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On the trail of the cultural tourist
By Pat Boyd, Executive Director, South Dakotans for
the Arts
“We Heart Cultural Tourists, Smiley Face Smiley Face.”
Never mind that this pitch would cause cultural tourists to turn around and speed away, but after hours of trying to describe South Dakota’s abundant cultural and heritage tourism offerings in a few manageable and inviting words, we were driven to the very brink of sarcasm. The State offices of Tourism and the Arts are working on it, as well as regions, communities and individual venues. So far we have it down to about 500 words, which is hard to fit on a bumper sticker.
South Dakota has two tourism related problems. It is too big and there is too much to do. Most travelers can easily agree with the first part of that statement. Helping them to sort out the second part presents more of a challenge. Trails and Corridors are helpful concepts, because they divide our big map into more manageable pieces, lending guidance for weekends or day trips that connect the dots for visitors. Calling any of these Cultural or Arts or Heritage or Music or Theatre trails and attaching the name of the connecting road (as in the very successful I-29 Cultural Corridor project) seems workable, and many are staking out territory across the country.
Online services and printed brochures make it easier for travelers to customize their itineraries, and these are affordable marketing tools. Linking various activities and events makes planning more fun, and South Dakota has a great advantage in overlapping uses for these same trail maps. You can find great hiking, biking, riding, birding, dining, lodging and other wonders along the same trails. This is good because the Cultural Tourist badge may only go to one member of a traveling family, and if everyone in the van qualifies, well even purist tourists love to eat.
Cultural travelers are ideal tourists. They are a diverse group and there are a lot of them. They spend more and stay longer. Statistics are available to anyone who still argues the economic impact of cultural tourism. Tourism is South Dakota’s second largest industry, with plans to double itself, and it is no accident that cultural heritage tourism is the topic of marketing campaigns in every region of the state. Americans for the Arts points to this as a national trend,” When the arts and tourism communities work together to highlight the unique character of a place, they can harness market forces to educate and entertain visitors, preserve cultural assets, and engender community pride in its heritage and way of life.”
For more, go to www.americansforthearts.org and www.culturalheritagetourism.org, a website of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Both point to the necessity for flexible working partnerships and collaborative effort in the development of cultural tourism projects. Cooperation here on the home front is vital, because competition for people’s precious vacation time is serious, more even than for their money. It has to be worth the trip. Quality and authenticity of the experience are essential ingredients in cultural heritage tourism, and are a natural blend in South Dakota.
Taking the long way home is a wonderful way to explore our own state, by the way. There are places you have always meant to go, just an hour or two away. Be sure to take the Cultural Detour whenever possible…and send us your travel photos for CANmail this summer.