New project aims to capture more tourist dollars on Navajo Nation – tourism academies to educate Navajo entrepreneurs

When Yvonne Todacheene looks at two major highways that cross her hometown on the Navajo Nation, she sees potential.

The traffic whizzing by means people who not only need to make pit stops to fill up their stomachs and gas tanks — but who also may want to stay awhile, shopping or just soaking up the Navajo experience.

The Associated Press

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For now, though, passing tourists are offered too few reasons to stop on the nation’s largest Indian reservation, Todacheene believes.

"There’s a lot of international interest in us," said Todacheene. "But they get here and there’s nothing."

That may change with a new effort to help Navajo-owned small businesses profit from the tourism industry.

At a recent workshop in Shiprock, Kathie Curley, the marketing director of the tribe’s tourism department, addressed a roomful of would-be entrepreneurs. Her talk was part of the Dine Tourism Corridor Demonstration Project — an effort to help establish and connect Navajo small business.

"We’re fledglings; we’re babes in the woods. … There is so much more that could be done," Curley told the group.

The Dine project uses free workshops, called tourism academies, to educate Navajo entrepreneurs along two major tourism corridors, said Anson Arviso, a Navajo whose firm, Arviso Business Consulting Inc., is organizing the project.

The ultimate goal of the project, funded by the Small Business Administration’s Office of Native American Affairs, is to form an association of small business owners that functions like a chamber of commerce.

In March, Arviso’s team launched the tourism academies and, last month, helped a small group of academy participants form the Navajo Land Entrepreneur Association, a group Arviso hopes will grow reservationwide.

Tourists spent nearly $70 million dollars on the reservation between February 2002 and January 2003 and tourism’s total economic impact surpassed $100 million, according to a Navajo Nation Tourism Department study.

"There’s an opportunity to capture above $100 million," said Leslie Kedelty, a senior tourism planner with the department.

Developing a business on the sprawling reservation has unique challenges. Financing, for instance, is a big obstacle. Tribal members cannot use reservation land held in trust for the tribe by the federal government as collateral to secure loans. High unemployment also means many tribal members do not qualify for credit.

To get a business lease, tribal members must negotiate with the tribal government.

There’s also the challenge of developing a business plan and implementing it — a daunting task for those who lack business training.

The first step for Arviso’s team is to foster small business development along the two corridors through the tourism academies, which touch on everything from how to find financing to effective marketing.

Shiprock sits at the north end of one corridor — U.S. 491 — that extends south into Gallup. The other corridor covers a large swath of communities from Mexican Hat, Utah, and Kayenta, Ariz., in the north to Chinle and Window Rock, Ariz., on the Arizona-New Mexico border.

The tribal tourism study found that the top reason cited by tourists for their visit to the reservation was sightseeing. Popular activities included visits to tribal and national parks, historical sites and museums as well as shopping. The average stay was about five days.

The department wants to encourage Navajos to provide goods and services to support tourism throughout the reservation, which at 16 million acres, is roughly the size of West Virginia.

She points to the small Navajo Nation satellite community of Church Rock, N.M., east of Gallup, as an example of a place turning to its own people to develop local tourism.

Locals have organized a group called the Church Rock Tourism Action Council in the hopes of getting traffic racing along nearby Interstate 40 to stop.

There’s Red Rock State Park and its dramatic sandstone cliffs to draw people in, council President Alvin Thompson said. But the group wants to educate the 40 or so local families who have informal businesses — like home-based food stands or jewelry making — so they can advertise their products to area tourists.

"We would like to help them get more traffic, to get more educated in the business sense and find out how we could advertise for them," Thompson said.

The idea, he said, is to eliminate the middle man so locals can sell directly to the public and make more money.

Back in Shiprock, a tourist attraction is the community’s namesake — a majestic volcanic pinnacle towering some 1,700 above the Four Corners plain.

"Driving up and seeing something used to be enough," Curley said. "People would see it and say ‘Wow, I saw it.’ Now, that’s not enough."

The next step is to develop the hotels, guided tours and other services to get tourists to stick around, she said. And just as in other communities where tourism academies are held, Anson’s team is trying to develop a peer roundtable of entrepreneurs that can form part of the reservationwide network.

Tony Skrelunas, whose Grand Canyon Trust helped organize tourism academies in March, said the project’s eye toward tourism and its emphasis on creating ongoing support for novice small business owners is unique.

"A lot of programs are one shot — you get help on one particular item," he said. "We’re hoping this is one is going to help (Navajo small business owners) get through the first year and, in the second year, we help the business go to another level."

Todacheene said mentoring that’s close by would be a big help.

"If there’s someone else out there in my situation — with credit problems but with really good ideas and talent — it would be like … they did it. So can I," she said.