March 13, 2019 (Carrollton, Ga.) – The Historic High Country Travel Association’s Winter Chautauqua tourism conference brought more than 80 tourism professionals from around the state to the Carrollton Center for the Arts, March 3 and 4.
“Chautauqua is a vibrant, information-packed meeting and it is a perfect example of the impact of tourism,” said Carrollton Area Convention and Visitors Bureau Director Jonathan Dorsey. “While these folks were here discussing tourism, they were tourists themselves, eating in local restaurants, staying in local hotels and shopping locally.”
Winter Chautauqua is an annual day-and-a-half gathering of destination marketing professionals to learn and build relationships in the industry. The meeting’s location alternates between the Northwest and Northeast Georgia travel regions each year. Carrollton captured the conference a year ago with a successful bid put together by the CACVB, in cooperation with local partners including the Carrollton Center for the Arts, Courtyard by Marriott, the Carroll County Chamber of Commerce and Haralson County and Villa Rica Tourism.
With a theme of Altogether Tourism — which keyed off of Carrollton’s Altogether Original brand — the conference featured two noted keynote speakers. Judy Randall, president of Randall Travel Marketing and co-author of the annual Top Ten Trends in Travel and Tourism, spoke about tourism marketing on a small budget and emerging trends in travel. Dr. Steve Morse, dean of the McCamish School of Business at Reinhardt University, identified the top reasons why tourism plays a significant role in community economic development in Northwest Georgia.
Breakout sessions focused on using technology in tourism marketing, the Georgia Visitor Information Centers, developing attractions around a famous name, developing historic attractions in a sustainable way, conducting familiarization tours for travel media and tour operators and a panel discussion of the role of wineries, breweries and distilleries in destination marketing.
Visitors to Carroll County spent almost $167 million locally in 2017, supported more than 1,421 jobs and generated $11.62 million in state and local tax revenues. Each household in the county would need to be taxed an additional $282 per year to replace taxes generated by tourism. Carroll County ranks fourth in visitor spending in the 17-county Historic High Country Travel Region and is 25th among all 159 counties in Georgia. The Carrollton Area Convention and Visitors Bureau is the official destination marketing organization of Carrollton and Carroll County.
For questions concerning this press release or the Carrollton Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, please call Jonathan Dorsey at (770) 214-9746.
