Economy's toll on our tourist towns

Last week about this time I was lucky enough to be driving around the back roads of Texas Hill Country, enjoying the twists and turns and majestic scenery.

Late one afternoon, needing a break to stretch my legs and mine the AAA guide for a likely-looking motel, I buzzed down Highway 281 into Johnson City – hometown of the 36th President of the United States.

Vintage storefronts, antique shoppes, the LBJ boyhood home, eateries. Perfect. I rustled up my guidebook and headed for an eclectic-looking tavern next-door to an old mill. Its door was propped wide open – but not in welcome mode, unfortunately. The interior was dismantled and the fixtures were being lugged out to curb. “We closed down,” the owner told me apologetically.

Further investigation showed that most of village’s antique and gift emporiums were shuttered as well – some for the day, some permanently. I backtracked a ways and found a sort of breakfast diner that also boasted a four-table tavern area and a TV tuned to CNN. The sole employee apologized for being out of Lone Star beer; demand was so sparse that they only had stocked the ubiquitous national brand.

“It’s just been really slow around here since everything changed,” she said, gazing out at the deserted main drag. “Nothing going on.”

It stands to reason that Johnson City isn’t the only tourist town struggling after two years of recession. If you’ve got one of these quaint crossroads in your region – and most of us have – it might be time for a checkup. How was their summer, and how do they plan to weather the cooler months? This story screams for a narrative, building-by-building census, detailing the history and fate of each storefront and small business person. Online, an interactive pop-up map, slide show and behind-the-scenes video would complement your prose.

To augment your anecdotes and balance the tendency of business boosters to accentuate the positive, contact the state treasury department for sales, use and hotel occupancy tax revenue data, so you can analyze the trends. (Check with counties too; tax levy systems vary by jurisdiction.) Review bankruptcy filings and talk with local lenders and landlords about small-business struggles.

If you don’t have a town nearby with a critical mass of tourist trade, find some other local attraction – a ski or sports resort, theme park, museum. Readers love the inside scoop on local landmarks and the leisure industry is a natural for an entertaining and informative business feature.

Here are some links to get you started:

U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a related site with quick links to local chambers and visitors bureaus nationwide.
RoadsideAmerica.com, a guide to offbeat tourist attraction
Waterparks.com
Amusement Today, an online trade paper for theme and water parks, carnivals and other parts of the leisure sector; be sure to check out the helpful links to other industry groups.
American Hotel and Lodging Association with 11,000 hospitality-industry members nationwide.
American Independent Business Alliance and the National Federation of Independent Businesses
These lobbying groups tend to focus on anti-chain-store activities but may be a good conduit to local entrepreneurs groups.
ConventionBureaus.com, a rudimentary but helpful online directory of some 2,000 local groups.

Perhaps you’ll find more than doom and gloom. Here's how Jerome Weeks put together a multimedia package for North Texas's KERA public broadcasting of how an entrepreneur snapped up most of a moribund town and is trying to revive it as an arts center.


Come back to Your Daily Tipsheet each morning for advice on where to find sources, background and creative ways to make financial news and trends relevant to your audience.

Golf to the Fore

Biz news has been pretty heavy lately, so let’s take a breather and focus on a picturesque weekend feature.

According to numerous event calendars, August is National Golf Month. I realize these industry "holidays" are phony and manufactured, but they come in pretty handy sometimes as a news peg for a worthwhile but rather orphaned story idea.

The ubiquitous sport of golf is a likely pick that generates a lot of spending in most areas and is flush with novel spin-off possibilities. According to the National Golf Foundation, it’s a $75 billion-a-year industry in the United States – and that sounds low to me given the NGF claims that more than 28 million players a year hit nearly the nation’s nearly 16,000 golf courses.

Your state’s travel and tourism department likely can come up with an estimate of golf’s impact on the local economy. Besides the NGF, the industry-sponsored Golf 20/20 site focuses on the sport’s financial impact and offers myriad studies and reports as well as a directory of state-level affiliates. Golf Digest magazine online provides up-to-date industry news and trends.

Talk with local vendors about how they’re coping with this year’s grim economy, or to ferret out small business and career features. Pro shops, instructors, equipment dealers and manufacturers, golf course design and landscaping specialists, municipal golf course managers and vendors of supplies from food to fertilizer are just a handful of the ideas that come to mind.

If you like trend stories, find out whether courses in your area are keeping pace with competitors providing catering and banquet services for weddings and other non-golf events. Are they doing double duty, switching to cross-country ski routes in winter to maximize their seasons?

Another competitive angle: Many country clubs and courses are cutting dues, offering incentives to lure junior members and otherwise responding to their clientele’s financial straits. What are the hot discounts and promotions in your area, and are they working?
Play Golf America, a sort of information coalition sponsored by various leagues, also highlights corporate golf – surely that’s big business. It also features resources for golfers with disabilities – an area I haven’t seen explored yet. Even blind individuals play golf and there are trainers who specialize in helping handicapped people learn the game. The site includes a zip-code search function for many of its channels, so you can find local experts and providers easily.

If you’re covering the work-life beat, how about reviewing the notion of golf as a career? The Professional Golf Management program developed in conjunction with the PGA of America and offered at 20 universities nationwide touts 100 percent job placement. Doing what, they don’t quite say.

Or, take a look at golf as a career-builder in your business community. I’ve often felt at a disadvantage because not playing the game costs me a number of professional networking opportunities each year; you might talk with career coaches, management experts and the like about whether strolling the links with the boss really does help boost one up the corporate ladder. This 2008 survey www.CIO.com, the site for IT executives, says golf is over-rated as a way to chum up with business colleagues, but I’m not sure I buy it – especially for sales people and others who trade heavily on relationships.

Come back to Your Daily Tipsheet each morning for advice on where to find sources, background and creative ways to make financial news and trends relevant to your audience.