The invitation

By Ted Lee Eubanks

Green travel. Geotourism. Ecotourism. Heritage travel. Culinary travel. Nature tourism. Avitourism. Agritourism.

The travel world is afloat in “isms.” Now every interest has its own niche; every person has their own interest. Google, Twitter, Facebook and the blogosphere nourish these interests, enabling travelers to bypass old news and to go it alone. But just where are these “aloners” going and what are they doing once they get there?

According to a new study sponsored by the U.S. Cultural & Heritage Tourism Marketing Council, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and Heritage Travel, Inc.:

* 78 percent of U.S. leisure travelers (118 million adults) participate in cultural and/or heritage activities when traveling

* Fully 40 percent of all leisure travelers in the U.S. alone can be classified as those who actively engage in cultural and heritage travel

* 24 percent of U.S. leisure travelers (36 million) will take a cultural/heritage trip within the next 12 months

* These travelers spend more money on cultural/historic trips ($994 on average) than is spent on the average U.S. trip ($611). Half of these expenditures are spent on activities, dining and shopping

* 57 percent of these travelers use Web sites as their travel-information source

* Cultural and heritage travelers are active online: 67 percent use Google and 42 percent use Facebook

Nature travel and outdoor recreation are also significant among the “isms.” A recent report by the Outdoor Industry Association states that “in 2008, 48.6 percent of Americans ages 6 and older participated in outdoor recreation. Americans made an estimated 11.16 billion outdoor excursions in 2008—either close to home, in a nearby park or on an overnight trip. Activities like backpacking, mountain biking and trail running showed double-digit increases in participation, and hiking and camping showed 9 percent and 7 percent increases, respectively.”

Travel packagers are marketing “slow food” travel. Bird-watchers wander the globe hoping to glimpse new species to “tick” off their lists. Train watchers, scanners joined to their ears, look (and listen) near tunnels, tracks, switchyards and switchbacks. There are carousel clubs, dragonfly collectors, scenic photographers and Civil War reenactors. There are hikers, rafters, campers, bikers, hunters and anglers. All eat, sleep, play and spend. All are searching for the real, the authentic. All travel.

Few find the Great Plains, though. Fewer still know what they would find. Of course rural Great Plains communities, still reeling (and shrinking) from decades of economic and social shifts, should benefit from tourism. Of course Great Plains states should welcome the expanded revenues that tourism generates. Of course small businesses, mom-and-pop B&Bs, roadside restaurants, farmers and ranchers, and Main Street shops and markets should jump at the chance to attract new customers.

Yet Great Plains legislators still fight to see who can spend the least on tourism promotion. Parks funding is slashed, and museums struggle to stay afloat. The travelers who are searching for the places that connect them to something real, something important, must first know that you are here. They must know that there is something in the Great Plains other than cattle and corn, windmills and wizards.

For nearly two decades, I have drifted about these Great Plains. I have worked on projects from the Turtle Mountains of North Dakota south to the Canadian River in the Texas Panhandle. I have tasted lutefisk at the Norst Hostfest in Minot. I have squatted (and frozen) in a viewing blind in the Rowe Sanctuary near Kearney, Neb., waiting for the sunrise of sandhill cranes. I have known Pembina Gorge, the Killdeer Mountains, the Badlands and Black Hills, Scotts Bluff, Sowbelly Canyon, the Pine Ridge, Crystal Lake in the Sand Hills of Nebraska, Fort Robinson, the Niobrara, the Kansas Flint Hills, Cheyenne Bottoms, Quivira, Black Mesa, Alabaster Caverns, the Wichita Mountains, Miami, Canadian, and Palo Duro Canyon.

My time in the Great Plains has been personally revelatory, transforming. Here I have learned crucial parts of the American story. Theodore Roosevelt, himself fascinated by the “Great American Desert,” said that “I do not believe that any man can adequately appreciate the world of today unless he has some knowledge of—a little more than a slight knowledge, some feeling for and of—the history of the world of the past.” Yet the allure of the Great Plains is as much about the present world as the past, as much about now as then. Americans should—no, must—hear, see and taste this story.

Let’s invite them and ask them to stay awhile.

Eubanks will be the keynote speaker at the Governor’s Agri/Eco-Tourism Workshop Feb. 3–4, 2010, at the Holiday Inn & Convention Center in Kearney, Neb. The workshop is sponsored by the Nebraska Department of Economic Development’s Travel & Tourism Division and co-sponsored by the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission and the Nebraska Department of Agriculture. For more information or to register for the workshop, visit http://www.visitnebraska.gov/industry.

Bookmark/Search this post with:

Delicious  •   Digg  •   StumbleUpon  •   Facebook  •   Yahoo