Hitting the Trail: Governor launches new statewide program with Old Tennessee Trail announcement
By Mindy Tate, Editor
mtate@williamsonherald.com
Bob Coan of Schenectady, N.Y., and his two friends — one from Sunset Beach, N.C., and the other from Florence, Ky., — were just looking for a small town to visit Tuesday when they traveled to Franklin and met Gov. Phil Bredesen as he launched the state’s new Discover Tennessee Trails and Byways with the debut of the Old Tennessee Trail.
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The first of 15 trails planned throughout the state, the Old Tennessee Trail: Settlers to Soldiers Trail begins and ends in downtown Franklin before snaking its way along country roads in southwest Williamson County and into the heart of Maury
County.
“This town is fantastic,” Coan said after the announcement at which he met Bredesen, himself a native New Yorker. “I really enjoyed it.”
Standing in the middle of the Public Square, Bredesen was joined by commissioners from Economic Development, Transportation, Parks and other state departments to announce the program.
“The trails initiative is one of the most comprehensive marketing and branding initiatives ever to be launched from the state’s tourism department,” said Commissioner of Tourist Development Susan Whitaker. “Discover Tennessee Trails and Byways is an opportunity to showcase tourism’s major sites as well as our state’s exceptional off-the-beaten-path attractions which are some of Tennessee’s greatest assets.”
Country music superstar group Rascal Flatts has signed on as the campaign’s spokesperson and their song, “Life is a Highway,” will be the theme song for the campaign.
Coan, his wife, her four sisters and a host of other family members were ensconced in the Wyndham resort in Nashville on a weeklong trip to Nashville. Drawn by the things that draw many other travelers — country music, a familiarity from passing through on previous trips and a desire to visit some place new — they arrived last Friday and will leave tomorrow.
Franklin drew them in for the description of its historic Main Street, antique shopping and historic sites and they weren’t disappointed, Coan said Wednesday.
Their visit seems to bear out a recent report showing 78 percent of all U.S. leisure travelers participate in cultural and/or heritage activities while traveling, translating to 118.3 million adults each year.
With cultural and heritage travelers spending an average of $994 per trip, they contribute more than $192 billion annually to the U.S. economy, according to the study conducted by the U.S. Cultural & Heritage Tourism (USCHT) Marketing Council, in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Commerce. Heritage Travel Inc., a subsidiary of The National Trust for Historic Preservation, and its Web site www.gozaic.com, was lead sponsor of the study.
“A lot of people have come together to make this work,” Bredesen said of the program, which was the brainchild of Leiper’s Fork resident and preservationist Aubrey Preston. The 15 trails planned as part of the program will stretch across Tennessee’s 95 counties.
“This is a regional effort. It recognizes that tourism and the things that draw tourism don’t necessarily follow city boundaries. It represents a new approach, a new way, of getting a visitor experience in Tennessee.
“I have to tell you during tough economic times it is even more important that we recognize the value of a regional approach in packaging tourism destinations,” Bredesen said.
Preston said he and Deborah Warnick of the Williamson County Convention & Visitors Bureau met with Whitaker over a year ago to talk about a heritage tourism trail because “people from the city really like to come out to the country on the weekends and a lot of our little country stores needed that to keep the doors open.
“We also talked about how visitors don’t really care about county lines. They want to come see our farms, they want to come see our villages, they want to come see our battlefields. They want to see our Main Street. They want to sit on the porch and hear stories from the locals, people like Goose and Uncle Lester.
“We also talked a lot about our friends from the North who are unlikely to drive out there alone. Some of them are still remembering that movie ‘Deliverance,’” Preston said. “They love the country but would love to have one of these trail guides to give them good directions when they are out in the country.”
Preston just returned with Bredesen from an economic development trip to China, but you can be sure he didn’t just talk about his experience in health care.
“We were talking about building an Old Tennessee Trail to China but really, I think there is a lot of tourism opportunities. There is a really large emerging group of middle class people and they know about Elvis Presley and a few of them know about Dolly Parton, but I think they would enjoy it from this perspective,” Preston said.
“I am still trying to dial in on what happened today because this is obviously much bigger and much quicker than the idea we had a couple months ago. I do think the reason it has taken off is because it is a solid idea. I think people that are in the cities do love to go to the country if they know where to go and I think our rural areas, when you look at the unemployment rates throughout our rural areas, really need tourism dollars.”
Other trails will be launched throughout the state beginning in January and throughout the spring, with the Old Tennessee Trail serving as a model. The Department of Tourist Development will provide tourism partners with a branding starter kit including dynamic trail names and logos such as “Proud Mary,” “Ring of Fire,” and “Walking Tall,” as well as brochures and Web site development. In addition to the branding starter kit Tourist Development will support this effort through the existing media plan which includes television, print and online, funded through a $300,000 federal grant, Whitaker said.
Posted on: 11/5/2009
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