UC Tourism Meetings Conclude; Plan Advances

The Upper Cumberland Tourism Association will move forward with new regional branding plans now that town hall meetings are complete.

Executive Director Billie Davis said one of the main takeaways from the meetings were that there are many more free, outdoor assets in the region than people realize. Davis said that promoting these free attractions will boost overall tourism spending even if they do not bring in revenue themselves.

“When people can come in and do these incredible parks and waterfalls and rivers and lakes for free, then they’re able to stay and spend money in our region at our destinations like our stores,” Davis said. “They can spend more money overnight. So I think that that was really helpful for all of our people to see that.”

Davis said the branding firm that hosted the meetings will use the information they gathered to create a brand that can be used for tourism marketing throughout the region. Davis said they plan to invite the public back for a soft launch of the new brand in January or February.

“They go so much deeper than just putting together a logo or just kind of a general brand,” Davis said. “They’re telling a story about what our region has to offer because when people are looking for some place to visit they want to know what they can do here.”

Davis said the goal of the brand is to make sure that everyone is sharing the same details and information about tourist attractions regardless of where they are or who is sharing it.

“An example of that might be (how) we’ve got this beautiful waterfall trail that we’re doing and whatever the name of this ends up being we’re going to put that out for all the counties to share cohesively,” Davis said. “And then they’re going to share that as one region.”

Davis said the meetings did a good job explaining to local citizens why communities need to work together instead of competing for tourists.

“One example that was used, and I think that it really hit people, is we have people who would call into say Cannon County, and Cannon County’s really rich with antique stores and art and things like that, but people might call and want to do things on the river or they want to do a waterfall,” Davis said. “Cannon County doesn’t necessarily have that specifically in their physical county borders, but in a twenty-minute drive they do. So I think they’ve really learned and I’m hoping, that goal is that the counties learn to share assets to where they can tell their customer or their guest calling, if they say, ‘Do you have a waterfall? Do you have a river? Do you have a lake?’ the answer is yes.”

Davis said that situations like this will still benefit the counties that tourists have to travel through to get to whatever specific attraction they want to see.

“That’s great that we’re sharing assets because rising tides lift all boats,” Davis said. “We have so much to draw people in, especially when we share those assets and we share our customer base that way.”