From Your Rutherford County Tourism Development Authority

Serving Rutherford's Accommodations,
Attractions, Restaurants, Event Organizers,
Business Owners and Government Entities

Save the Date! TDA Alliance Meetings Offer Free Opportunities, Information & Networking July 22 & August 18

Mark your calendars for the formational meeting of the Rutherford County TDA Alliance group: Tuesday, August 18th from 2:00 to 3:00 PM in the Lake Lure Inn Dining Room.

The first formational meeting July 22nd brought a wide range of tourism entities to the table to learn and begin sharing ideas – and “Hands on Help” offered the first daily-use presentation from the Alliance.

In an hour on August 18th, we will cover:

• Tourism and Rutherford County
• Who Is Your TDA Staff?
• What Services Do We Offer?
• How will the Alliance Help Me?
• Hands on Help
• Q&A

About the Alliance:

Packaging. Marketing. Money Savings. Business Growth. Networking. Recently formed by the TDA, the TDA Alliance will connect you to opportunities, information and networking for one of our county’s biggest industries – tourism. Attend one of the formational meetings of the TDA Alliance to learn who your TDA is, what we and the Alliance have to offer you, and about the information we want to share to help you. Come also to tell us what you need from your TDA.

What information are you looking for? In what areas can we help your business? What problems do you face that we might be able to help you with? Accommodation owners and managers – would you like to know what the occupancy tax does for you? Want packaging resources and information?

Your Zip Codes Needed

We had great success in the past retrieving our zip codes from you, our Rutherford County accommodations, attractions & restaurants. We want to implement this again so we need your help. This will help us to determine how successful our marketing has been as well as what areas to market to in the future. Here is how it works. PLEASE START IMMEDIATELY!

• After the first of each month, send just the city, state and zip codes of your guests/visitors for the past month to Crystal Millwood in an e-mail. (For example, after August 1st, please send July’s city, state and zip codes.)
• Please send your zip codes no later than the 10th of each month.
• We will dump everyone’s city, state, and zip codes into a master spreadsheet, sort and prioritize to determine our top zip codes.
• There will be two separate reports. One for Accommodations and a second report for Attractions and Restaurants.
• A report will be created monthly. Your name or property name will not be associated with your zip codes. The only information given is the top areas and the number of properties reporting.
• If you have participated by giving us your zip codes, we will gladly send you an electronic copy of this monthly report.

Thank you and we look forward to receiving those zip codes!

Sweepstakes Program: In Test Run

The TDA is in the process of studying the feasibility and success of a potential sweepstakes program. As a test run, we have picked up the cost of the August VisitNC.com sweepstakes.  We were fortunate and able to get the month of August at the last minute when someone else dropped out.  VisitNC.com is the state’s official travel and tourism website.  They report that these sweepstakes usually average over 22,000 hits and bring partners over 9,000 leads.

We will review the sweepstakes and may be looking for partners in future VisitNC sweepstakes and in our own TDA website sweepstakes.  Stay tuned for more on this potential opportunity – and enter to win our own sweepstakes starting August 1!

DEADLINE: Autumn Peaks - Your Events Needed

Autumn Peaks will be our events marketing campaign from Labor Day to Thanksgiving. If you want to be included in this campaign, we need to know your fall events immediately! Please send them to crystal@rutherfordtourism.com. Thanks to those who have already sent in their events.

As the TDA implements its new Stakeholder Services, more information will be coming out about how you can be part of our events marketing campaigns – at no cost to you.  

DEADLINE: Hometown Holidays - Your Events Needed

Marketing efforts are already underway for our Hometown Holidays.  Just as with Autumn Peaks, please send your events as soon as you have them to: crystal@rutherfordtourism.com. Thanks!

Free for the Taking: Promo Videos Available for Viewing and Linking to your Site

View, link, and share videos about Rutherford County Tourism to your website.  Some are as recent as this summer and we hope to add to this database as time goes on.  Check out what is available for you at: http://www.rutherfordtourism.com/aboutus/videos.php

Visitors: State Tourism PR and Marketing Officials Tour Our Area

Susan Dosier, Director of Marketing for LKM (the marketing agency that holds the State of NC account) and Wit Tuttle, Director of PR for the NC Division of Tourism and Sports Marketing expressed interest in touring the middle and eastern parts of Rutherford County, and on July 10th, were given a “crash course” of the area.  They were already very familiar with (and love to vacation in) the Lake Lure/Chimney Rock area and wanted a sense of the Rutherford County tourism products they did not already know.

Wit Tuttle came on a Thursday for an Owls game and was then joined on Friday by Susan Dosier for the day-long tour.  They were particularly interested in our events, our history, our food, our baseball, our museums and our accommodations.  They said several times that they really enjoyed their time here and look forward to using Lake Lure and the Blue Ridge Foothills in more and different PR/Marketing opportunities for the state.

In the News: One of Eight Summer Lake Towns to Love

As mentioned in last month’s Alliance newsletter, Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel (online edition) featured Lake Lure on its lakes to visit list. This national publication and had photos and information about the area.  Written by Budget Travel writers,  we provided the photos that they requested -- and they used several of them. Chimney Rock Park was kind enough to make shots of the village of Chimney Rock just for the occasion. 

See the article at: http://www.budgettravel.com/bt-dyn/content/article/2009/06/22/AR2009062202270_2.html