Colorado to tap ‘heritage tourism’

Profits seen in promoting historic sites and legacy of plains c
"Heritage tourism" is a lucrative but largely untapped source of new tourism dollars within the $525.8 billion U.S. travel industry, speakers at the seventh annual Colorado Preservation Inc. conference said Friday.

By J. Sebastian Sinisi
Denver Post Staff Writer

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~33~1944109,00.html

Smaller, rural communities in Colorado and Utah – rich in scenery and historic legacy and less so in traditional economic-development opportunities – are prime prospects.

In Colorado, plans are underway toward a combined effort to draw heritage tourists to the plains area of Elbert, Lincoln, Kit Carson and Cheyenne counties.

A primarily promotional brochure and website that cost $20,000 to produce will be ready for this summer’s tourist season to promote the area, said Jo Downey, executive director of the project’s governing board.

The area offers historic jails, railroad roundhouses, an old town in Burlington and museums, along with a centerpiece 1905 carousel.

Downey estimated the return could run to "hundreds of thousands of dollars" annually.

National numbers are less hazy.

Defined as travel to a location where both the site and activities represent authentic slices of people and the past, heritage tourism is growing at more than twice the 5.6 percent growth rate of travel overall, said Amy Webb, who directs the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s heritage tourism program from Boulder.

That translates to a 13 percent increase for heritage tourism between 1996 and 2002, she said.

Of the 118.1 million U.S. travelers in 2002, 81 percent of them included heritage or cultural attractions in their trips, according to industry figures.

About 40 percent of those travelers are 35 to 54 years old, Webb said.

Heritage travelers spend on average $623 per trip per person, compared with $457 for all U.S. travelers. Sixty-eight percent of the heritage group travel by car and take three or more trips per year.

Current trends in U.S. tourism, especially since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, work in favor of heritage travel, Webb said. Those trends include shorter and more weekend trips, more use of the Internet, and a broadened perspective of history.

Wilson Martin, a Utah state preservation office director, said heritage travel is also aided by a growing "retro industry" that is marked by "a fondness for a slower, simpler time against the backdrop of our interactive age."