remains a good idea.
