That was the advice tourism industry executives heard repeatedly during last week's three-day governor's conference on hospitality on Hilton Head Island, an annual event that took on a more urgent air this year in light of tourism's growing importance in a state losing manufacturing jobs.
Yet whether the $14.5 billion tourism industry takes heed, or even has the money to do so, is the question.
To many of the conference attendees, these were not exactly new notions.
Beating the drums on drawing more affluent travelers from overseas were Gov. Mark Sanford; Horst Schulze, the event's keynote speaker and former president of Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co.; and Kurt Dassel, a member of the Monitor Group, a business strategy and competitiveness consulting firm that is helping the state develop new approaches to job creation.
While it sounds like a good idea, there is one big problem in trying to draw more international visitors to South Carolina: the lack of a major airline hub anywhere in the state.
Most international visitors, who account for just 2.6 percent of all tourists to the state, are Canadians who stay for one night on their way to Florida.
International travelers are unquestionably big spenders.
According to the Travel Industry Association of America, about 31 percent of overseas visitors rent cars. They stay an average of 16.2 nights, come to visit an average of 7.2 times over five years and have average household incomes of almost $80,000. Overall, they spend about four times as much as domestic travelers.
Most overseas tourists fly into one of about 10 U.S. cities, including places such as New York and Miami.
South Carolina, in comparison, gets few international travelers. About 156,000 foreign tourists, not counting those from Canada and Mexico, visited South Carolina in 2000, according to the latest available figures.
"The numbers tell us we're not doing anywhere near what we could," said Stephen Litvin, an associate professor of hospitality at the College of Charleston.
"The reason we're a drive-to market is people don't perceive that there's enough to do to stay longer," he said.
Yet many of the industry's front-line players don't seem ready to put a lot of emphasis on the question.
Myrtle Beach, for example, is more interested in chasing state grants so it can buy regional ads to run in the summertime, according to Stephen Greene, a spokesman for the city's Convention and Visitors Bureau. Greene said international marketing for Myrtle Beach, and the rest of the state, just isn't as profitable as running ads directed at the domestic market.
The Charleston CVB said international travel has been a part of its marketing push for more than a decade, but that, again, its best return on investment is in attracting tourists who drive to South Carolina.
The industry does have an organization in place devoted to attracting more visitors from abroad.
Coastal South Carolina, USA was launched in 1988 with support from golf promotion companies, hotels and CVBs in Charleston and Myrtle Beach and on Hilton Head. With an annual budget of about $340,000, the organization has established a presence in Germany, Great Britain and, more recently, Ireland.
Gary Edwards, managing director of the nonprofit, said few other states have an organization akin to the one he oversees. He was encouraged by the conference's emphasis on drawing foreign visitors.
"It was music to our ears," Edwards said. "I have no question in my mind that the greatest question all of us have to overcome is the funding."
The CVBs in Myrtle Beach and Charleston said Coastal South Carolina, USA remains a priority to them, but they balked at the question of whether they would increase their contributions to the organization based on what they heard at the conference.
Meanwhile, collaboration was another of the hot buttons at the conference.
Chad Prosser, director of the state's Parks, Recreation and Tourism Department, called for the private sector and local governments to work together more to build the tourism industry.
The Monitor Group urged a strengthening of the tourism "cluster," or sector, through beefed-up investment in hospitality education and a more unified marketing campaign by tourism promoters statewide. Monitor consultants told conference attendees they were doing a poor job of collaborating and developing a consensus on strategically important questions.
But a lot of tourism leaders, including Charleston CVB Director Helen Hill, contend the state's hospitality organizations, at least those on the coast, are already on the ball when it comes to cooperative partnerships.
"(The conference) just reinforced that we were on the right track," Hill said. "We're just lucky to have a really strong tourism industry already used to collaborating."
Hill said her organization regularly works with the CVBs on Hilton Head and in Myrtle Beach. Similarly, the groups consistently cooperate with the statewide hospitality association and the PRT.
Myrtle Beach's Greene said there may be room for the state's tourism factions to work together more, but he pointed out that a lot of the state's attractions fall into different niches. In other words, Charleston, Hilton Head and Myrtle Beach have very different things to offer tourists, according to Greene, and all three have even less in common with destinations in the Midlands and the Upstate.
Industry leaders said the sort of cross-promotional effort that the Monitor Group and Sanford were pushing already can be found in organizations such as Coastal South Carolina, USA.
Regardless, more coordination and cooperation seems inevitable.
The PRT, the state agency that promotes tourism, has undergone a series of budget cuts in the past couple of years. That increasingly leaves the CVBs and others in the industry to fend for themselves.
The PRT now spends about $55 million on state tourism. That's about $13.41 per resident, far less than many other states.
South Carolina ranked 22nd in overall tourism spending in 2002, according to the Travel Industry Association of America. North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Florida and Pennsylvania all shelled out more to court visitors.
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