Leaders play up service, strategy

HILTON HEAD ISLAND - Tourists don't spend nearly as much money in South Carolina as they do in other states, prompting S.C. leaders on Tuesday to stress better customer service and ask private businesses to help grow the industry.

Strategies to boost tourist spending - including improving service, promoting cultural offerings such as Brookgreen Gardens and aggressively pursuing the more lucrative international market - emerged during the second day of the Governor's Conference on Tourism and Travel.

Each tourist to South Carolina spends about $278 - much less than the $418 per person average nationwide.

"We are not capturing what we should be," said Chad Prosser, director of the S.C. Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism. "We ought to be able to raise the bar."

Gov. Mark Sanford challenged the conference's 550 attendees to step up and help tourism grow. Sanford praised the $14.4 billion industry as a job creator. He tried to tap successful strategies by brainstorming ideas for an hour with about 25 leaders, including five from the Grand Strand.

"Tourism is an absolute priority for this administration. Too long, tourism has been the red-headed stepchild of economic development," Sanford said. "It's a remarkable economic engine and an underappreciated economic engine."

Sanford urged the group to take a more active role in pushing the industry forward, especially with the creation of the proposed tourism cluster, which leaders will hear details about during the conference's final sessions today.

"I would ask you to push your thinking outside of the box," Sanford said.

One strategy is making sure the hospitality industry lives up to the "Smiling Faces" South Carolina promises in its slogan, Sanford and others said.

Training employees better and hiring more selectively will help improve service, they said. Some proposed changing state law to allow accommodations tax revenue to be used for training workers, not just to support events that draw tourists.

"If we don't treat that visitor with good hometown hospitality, they will not come back," said Molly Harts of Greenwood County. "That should be our most important concern."

Destinations need to spend whatever it takes to make visitors happy because they will pay for good service, said Horst Schulze, who helped create Ritz-Carlton and is president of the Atlanta-based West Paces Hotel Group.

"The greatest driver of customer satisfaction is service," he said. "Tourism is meant to create an environment people want to come to, want to be in and want to spend money in."

The PRT also is considering stepping up efforts to lure international tourists now that dollar exchange rates have improved and travelers have adjusted to the extra security that emerged after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

International tourists tend to stay longer and spend more in the United States than domestic travelers.

Prosser plans to partner with places such as Charlotte, N.C., because it has the U.S. Airways hub most international tourists would pass through on their way to South Carolina.

Those new strategies - coupled with the increase in marketing dollars this year by the PRT - should help the industry grow, which will benefit the state's economy, said Brad Dean, president of the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce.

"We can't do the same old things and get better results," he said.