SPRING 2007

AASLH Performance Management Survey

Partner Profile

  2007 Dozen Distinctive Destinations

Alliance of National Heritage Area Conference

Blackstone Valley's Sustainable Tourism Development Lab

Boomer Project

Professional Arts Management Institute Conference

Scanning the States

Transitions

Washington Buzz

Calendar

Mission

Partners in Tourism: Culture and Commerce is a coalition of cultural service organizations, the travel industry, and federal agencies that provides a forum for collaborative research, education, promotion and advocacy with the common goal of advancing the role of culture and heritage in the travel and tourism industry.

National Partners

and

Federal Corresponding Partners

Cultural Heritage Tourism News

is published by:

© 2007

Partners in Tourism: Culture and Commerce

Editor

Carolyn Brackett

Assistant Editors

Amy Webb

Verna Romero

GOT NEWS?

Send program updates, new initiatives and case studies to cht@nthp.org

Blackstone River Valley Shares

Tourism Success with Others

Twenty-two years ago, the Blackstone Valley in Massachusetts and Rhode Island suffered from poverty, pollution and neglect and would hardly have been considered a tourism destination.  Thanks to the dedicated efforts of talented local visionaries, today this region is one of the nation’s most successful National Heritage Areas showcasing America’s first industrial landscape.  Building on more than two decades of hard-earned experience, the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council has recently developed a 5-day Sustainable Tourism Development Laboratory to help other communities design thoughtful tourism planning and development strategies. 

According to Bob Billington, President of the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council, “In the tourism industry, we tend to gravitate to marketing places.  That’s a wonderful thing—but it can be too easy and seductive.  Tourism needs to be built on sustainable principles from the very beginning.” 

The Lab includes practical and immediate strategies for communities such as learning how to incorporate “green strategies” into tourism planning. 

In addition to the Lab, the Blackstone Tourism Council has sponsored several conferences in the past year including one on Voluntourism last spring, a Sustainable Tourism summit last fall, and a Green Tourism conference coming up on April 26, 2007. 

Mary Steinmaus, a participant from Appalachian Ohio at the Sustainable Tourism Summit commented,

"We were amazed at how many people from all sectors of the community were around the table.  These people understood that heritage tourism is economic development, it is preservation, but it is also community development.  Their efforts to reclaim the Blackstone River Valley have brought all of those people together around a common table and they all got it."

A Green Guide to the Blackstone Valley will be released in May 2007 to educate visitors on how to be a green visitor, including how to adapt to the local lifestyle and how to minimize the impact of a visit.  This publication will be available both in hard copy as well as a downloadable file on the sustainable tourism lab website. 

The Blackstone Valley is eager to share the lessons they have learned about how to build on the resources communities already have.  Billington notes:  “Here in the Blackstone Valley, we don’t have grand mansions, white sandy beaches or a lot of money.  What we do have is the creativity and innovation to find the resources to build a better place and do it with consideration of the community.  If you can do this in the Blackstone Valley, you can do this anywhere.” 

In March 2007, for example, the Blackstone Valley Tourism Commission capitalized on the recent influx of minority groups by creating a guide to 150 minority-owned food related businesses to feature the growing cultural diversity of the region.  The concept caught the attention of the major newspaper in Rhode Island,

resulting in a 3-page feature story on local food establishments that had previously been largely overlooked. 

Sustainable tourism laboratories are offered to groups of 3-8 stakeholders from one community with customized content tailored to meet individual needs.  The Lab can be either offered in the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor or in a given community.  Participating communities receive a Sustainable Tourism Development Plan 60 days after the Lab concludes. 

To find out more, check out www.sustainabletourismlab.com or call 401-724-2200.

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