Srgjan Kerim, a diplomat from Macedonia and the president of the 62nd session of the United Nations General Assembly, visited Rhode Island last year to evaluate the state’s hospitality industry.
“He came without our knowledge, on Newport Jazz Festival weekend, in August,” said R.I. Tourism Division Director Mark Brodeur.
Apparently, the diplomat liked what he saw, Brodeur said.
Kerim visited as a trustee for the American Academy of Hospitality Sciences (AAHS), which this month awarded Rhode Island its International Star Diamond Award.
Brodeur said that award is the “highest honor bestowed upon any hospitality service in the world.” Kerim evaluated every aspect of his visit – from the hotel staff’s attitude, to the décor of the lobbies to how much traffic restaurants were seeing.
The prize is usually given only to cruise ship lines, hotels, resorts and restaurants. Rhode Island is the first U.S. state to receive the award. New York City this year won the award, too.
For Rhode Island, the recognition couldn’t have come at a better time.
The tourism industry accounts for about 10 percent of the Ocean State’s jobs. While a report released in November by Waltham, Mass.-based Global Insight Inc. showed that spending had increased 9.3 percent from 2006 to 2007, the results for 2008 might be lowered because of the economic downturn. And 2009 is projected to be a weak year for tourism.
The award, however, might help to stabilize the industry, Brodeur said.
With travel budgets tightening, Brodeur said his division this summer plans to increase marketing toward tourists from the New England region, who he hopes will have their curiosity piqued by the international award. He said the award should help Rhode Island “compete with destinations that have five times its advertising budget.”
Brodeur said nominations for the award come “from world travelers and from their board of trustees, which includes Donald Trump and influential people throughout the world,” Brodeur said. “They then evaluate these endorsements that come in and make a decision about whether to send a trustee anonymously to the destination to do a full evaluation.”
That evaluation isn’t released by AAHS, but Brodeur said Kerim’s Rhode Island evaluation includes descriptions of South County’s beaches, the ease of traveling around the state and the high level of service at the hotels and restaurants he visited.
Newport County Conventions & Visitors Bureau President and CEO Evan Smith said there are many important awards in the tourism industry.
“It’s not the only award in the world – there are many issued to hotels, restaurants, attractions. They’re displayed with pride, as they should be,” he said. “But this particular one is a very important national award by a prestigious international organization.”
Nationally, state tourism office budgets have dwindled and Rhode Island’s tourism budget is no different. It has declined during the last 10 years and this year was about $1 million, Brodeur said.
The ability for a state to brand itself without private-industry help has diminished and this award, which will include Rhode Island being added to media distributed by AAHS, is a way to increase the state’s tourism marketing, he added. The actual value of that marketing is “immeasurable,” but the private investment over the years from destinations that have promoted themselves as winners could be a combined $1 billion, Brodeur said.
Rhode Island will get the benefit of that advertising backlog when the state puts the AAHS logo on its marketing materials, Brodeur said.
But as far as the actual economic impact in the coming years, he said, “it’s hard to put a real value on it.”
And the R.I. Tourism Division’s budget won’t increase as a result of the award. “Although we certainly hope we have everybody’s attention with this particular award, to ask for more money is a difficult thing during these hard times,” he said. “We certainly would appreciate more money, but the reality is that every department is being stretched, asked to do more with what they have.”
The academy will help with advertising by “sending out an e-mail blast to let everyone know we’ve won this award,” Brodeur said. “And they’re going to be talking about the destination … [They’ll release a magazine] and you know how important editorial is to us these days. We don’t have the money to advertise in every corner of the world.”
At the NCCVB, Smith said the award is “an honor, but it also, in a way, helps us grow our small budgets and allows us to remain viable players in the competitive travel industry.”
At the Preservation Society of Newport County, which runs the Newport mansions, CEO Trudy Coxe said the outside recognition is always welcomed in the tourism industry. In the last month, PSNC has been recognized as a top destination by both tripadvisor.com and by The New England Michelin Guide for 2009, she said. The tripadvisor.com recognition, which came with a direct Web link from the PSNC Web site to tripadvisor.com (a site that puts together travel packages), is especially important because the Internet has become one of the most important tools for the travel industry, she said.
Traffic through the mansions this year has been up compared with years past, but “having others put a stamp of approval on us is always better than us telling the rest of the world how great we think we are,” Coxe added.
The AAHS award has a focused audience of high-end travelers in Europe, Brodeur said. And it’s also seen by cruise ship operators, which might grow the number of ships that come to Newport each year, he added. Last year, 82,000 people came to Rhode Island on cruise ships.
Blackstone Valley Tourism Council President Robert D. Billington said the award is a tribute to the fact that the many state tourism councils work cohesively. South County Tourism Council President Myrna George echoed that sentiment, adding that “being the smallest state in the union certainly has served us well.”
The award’s logo – a gold and silver circle with five stars – will this year grace the front of the R.I. Tourism Division’s travel guide and will be prominent on the division’s Web site and all e-mails. Tourism councils throughout the state also will be able to use the logo, Brodeur said.
Billington said he’ll use the logo as soon as it is e-mailed to him.
“These types of recognitions are great for business and are great to put on brochures,” he said, “but the most important thing about an award like this is that the people who live here know about it and know that someone else knows what’s going on here.” •
