The S.C. and N.C. business leaders and tourism officials who attended Thursday's Regional Tourism Summit correctly see the coastal Carolinas as one entity. But the only local elected official who took part in fashioning this consensus was Horry County Council Chairman Chad Prosser. He is on his way out, because of his recent appointment as the top S.C. tourism official, which lacks only S.C. Senate confirmation. No other Horry County or Myrtle Beach elected official attended the summit.

At least some members of both governing bodies should have been there. Their absence was, at heart, a failure of the imagination.

It's true, as some members of both councils may have decided, that state and county political boundaries are immaterial to the summit's purpose: strategizing regionally to attract visitors and their money. But as the summit's keynote speaker Michael MacNulty strongly suggested, this does not mean local officials have no role in growing the coastal Carolinas' tourism economy.

MacNulty, a former Irish government tourism leader now in business for himself, told summit attendees tourism can flourish only when local government partners with the accommodations industry to promote the region, while protecting natural resources and ensuring that growth is orderly. Public-side participation in tourism strategizing, he said, is indispensable if the goal, as it should be, is for the region to speak with one voice.

This is a new way of thinking, so local council members deserve forgiveness - this time - for blowing off the tourism summit. But they must quickly grasp that they have a critical cooperative role in regional tourism strategizing. They must resolve to play that role aggressively. Failure to do so would suck the life out of the two-state effort to which summit participants gave birth this week.