Notes From My Knapsack 7-1-07
Jeff Gill

Hospitality and Heritage in Licking County

Through late spring and early summer, I had the pleasure of meeting 300 new friends.

These were Canadians, whose tour operators had heard about Licking County from the work of our Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB). While making a sweep across the Midwest, they saw Licking County as a spot where a brief interlude could fill in the gaps between major attractions to our north and south.

The reaction of the staff who accompanied the bus loads of friendly and curious folk from southern Ontario (the province of Canada just across Lake Erie from Ohio) was that Licking County was consistently experienced by their customers as the unexpected jewel of their trip. Cherry Valley Lodge in Newark, the world-class Newark Earthworks, the Greek Revival architecture of Granville, and eating at the Buxton Inn left our northern guests wanting more. An evening listening to music at the Granville Inn, and a trip out of town past the Longaberger basket building and Blackhand Gorge, with signs pointing to Flint Ridge State Memorial, has made quite a few request a return tour in Autumn, when the leaves are turning in the Welsh Hills and along the slopes of Licking Valley.

I’ve been privileged to get to tell the 12,000 year old story of visitors feeling at home here in Licking County, and make an explicit invitation to them, and other individual bus tours, to return and stay a few days on their own. My invitation is sincere and based on a firm conviction that there’s more to see and do here than an afternoon and night’s stay, then off and away, can reasonably fit in.

It’s also rooted in the concrete knowledge that a tourist staying two and three nights also needs to buy meals, purchases admission to places like the Heisey Glass Museum, and may make other expenditures whether art at The Works, ice cream at Ye Old Mill, or sundries at the drugstore. Tourism is economic development that costs very little in local investment, and is not only sustainable but expandable with high return rates, where word-of-mouth builds visitation rapidly over time.

Local businesses that directly relate to tourism, like hotels and inns and restaurants, not to mention museums and cultural attractions, know how to be welcoming and work at enhancing the visitor experience. They understand that the point is not only so we get repeat visits, but make visitors want to encourage their friends and family to visit as well. Bus tours, where sixty people come as a group, are even more beneficial, given that to get them individually means thirty or more cars parking and exhausting their way around the sites and attractions of Licking County.

Our recent set of guests (you can call them tourists, if you want, but I like to stick with the frame of mind that comes with “guests”) ran into a few situations where they encountered local residents who were, not to put too fine a point on it, shocked to learn people would pay money to come here. Telling the residents that their home has been advertised in the pages of National Geographic provoked disbelief, and a number of reactions along the line of “No, really, why are you here?”

If in fact there are local folks making complaints that tour buses are sharing our streets, I’d hope to communicate to them that tourism is a great economic development option for Licking County, and while there may be mixed feelings over ethanol plants or other business development, there’s really no downside to tour buses. Our CVB staff is to be commended for their promotion of this low cost, high return business for the county; many local folk who get National Geographic were pleasantly surprised to see an ad for visiting our home in those distinguished pages.

“Do people really want to come visit here?” some ask us. Yes, they do, I get to answer with a smile, especially when we let them know we’re here, and what we have to offer. If you encounter a tourist, thank them for coming, if you would. Treat them like a guest in our common home, and encourage them to stay a few days. We’ll all be glad you did.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he also enjoys talking on a microphone while swinging wildly from an overhead strap with one hand on a tour bus. If you have an odd hobby to share, write him at knapsack77@gmail.com.