The Ocala evening star. [volume] (Ocala, Fla.) 1895-1943, 1918-07-15
SOME COOP SUGGESTIONS
Miss Jefferson Bel Tells How Tour
lists May be Attracted
to Marion


Miami, July H.
Editor Star: In a recent issue of
the Star | note suggestions for inter
esting tourists IN Ocala and because
of my personal interest in the town.
am joining you with some sugges-
lions along the same lines.
Getting tourists to come to a sec
ton is matter of advertising. pure
and simple. and satisfied tourist is
the best advertisement a town can
have. With Ocala in mind, / studied
the tourist question last season in
Mani. Living in large apartment
house filled with tourists and coming
my work. may have learned some
thing of value to Oeala.
Miami makes a special effort to
please the people who spend the sea-
son here. The whole population is
keenly awake to the value of the
tourist business and everyone in Mi
ami does his or her bit by making the
town attractive and by being cordial
and interested IN the people who
come. Ample accommodations are
now provided in modern apartment
houses and hotels and in homes.
Pryor's band was kept last season
for the entertainment of the tourists
and gave two concerts daily IN Royal
Palm Park facing Biscayne Bay, an
afternoon and an evening concert
The park is the meeting place for the
tourists in Miami and all through the
golden mornings the benches were
filled with women knitting and men
reading or lazily watching the boy or
the planes overhead. There were
groups playing chess and checkers
and pitching horse-shoes under the
cocoanut palms. Trips to the beach
for swim or to watch the bathers or
a game of tennis or golf at Miami
Beach afforded pleasant diversions.
For the evenings, there were dances
at the hotels and casinos, grill nights
at the Royal Palm and always the
moving pictures. Slime enough for
any town to follow.
/ found that people come to Flor
ida for the climate and they come to
Miami because it is the place every
one knows about. They come back on
account of the climate and local at
fractions.
If Ocala would have tourists by all
means advertise the fact. The money
spent would soon come back in bust
ness and in z revival of property
values. Noe and more people are
coming in automobiles and Ocala
should post the roads along the en-
trance to the state with signs point
ing the way. Thousands of people
decide after they reach Jacksonville
where they will go. These people
could be reached by advertisements
in the Jacksonville papers and by
advertising on moving picture screens
in Jacksonville and other tourist CEN
ters to catch them on the return trip.
A public park with seats is an abb
solute necessity and band of little
less Importance. Ocala has no beach
to offer but if the people there would
get busy and make a park of the
Taylor pond property and put in a
big swimming pool and tennis courts
and make the street along the A. C.
L. railway through which the travel
ing public passes and from which it
gets its view of Ocala. look less like
a bat roost two miles long, it might
reasonably expect people to stop over
instead of going on through to the
more expensive resorts.
Ocala needs tourists but at present
she has little to offer them in the way
of accommodations and entertain
ment. Only small per cent of the
people who come south for the winter
live at the hotels. Furnished houses
and apartments must be available
when they come in numbers.
The Marion County Fair would be
an attraction if held later in the sea-
son. In November it is purely a
home institution without advertising
value to the county.
Ocala needs team work. 1t needs
the community spirit backing up its
board of trade and public organiza-
tons. 1t needs one gigantic Ratchet
burying and it needs the cooperative
spirit, the lack of which has scatter
ed its young men and women through
the state instead of keeping them at
home to build city. Ocala's contri-
buttons to other sections would al
most double its present population
and resources. jefferson Bell.