In tough times turn to tourism

So the County Board is looking at increasing its investment in domestic tourism. Ahhh, tourism.

I’ve been down that road before. Let me take you down memory lane. It’s a winding road but relevant to the issue.

Illinois tourism was a Gov. Big Jim Thompson administration initiative. Actually, it was an idea promoted by Randall Wolter, who Thompson appointed as Director of the Commission for Economic Development.

I was paying attention at the time because I was unemployed and the economy was darn near as bad as it is now. I looked at the new program as a shot-in-the-dark opportunity to retrain and restart my working career. Northern Illinois Tourism Council (NITC) was just getting started. The organization (now known as the Northern Illinois Tourism Development Office) needed delegates from each of the counties in its district to serve on its board. Because no one else in the county was paying attention I became this county’s delegate.

It was a volunteer position. There was little-to-no funding at the time. No one else wanted it except Sandra Black with the Sandwich Opera House. She’s always paying attention. I don’t know what Sandwich would do if not for her.

NITC was to represent and promote domestic tourism in areas not covered by a convention and visitors bureau (CVB). CVBs received funding from the state’s hotel/motel taxes — if the organization could get its local units to devote a portion of their local hotel/motel tax to the program. DeKalb and Sycamore had the only motels in the county and only DeKalb was a home rule community. Getting DeKalb’s Mayor Greg Sparrow to take one penny of hotel/motel tax revenue out of the General Fund was a no go. Not on his watch.

Sycamore had the Stratford Inn, Ron-Jo’s and Twin Gables and no home rule authority. They also had Mayor Red Johnson. I bugged him so much about that “silly tourism program” that he made me buy an old chair at a charity auction.

“Sold for $10 to the tourism fella in the ball cap,” said The Mayor. I don’t think anyone had bid anything on the chair. I sure didn’t. At least he knew why I was really at the auction.

NITC was DeKalb County’s conduit to the state’s new tourism program. But NITC funding, for the most part, was limited to association membership dues. George Miller, out of the Quad Cities, was hired as the first executive director. His mission was pretty straight forward. Get members.

The way I saw it, if I was going to be effective at getting members from DeKalb County, I needed to learn from Miller how to get them. So I traveled about with him in the uncharted-for-tourism waters of northern Illinois. We were selling blue sky in the gloomy days of a recession.

What a wonderful experience. Domestic tourism worked. It got people to take risks and invest into their entrepreneurial dreams creating needed jobs. Festivals were re-energized because of their sales tax revenue potential and because that revenue was paid by alot of people who didn’t live (and already pay taxes) in town. Communities, take Galena for a shining example, were reborn with a purpose.

Communities could get in the tourism game with what they had and then build upon that. Before tourism the Fox River was more often referred to as “Chicago’s sewer.” An activist known only as, “The Fox,” took vigilante action on illegal effluents into the river. Ralph Friese had to fight in the courts to get canoeing rights on certain rivers. As success stories in tourism grew the value of natural resources was enhanced.

When Jim Thompson left office in 1991 he was asked what he thought then governor-elect Jim Edgar should do with the tourism program. From the Chicago Tribune:

“It’s one of the areas where we can’t afford to cut back our expenditures either for infrastructure or for marketing and promotion,” Thompson said, as if he were continuing in office. He said tourism can create jobs, “in a very elastic fashion. Sitting here in the middle of the country, we’re a different kind of marketplace and destination from spots like New York, California or Florida. We can take advantage even of economically tough times because people will confine their vacations, in many instances, to day trips or weekend trips. And that’s a market we can pick on.”

Edgar and then George Ryan pretty much left tourism in place. When Jim Edwards was elected as mayor of Sycamore he asked me to serve as chair of the Sycamore Tourism Committee. Edwards was a big promoter of tourism because he was a fanatical promoter of Sycamore. During a convention in Springfield, Edwards learned that the Bureau of Tourism left Sycamore off of a printed map. He threw such a fit that by the next year’s convention, Sycamore had a prominent place on the map. We even got a special mention for our tourism guide. I was proud of that because I produced it.

I was (and still am) also proud of shaking then Gov. Ryan’s hand at an event at the Governor’s mansion because he remembered me.

“How’s tourism doing in DeKalb County,” he asked. “You’re doing a good job up there.”

I spent a lot of time in tourism. Often on the road as a volunteer. It felt good to be recognized.

Rod Blagojevich added a new twist – the addition of Hollywood incentives to get more movies filmed in Illinois. DeKalb County has done well with Hollywood. Dennis Quaid and Zac Efron are still running around the county filming a movie. A new Superman movie was filmed in the Sandwich-Plano area just recently. A new movie is being filmed in Sycamore.

Three things I learned from my experiences in tourism:

1. Put Heads in Beds – if tourism is to be funded through local hotel/motel taxes (matched by the state) and held accountable then its funding source, association membership dues aside, must remain hotel/motel tax. That doesn’t necessarily guarantee a funding level but it sure makes the CVB focus in bringing overnight visitors and they are the most lucrative for the host community.
2. Don’t Put Dead Things On Walls – if visitors can’t interact with the exhibits at a museum or art gallery, they won’t come back. They won’t stay long either.
3. Open Tuesdays from 1-4pm won’t cut it – throughout my travels up and down and across the state I often came across museums, attractions and such ran entirely by volunteers so they were only open once or twice a week. They’re usually non-profit and operated by elders raised in or near the Great Depression era. They have a CD worth around $60,000. They’ll never consider hiring someone with that money to promote the attraction as a resource and to generate subsequent revenue. Often there’s no one to pass the torch to and all the years of efforts for preservation are then lost.

Domestic tourism is a great investment especially in rough times. DeKalb and Sycamore should devote a portion of their local hotel/motel tax and strengthen the outstanding efforts of Debbie Armstrong and the DeKalb County Convention and Visitors Bureau. That organization should live and die on hotel/motel taxes albeit membership dues are always helpful. If the focus shifts from Heads in Beds then another Chamber of Commerce has been formed and we don’t need it.

DeKalb County’s heads in beds are often business travelers. The largest tourist attraction is NIU, of course, with its world class arts and music programs; its athletic programs, alumni and its students’ parents. The DeKalb County Farm Bureau is cutting edge on agri-tourism. Shabbona Lake brings tens of thousands of visitors to the county. Sandwich is growing its tourism base and is greatly enhanced with the Timber Creek Conference Center. Genoa, Kingston and Kirkland are quietly building another sportsman’s paradise/outdoor recreation corridor on Rte 72.

We can build from what we already have and that’s a good position to be in.