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The Battle for Staycationers
Georgia and South Carolina are fighting for tourism dollars
by Walter C. Jones , Morris News Service
June 9, 2009
W
hether you call it more of a friendly competition than a feud, Georgia and South Carolina
are busy enticing each other's residents to vacation in the other state.
The recession prompted the change from trolling for Yankee tourist dollars, the traditional
goal of every Southern civic booster. With families watching their spending, tourism marketers
figure they needed to change their strategies, too.
"We were trying to hedge our bets and guess what people are doing," said Marion Edmonds,
spokesman for the South Carolina Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism.
Last winter, the department launched a late-winter ad blitz at snow-weary Chicagoans. This
year, the focus is on families in nearby states who plan to drive to their vacations to save money.
Edmonds said the marketers in his department looked at the five cities that have traditionally been
the main sources of drive-in visitors and targeted them, including Atlanta, Greensboro and
Charlotte.
Georgia officials were making the same calculations, according to Kevin Langston, assistant
commissioner for tourism in the Georgia Department of Economic Development.
"Everybody is reacting to the current marketing conditions which means staying closer to
home and having shorter vacations," he said. "We are fortunate enough to have the biggest
population center for the whole region in Atlanta, so everyone is in this market."
Atlantans and other Southerners are exposed to a range of tourism messages from South
Carolina, Florida and Georgia. Many of the messages are coming through articles in newspapers and
magazines as well as television shows in the form of public relations rather than bought ads as the
state tourism agencies also cope with tighter budgets. South Carolina, for one, is looking at a 30
percent smaller budget, though much of the economizing was done through staff layoffs to maintain
as much of the advertising budget as possible.
Others in the market are fine-tuning their strategies to get visitors to stay longer. For
example, the Hilton Head, SC., Area Hospitality Association decided to lengthen the programs in its
two annual wine and seafood festivals from four hours on two separate afternoons to four days each,
according to association Executive Director Ann Marie Adam. The aim was to lure visitors into
spending the night in local hotels and spending their money in local restaurants.
"We created a destination event. We went from proudly offering a community event to mostly
locals to a destination event that would bring people in from out of town who would want to stay,"
she said.
Just Monday, the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce launched in conjunction with hotels in
the state aimed at keeping Palmetto State residents from the seduction of Georgia's beaches,
mountain and cities.
Called "Close to Home Escapes," the campaign links a series of promotions offered by the
various hotels, such as vouchers for meals, gas rebates and free tickets to attractions.
While the competition is vigorous, it is likely to remain civil without the kind of
comparison ads sometimes used by automakers and detergent marketers who talk down about "Brand X."
"The nice thing about tourism is even if someone takes a vacation somewhere else, they can
still take a long weekend here," Langston said.
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