The evening leader. (Tarpon Springs, Fla.) 191?-19??, 1918-02-22
Holding the Tourists.


course presupposes comfort. But COM
Portable hotels with unsurpassed cui-
sine are not In themselves sufficient.
There must be good roads and streets;
and there must be good roads and
streets; and there must be forms of
amusements. OF these the greatest
! is golf.
1t is estimated that 100000 peo-
pie in the United States play golf,
I that the investment in golf is some
where between S5O,OOO0oO and $751;
900. This in itself is considerable
interest to cater to.
When the chamber of commerce OF
San Antonio advocated the building OF
. municipal goif course and won over
the park commissioner to the idea, a
certain solid, self-made citizen went to
the commissioner and said: "Why do
you want to spend $4,000 or $4,000
building golf course for lot OF
fools in knee breaches to play on Z"
The hard-headed commissioner an
swered: "Those fellows that play golf
may be fools; I don't know, | don't
play; but l know that there are 5000
or 10000 of them that can be brought
to San Antonio to play golf if we
build those links. If / knew there
lwere 5000 or 10000 idiots who would
leone to San Antonio and spend $25 or
$50 a day for the pleasure of turning
Ihandsprings, / would fix nice grassy
place out here for the hand-springs
Icourt. Don't you think it is good bus
mess 2"
! ! am told that there are resorts
lalong the Atlantic coast that are built
on golf. A naturally rainy and un-
favorable location, provided with a
number Of beautiful golf courses,
draws thousands of people every year.
Therefore, whether the variety of
tourist belongs to the winter OF the
summer family, give him golf, and
then some rac-a golf. and he will
fcome early and stay late. He will be
IpIeased with your climate, charmed
with your hotels, and will certainly
Eadmire your people.
| There is another large class of tour
lists who get their pleasure from the
automobile, therefore good roads and
fplenty of them are necessary.
Remember that the tourist is bird
of passage and naturally restless. He
lis bound to keep moving. If you can
lprovide a way for him to run around
in circles, whether it be on the golf
thinks, or around loop automobile
roads, you will keep him with you
much longer. In San Antonio we have
made a speciality of loop roads. We
start with easy loops of 20 miles, and
run them up to 200-mile loops through
the mountains, or 500-mile loops to
the Gulf, or to the Mexican border. We
give them any kind of loop that they
want, and minute directions of how
to loop the loop.
There is another large class of tour
lists that are sportsmen. They want
to hunt and fish, and they will travel
many weary miles for the pleasure.
These are not as numerous as the golf
bugs, nor as ubiquitous as the automo-
bile cranks, but they follow their own
particular hobby with the same sin
gleness of purpose and the same dis
regard of cost.
We have tried to organize places
for them to kill the quail, hunt deer
and the elusive wild turkey, and have
often staked out good cowboy shots to
kill some for them when all else fails.
We have provided them with the finest
fresh water fishing in America, thanks
to our English friends who put up the
money, and they can get at the gulf
that greatest of game fish, the tarpon,
as we'll as about 200 other varieties.
But even so, we have not developed
this variety of tourist more than 5
per cent of what is possible.
But the, building tourist bust
ness, like building any other business,
takes time. The great difficulty is that
you must develop the business some
times before you can get the commun-
ityity to invest the capital necessary
to take care of it.
On the other hand, it is often very
difficult to develop the business unless
you are first in a position to take care
of it. That is the reason that so many
of these ready-rhade tourist resorts
are built up by big capitalists where
community effort falls short.
La-J ao,.o .s4xy