The coastland times with which is combined the pilot and herald of Belhaven and Swan Quarter. [volume] (Manteo, N.C.) 1959-1973, 1961-06-16
ING AHEAD"

ING AHEAD"
These eight meaningful words
are like the picture in the Chin
csc proverb-they're worth a
whole book of adjectives.
And let's accept that at face
value, but let's get coldly specific
about what we have in the travel
industry-and how we are moving
ahead.
In other words let's take quick
inventory:
/. Plant. Are our Accommodations
modern or showing signs of wear?
! 2. Service. Is it fully cometitive
in a buyers market.
8. Food. Do our restaurants Of
fer genuine southern cooking, or
is it still largely confined to pri-
vate kitchens?
a. Hospitality. Is our natural
friendliness and courtesy to visi-
tors backed up with information
that will hold and bring visitors
back 10 our State
| 5. Cleanliness. Are our highways
and landscapes and travel attrac-
tions as clean day-in and day-out
as when we were being compli-
mented on our spotlessness during
the anti-htterbug campaign?
z. Advertising. Is your region,
your resort promoting itself or it
is depending almost entirely on the
State to bring visitors.
8. Conventions. Are you getting
them in profitable volume?
9. Year Round Business. Are
you getting "off-season" divi-
dends?
The answer, happily, to most of
these questions, is YES.
But not to all of them.
The last, for instance-year
around business
You may be surprised to learn
that people in Boone are looking
into artificial snow for skiing in
winter. It may be the answer for
utilizing tourist facilities now used
only in summer. Up in Highlands
they are already getting some
winter business from Deep South
erners who visit here because
Highlands, North Carolina has the
closes snow. Study is being made
of the potential for winter sports
in North Cardinals traditional
summer vacation areas. Molen
science, which produces artificial
snow, can change a lot of things.
This may be one of them.
About food. North Carolina is
getting an increasing number of
good restaurants. We find evidence
of that right here. But we are get
ting some bad word-of mouth pub
licity. For instance in fresh sea-
food country some restaurants
don't serve fresh seafood. We have
a letter from one out-of-state
tourist-complaining that the only
Seafood offered in one of our better
coastal resort restaurants was can
med salmon. Other restaurants fail
to capitalize on native dishes iden-
titled as something special. For
instance, why don't we serve Ocra-
coke Clam Chowder instead of New
England Clam Chowder-
It's poor marketing to mislabel
North Carolina country ham, than
which there is none better "Vir-
ginia Ham," - We should serve
and show on our menu Johnston or
Macon County ham instead of Tai
madge hams from Georgia or
Smithfield hams from Virginia i.
they're better and they are a North
Carolina product.-and please un-
derstand, I'm not trying to sell you
"buy North Carolina products"
I'm attempting to help us build a
better North Carolina image to inn
prove 4sthe- taaAze1~ hSsisaess.s
Poor cooking is the worst North
Carolina crime Of all, says an in
|ternational travel authority named
J. Stanton Robbins of New York
who visited the Outer Banks last
fall. That's what he wrote the Ad-
vertising Division after praising
our vacation attraction otherwise.
This is something the Travel
Council can do something about.
Already it has started the move
menth through the Host School pro-
gram. This needs to be broadened
out to bring in the assistance OF
1.-THE States home ecoonniic train
ling resources. This is a project ]
| I'll