Olympic Peninsula Tourism Commission 2009 Tourism Summit

I am always a cheerleader for collaborative and cooperative efforts, especially in the tourism industry.  The Olympic Peninsula Tourism Commission is a wonderful example of a cooperative effort; a portion of each members funds are pooled to create a marketing fund and they all have input on how the funds are spent.  This crosses community and county lines.  The group does traditional marketing, shared websites and explore new ideas together.

The 2009 Tourism Summit was packed with a variety of people involved in tourism; government officials, business owners, chamber representatives and more.  Speakers were both local and one came from Wyoming.

The agenda was filled with great general sessions and relevant breakout sessions.  I would have liked to attend all nine offerings but had to pick three, one during each breakout.  I am not a great "sitter" but I sat through a full day of programs fully engaged and wanting more.

The theme was "New Economy - Low Budget - High Tech - Growing Trends".  Right on target for today - everyone left with things they could apply to their businesses immediately.  I thought I was up to speed on social networking but I learned new tricks and some new technology.  Did you know that if Facebook was a country it would be the fourth largest country in the world and it is growing faster than any country! 

Any tourism organization or business not making full use of social networking (Facebook, Twitter, etc) is behind the curve and missing out on one of the best, free tools available today.  I am even more impressed now that I learned more ways to make the networking tools target visitors and get the word out.

I could go on and on about the summit but here is a link to the informaiton.  At the bottom of the page are some PDFs of some of the presentations.

One of the themes was Culinary Tourism.  There was considerable discussion of what is being done and what can and should be done to fully take advantage of this growing trend.  But nothing speaks better than showing what can be done . . .

Did I mention the lunch?  It was outrageous!  10 Olympic Peninsula celebrity chefs created multiple items using local and organic items when possible.  There were food stations in all corners of the room with temping dishes like: Roosevelt Elk & Berry soup, Dungeness Crab and Oyster mushroom Agnolotti with Mascarpone cheese finished with a Tarragon Beurre Blanc, local Coho Salmon slow cooked on sticks over a wood fire, Northwest Dungeness crab cakes with roasted pepper coulis, basil aioli, Blackberry Pavlovas with Mt Townsend Fromage and this is just a sampling of the offerings.