Here’s another great small town/rural tourism idea you can steal, this one from Canada. A two-day Taste & Tour Middlesex Conference started off with networking and local food. It’s important to do the fun stuff first. Then they turned to learning the second day, with a traditional conference event. “Tourism continues to be one of…
Last week, two local tours caught my eye. No, not local as in “my town,” local as in “taking your local people to see what’s local.” Hamilton County, Indiana, was taking their tourism staff out for a tour: Some of our staff is touring the county today to get acquainted w/ Hamilton Co.’s history! What…
In January, I spoke in Norfolk County, Ontario. It’s a rural county with several small towns and lots of farms, and a beautiful coastline. They sent me probably the best speaker-preparation packet I’ve ever received. Looking at the Official Map and Local Food Guide, the local recipe booklet, the Ontario’s Garden brochure and much more,…
Small town tourism can take inspiration from the Smithsonian Institution’s list of best small towns to visit in the U.S. Their first list in 2012 was limited to towns under 25,000 in population. For 2013, they’ve changed the target to towns under 15,000 and put the focus on visiting rather than just giving a ranking. The…
Last week, I had the chance to tour two agri-tourism operations near my hometown of Alva, Oklahoma. Here are their stories. Bradt’s Menagerie Jerad and JoDe Bradt wanted to get their kids out of video games and more into the real world. Jerad suggested they try raising chickens. JoDe had raised chicks when she was…
Even in small towns, hotels and motels have to cope with online reviews. Sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Google Local let every traveler become an instant expert. And small town hotel owners are left wondering how to respond. (Don’t see the video? Click through to What do we do about a negative review.) You already…
My neighbors in Ponca City, Oklahoma, have a famous local barbecue sauce, Head Country. This is the kind of thing that lots of economic development and tourism agencies have long given out in full size bottles to special guests and at booths at travel shows, etc. The problem is, how they heck do people get this stuff…
Sheila Scarborough was touring around small towns in Alberta, Canada. The person driving her around said, “Actually, I have a picture of Winston Churchill when he visited here during the war.” He pulled out his phone and showed her and told the story. (I’ll put the story at the end of the post.) He had…
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