Monday, November 1, 2021
Monroe County held a successful rural tourism conference last week with the centre of the action taking place in Sweetwater.
According to Monroe County Tourism Director Blaina Best, the conference went “phenomenally well.”
“We hosted over 200 tourism professional at the conference, which was the largest number of attendees to date for this particular conference, so that was wonderful,” Best expressed. “The City of Sweeter’s City Recorder Jessica Morgan came up with a great idea to do Main Street Bucks, which were valued at $5, and she made sure that each attendee received two of them so they could use them to shop in downtown Sweetwater.”
The attendees were able to use them within the businesses in downtown Sweetwater.
“This encouraged our attendees to go downtown in the Main Street area and really shop downtown,” Best said. “All of the Main Street businesses kept up with the amount of money the conference attendees spent in their stores by request of the city, so probably by the end of next week we will see how much of an impact that had on the city.”
She noted Morgan and others in Sweetwater city government has received good feedback from the businesses downtown.
“As for the county as a whole, we were able to take them to Lost Sea which is America’s largest underground lake right here in Monroe County, we were able to take them to Tsali Notch Vineyard and in addition to them having a great experience you could hear them talk that they want to come back with their families which will have a huge impact on the county.”
She noted that a lot of the attendees had decided to stay over the weekend to attend the Cherohala Skyway Festival.
“I honestly think that Monroe County Chamber of Commerce, Sweetwater city and Monroe County Tourism have done a really good job working together to showcase Monroe County and I really don’t think there was much that we could have done better,” she said. “We worked hard as a team and we made sure to talk about all areas of Monroe County, so I think we gave them a really well rounded experience.”
Best would like to be able to host another tourism conference again in the future.
“The economic impact is hard to deny,” she noted. “When you see that many people in downtown Sweetwater spending their money and then staying for the rest of the week just to go to the Cherohala Skyway Festival then you know this is the type of conference that will have a massive impact on our county.”
Best stated she appreciated “100%” of the teamwork that was presented during the conference.
“It is not just about a city because tourists do not see city lines,” she noted. “The fact that an entire county came together to make sure that we were able to host this, people we were willing to sponsor this, there was just so many people involved in making this successful that I want them to know that we appreciate them and we could not have done this without them.”
Tags: rural tourism
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