Little Rhody makes big impression

Gail Arndt, owner and operator of Tour Trends Ltd. in Plymouth, Mass., routinely organizes tours to Cape Cod that include a daylong stopover in Newport, so she’s known about the City by the Sea and its tourist attractions for some time now.
But Arndt was, in her own words, “blown away” by the quintessential tourist paradise she found when she recently attended the National Tour Association conference, where about 100 national and international tour operators were treated to tourist delights in Providence, Warwick, Block Island and Newport, including WaterFire, a lobster bake, a visit to Rosecliff and a 12-meter yacht race off the Newport coast.
“It is amazing how much little Rhode Island has to offer,” she told Providence Business News during a recent telephone interview. “So much is there that I didn’t know about.”
Arndt is not the only one who attended the three-day conference, Aug. 1-3, crowing about the appeal of the Ocean State as a tourist destination.
Conference-goers from the NTA, based in Lexington, Ky., were most impressed by the people of Rhode Island, said Lisa Simon, the organization’s president.
“Members said it seemed like everywhere they went, people were so friendly and so welcoming,” she said. “And they were impressed by how much history is there, dating back before the American Revolution, with events you’d expect to have happened only in Philadelphia or in Boston.”
The conference, which drew a total of about 150 people including the 100 tour operators, is the latest arrow in the quiver of inducements that statewide tourism professionals routinely wield, with money-spending tourists as their target.
Organized in large part by Katrina White, tourism trade manager with the tourism division at the R.I. Economic Development Corporation, the conference cost his division no more than $10,000, said Mark Brodeur, executive director of the division. “Everybody shared the cost,” he explained, referring to the hotels, restaurants and transportation companies that provided services for free or at discount rates for the NTA event. The weather, luckily enough, was perfect, with temperatures in the 80s and low humidity.
Brodeur noted that about 70 percent of the tour operators attending the conference never had been to Rhode Island before. Attendees included tourism professionals from China, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Canada and Argentina, according to Brodeur and Simon. Some 30 operators, including Arndt and Simon, also visited Providence and Warwick during the weekend before the conference. A Block Island visit was offered as part of the conference.
Arndt, who organizes tours on a wholesale basis for operators around the world, said she already has booked three sight-seeing tours for Rhode Island in 2012 as a result of the NTA conference: two for groups from Ohio and one from Kansas City, Mo.
These motor-coach tours will visit Providence, Newport and the Blackstone Valley, Arndt said, for four days or seven days in June, August or September, with an estimated 55 people in each group. Transportation, hotel and most meals are included in each tour.
The culinary scene was emphasized in the weekend Providence visit, Arndt said, including a walking tour of Federal Hill where many top-class eateries are located. This was of particular interest to Arndt, because she said culinary travel is “hot” right now and one of her specialties. “You have some special things that you can’t find anywhere else,” she said of Rhode Island, mentioning coffee milk. Arndt said she fully expects to book more package tours to Rhode Island and added that she is engaged in discussions right now with groups in China. “We had tour operators at the conference from China, and they are interested. I think China is going to be a big market [for tourism] once things settle down there,” she said.
Arndt, who said she organizes several hundred tours each year to New England, New York, Washington, D.C., and eastern Canada, took a day during the conference to visit Bristol on her own. “I was so blown away by this little town,” she said. “I want to go back and do some shopping.”
Simon, head of the NTA, said she is certain Rhode Island will see more tourists as a result of the conference. “New England is a very important destination as a whole and I really believe Rhode Island will get some new business because so many of our tour operators had not been there,” she said. “Many already offer trips to New England, so Rhode Island won’t be hard for them to pick up.”
At the tourism division, Brodeur spoke of several tour operators who told state officials they are “committed,” he said, to bringing tours to Rhode Island. He declined to divulge identities because plans have not been finalized, but said these include tour operators from a “Scandinavian country,” from Chicago and the Florida Keys.
“These were very strong verbal commitments,” he told Providence Business News. “Plus we have dozens of leads that we will be following up on in the coming weeks, so we are looking at millions of new tourism dollars.” &#8226