|
State’s tourism action plan highlights ‘blooming’ potential
By Shelia Watson
Contributing Writer
When it comes to tourism in South Carolina, there is much to celebrate but, equally, much work to do, said Chad Prosser, head of the S.C. Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism.
“We’re a protected industry based on the fact that our product is a place, so we’re not worried about off-shoring tourism,” he said. “You can’t pick up downtown Charleston and move it to Shanghai.”
Speaking at the 42nd annual conference of the South Carolina Economic Developers’ Association earlier this month, Prosser pointed to the influence of the state’s No. 1 industry: an overall economic impact of $14.6 billion providing 11% of the state’s employment and $1.1 billion in tax revenue.
“We’ve only scraped the surface of the potential we have here,” he said. “The money comes in incrementally in diverse places like food and beverage, hotels, carriage rides, so you don’t tend to notice the aggregate impact, but it’s quite a bit.
“When you think about economic development, you think about ribbon cuttings on big buildings, but tourism is just as important. It’s just harder to quantify.”
Working with the Tourism Cluster Committee for the New Carolina, South Carolina Council on Competitiveness, Prosser, along with international consultant Michael MacNulty and his team from Ireland’s Tourism Development International, produced a report on South Carolina’s tourism industry that quantified some of that potential.
The report, which called tourism in South Carolina “a flower waiting to bloom,” noted that the state could grow its tourism revenues to $40 billion by the year 2020.
“South Carolina has the people, the product and the potential for so much more,” MacNulty said in the executive summary. “The world just keeps getting flatter, and given the competition from other states and other countries, now is the time to move toward making South Carolina a truly competitive player in that most sustainable of economic arenas: tourism and hospitality.”
The Tourism Action Plan, presented in more than 600 pages in three volumes by Tourism Development International, is the result of seven months of research by international experts who conducted more than 400 interviews and traveled across the state to evaluate the state’s overall approach to tourism development.
TDI, whose client list includes the national tourism agencies of China, India, the United Kingdom, Ireland and the Netherlands, as well as corporations such as Delta Air Lines and Holiday Inn, began working in South Carolina in November 2005.
The plan, funded by a coalition of public- and private-sector groups, provides a detailed list of recommendations.
Prosser noted in his presentation that tourism in South Carolina currently contributes $10.9 billion a year to the gross state product and employs about 216,000 people. Implementing the plan’s recommendations would allow the state to double the growth rate of the industry within five years and deliver $40 billion in annual gross state product by the year 2020, the plan concludes.
Among the primary recommendations of the Tourism Action Plan are:
Reorganizing the current State Tourism Office into an entity that is removed from government and formed into a public/private partnership. Such action would remove civil service encumbrances and facilitate best practices in tourism development.
Forming an umbrella organization to unify the components of the state’s tourism industry to advocate for issues of industry-wide concern and promote information sharing.
Increasing the tourism marketing budget. The SCPRT marketing budget for FY 2005-2006 was $14.6 million, of which $10.1 million came from state appropriations. The report pointed out that less than one-fifth of 1% of the $9 billion in direct tourist spending during that period was reinvested in marketing and advertising efforts.
Developing a state product development plan to increase tourism in inland areas. Prosser said such focused product development could create tourist-attracting clusters of activity near interstate highways and draw more visitors to areas such as Greenville, which has a strong industrial base but not the tourism traffic it has the potential to serve.
Improving access to the area by highway and air, including efforts to promote South Carolina as a destination to stage more flights and new routes.
Improving training for service-industry jobs to recruit and retain workers.
Designing and launching a public awareness campaign aimed at raising tourism’s profile, especially in rural and inland areas.
Tourism is not just South Carolina’s No. 1 industry, it is also one of the world’s largest industries and the world’s largest service industry, growing at an average annual rate of 4.5% worldwide, compared with the 3.5% gross domestic product growth worldwide. Tourism pays 7% more than manufacturing jobs worldwide, Prosser said.
“Tourism isn’t just about where to vacation,” he said. “It’s the business activity that drives the demand for preference of destination.”
There are several niche areas developing, including agritourism, architourism, ecotourism, voluntourism and other reasons for travel to a particular destination, such as bookstores, culinary, cultural and medical tourism, Prosser said.
|
E-Mail This Article
Printer-Friendly Version