Discover New England drops Conn.
More than six months after Connecticut ended funding for tourism, the Discover New England promotional group dropped the state from its website.
The Portsmouth, N.H.-based organization now lists the other five New England states, omitting Connecticut from a map of the region and from its list of tourism agencies, events and driving routes.
Gov. Dan Malloy has pledged to restore some tourism funding in the current legislative session. According to the Providence Journal, Discover New England charged Connecticut $100,000 annually to be part of the website. According to the U.S. Travel Association, at just under $1 million Connecticut had the second lowest tourism budget in the nation after Rhode Island.
Newport loses America”™s Cup bid
Newport lost out on its midnight bid to be the host of the America”™s Cup in 2013, with San Francisco Bay to be the setting for the 34th installment of the regatta.
It marks the first time since 1995 that the America”™s Cup has been hosted in the United States.
The America”™s Cup Event Authority reportedly had approached officials in Newport, R.I., after a gap opened in financial negotiations with San Francisco. Holding the regatta there would have provided a likely boost for the casinos in eastern Connecticut; while proving a draw for corporations in Fairfield County, which is home to a large number of offshore yachtsmen.
The competition is expected to generate an estimated $1.4 billion in economic impact.
Underfunded and misunderstood CT tourism is not just under the radar screen, it’s been in danger of extinction. While we take Gov. Malloy at his word that he’ll fund tourism marketing with $15million (which will come back to the state treasury 9-fold if past history is any indicator), CT legislators and the voters who elected them should be aware that, right up there with funding to market CT as a destination, how and to whom those funds are apportioned will make or break tourism in CT and tourism revenues that shore up social services and other non-revenue producing CT departments and services.
Until legislators raided the tourism piggy bank and made a mashup of CT’s tourism marketing entities, the regional districts did a bang up job of bringing in tourism revenue from convention & meetings, leisure travelers, events, sports, and motorcoach groups.
CT’s legislators and Dannel Malloy have another chance to get it right by adequately funding and leaving the business of regional tourism to the regional tourism pros and squandered.