Video: Dozens Of Towns Uniting For New Tourism Tools

COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) – Many small towns are looking for new sources of revenue.  An increasing number of them are looking to tourism, but getting the word out isn’t always easy.

That’s why the Mississippi-Tennessee-Alabama Rural Tourism Conference is educating those rural towns on how to lure more visitors.

This is the first time since 2008 for Columbus to host the two day event, and it’s also the first time for Tennessee to be apart of the conference.

When you think of a rural area, you think of small towns in the middle of nowhere, but that’s not the case. In fact, Columbus is classified as a rural town, but it has a little over 23,000 residents.

“That has to do with the economics of everything. How many people are impoverished, who lives in your area, so the criteria is greater than just the number of people because you could actually have people from a city larger than Columbus, but it really is considered a rural area,” says Columbus Convention and Visitors Bureau Executive Director, Nancy Carpenter.

Doctoral student, Amy Bardwell, is working on a Rural Tourism Research Project, and has found that the uniqueness of small towns is why tourism numbers have been up within the last decade.

“I think a lot of towns are really working on trying to hone in on those marketing efforts. It can really boost the economy in those areas, if it’s done right, and I believe that a lot of places are doing a really good job right now, of trying to get more people to their little towns, and their little niche areas by supporting some of these cultural spots that they have.”

Digging up the roots of a small town is another tourism tool that many may not realize.

“To realize that history is tourism and tourism is economic development. I always laugh when I hear people say ‘no, we need a building on that property, we don’t need to have fishing on the Tenn-Tom.’ No, that is economic development,” says Carpenter.

Holly Springs is one of the towns that’s benefited from one of those shared tips, by taking the idea of creating an app, and turning it into a spot on the web.

“We spent six months on it, but it stemmed from someone else’s idea, and basically what you take away from a conference like that is how can I make it fit in my area, so we couldn’t afford the app, but we have a cultural map,” says Executive Director for Holly Springs Tourism and Recreation Bureau, Lakisha Buffington.