By John Dersham
Visitors love coming to our area and our visitor numbers have been rapidly increasing for several years but now seem to be exploding. We are having our best spring volume ever. Spring is blooming and so is tourism. Lodging throughout the area is near max on the weekends and school is not even out yet.
Our lodging tax income is up for the year. The additional lodging income we are getting from the city of Fort Payne to conduct outside advertising is paying off with increases in overnight stays, restaurant attendance, park visits and in general creating more shoppers for all business types.
We have two things happening right now. First, we have more advertising dollars available for us to invest in a wider gamut of internet, social media, and print and radio ads. This generates new visitors coming to our area for the first time. Secondly, we are getting a high content of return visitors who are coming here multiple times per year from major population markets within a 200 mile radius. There are 11 million people living in the 200 mile circle around us and we make an easy weekend trip for all of them. As our numbers of visitors grow it perpetuates our increases. Visitors come and they love it, they go home and tell friends and relatives and the cycle of tourism increasing grows and grows.
As we grow, so do our local businesses and so do the desire of new businesses to move to our area to participate in our increasing success. One thing leads to another and we all benefit and so do other organizations like Fort Payne Main Street, the area Chambers of Commerce, our festivals, parks and special events all get more attendees. All of this keeps tax revenues coming into our communities that contribute to their bottom lines and in return allows money for all forms of improvements to our communities and to the county.
This weekend is a big tourism weekend. We have our Fort Payne Third Saturday Cruise In, Mentone Rhododendron Festival and U.S. 11 Antique Alley Yard Sale.
This is all very exciting and very encouraging to our growth into an even more inviting place to live or visit, but it also creates jobs and higher incomes to benefit each person and each business.
For information about upcoming events in DeKalb, visit our website www.northalabamafestivals.com or call us at 256-845-3957.
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