At the start of the summer season, there is no better time to write about tourism, which is the lifeblood of many communities and an untapped resource for others.

I remember a quote from the Indian author Anamika Mishra, who said: “Traveling means opening windows of the heart and welcoming new things.”

That begs the question, does your community create new things and offer new things to those who travel through or visit?

Most communities across the country are facing financial problems for many reasons. Revenue is slowly eroding – or, in some cases, rapidly -. For most communities, there are few ways to reverse this trend of local dollars leaving their community. What can communities do to slow down or, even better, reverse these trends, which will intensify in the future?

One way to slow, or possibly reverse, the outflow of dollars from your community is to find ways to attract visitors through tourism. The power of the tourism dollars can literally change economic trends, results, and the landscape in your community.

While each community varies slightly based on the cost of living and other economic conditions, studies show that tourism brings in about $ 500 per visit to a community for an average two-day stay. That figure includes hotels, gas, shopping, and dining. If your community can use these numbers to attract 10,000 additional tourists during the year, that is an additional $ 5 million circulating through your community each year. It gets better. Studies also show that those dollars are then circulated three to seven times that of those within the community throughout the community. This equates to $ 15 million or more circulating in your community each year. What does $ 15 million add to your business base and city treasury charged with infrastructure and maintenance for the city?

Needless to say, tourism is a high stakes game that any community would negligently not play. Community leaders would evade their duty by not actively pursuing these dollars. How could a community build the machine that encourages and attracts tourism? While there are many ways to increase that sales, here’s a simple three-step process that works:

• First recognize, understand and promote the value and vision of tourism. Regardless of where you are, you need to get to a point where you are constantly preparing and doing things that will make tourism grow. This is the most important attitude church leaders can have when it comes to the financial survival of their church. It’s not a short sprint. It will be a marathon – but a marathon with little satisfaction once it is completed.

Second, find unique things about your city and build on them. As the above quote shows, tourists seek new and unique experiences, not the same thing. Tourists seek the heart and soul of a community, not the easy-to-find experiences that so many offer. Does your community have access to water such as rivers or lakes? Does your community have a niche like music, history, and / or art? Find at least one niche and grow it as best you can.

• Third, support organizations that are ready to organize events that promote the talents of your community. People travel for good events. Events can be car or bike shows, food festivals, unique music festivals, veterans events, ethnic festivals. … the list is endless. However, real skill in this arena goes beyond simply creating these events. Any event that you focus community resources on should be an event that can ultimately turn into a multi-day event. These are the events that attract high stakes tourist dollars to create the impact your community needs.

There is one additional element that cannot be overlooked as you begin to capitalize on these great events – the look and feel of your downtown area.

John Newby is the author of the Building Main Street, Not Wall Street column, which aims to help communities combine synergies with local media companies so they can not only survive but thrive. His email is john@360mediaalliance.net.

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