"Our region is competitive with Florida, France, Spain and Mexico," says Bill Howard, vice president for tourism at Atlanta's Convention and Visitors Bureau. "Our objective is to jointly pool the Southern cities into a cohesive marketing team."
The newly formed alliance includes such well-known tourist cities as Atlanta, Charleston, Nashville, New Orleans and Savannah, as well as cities less known internationally, such as Asheville, North Carolina, and Chattanooga, Tennessee. Four states are also part of the pact: Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina and Louisiana.
One of the driving forces behind the group's creation was the way in which international tourist agencies promote destinations to potential travelers. Because a German family isn't going to spend an entire holiday in just Atlanta or Nashville, tour agencies generally market whole regions to their clients. "We have been selling ourselves as individuals," Howard notes.
The coalition partners will bind themselves together by creating a Southern brand, which will promote the Southeast mystique of a genteel lifestyle. It will work in much the same way as the New England brand under which many Northeastern states sell themselves.
Members of the Southeastern group will cooperate at national and overseas trade shows by operating out of a single booth. Also planned are joint tour-hosting ventures designed to show journalists and tour promoters the whole Southeast, rather than a single destination as they used to do.
