Tourists From Around The Globe Visit The Friendly City

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COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) — The 2016 Columbus Spring Pilgrimage is a thing of the past, but it doesn’t mean the end of tourism in The Friendly City.

Visit Columbus CEO Nancy Carpenter said this past Pilgrimage fill the city, and local hotels have reported raking in around $100,000 on multiple times throughout the two week event.

Local restaurants also enjoyed the extra business throughout Pilgrimage.

“The past year versus this year, we’ve seen definitely about a 75 percent influx of additional revenue since we’ve come in our second year during Pilgrimage…”, said Old 82 restaurant General Manager and Executive Chef Mark Eakes, “…the clientele is great, a lot of new faces, and hopefully a lot of those new faces will be coming back the following year.

“Actually making reservations for the following year already.”

Eakes also said the start of the Spring season, “with the downtown influx of business, it’s the start of Spring once…Pilgrimage kicks off and its really through the roof past that.”

Visitors are visiting Columbus from all over the world, and recently a group of 26 Australians spent time in the city as part of a literacy tour in the Deep South.

“We’re visiting the homes of famous writers, the graveyards where they’er buried, we’re seeing manuscripts and libraries…”, said tour guide and visitor from Sydney, Australia Susannah Fullerton, “…we’re walking through towns that they describe in their novels and their poems, and we are having a wonderful time.”

Tourist from Newcastle, Australia Boris Sokoloff and Fullerton both said their favorite part of the tour has been “Southern Hospitality”.

Everywhere we’ve gone, we’ve sensed that people are so proud of their heritage, their towns…”, said Fullerton, “…they look after their architecture. The sense of community and the incredibly warm welcome that we’ve had from absolutely everybody…its been quite amazing.”

The events don’t stop for Columbus. Market Street is fast approaching, and the city will be hosting a Presidents Cup Soccer Tournament as well as a Bass Fishing Tournament the weekend of May 11th through May 15th.

Carpenter expects that weekend to bring in over a million dollars in revenue.

Eakes also recommends visitors to “shop local” and support the many locally owned businesses in downtown Columbus.