CVB Leaders Work To Bring Group Tours To Bartow County

CARTERSVILLE, GA - From Travel South USA: Cartersville-Bartow County Convention & Visitors Bureau Board Member Jennifer Matthews and CVB Business Development Manager Michele Sims represented Cartersville and Bartow County’s tourism industry at the 36th Annual Travel South Showcase at the Mississippi Coast Convention Center in Biloxi, March 18-21, 2018. The showcase hosted by Travel South USA welcomed almost 600 delegates from across the United States.

Travel South Showcase is the South’s premier marketplace where travel professionals, buyers and sellers gather for three days of intensive timed meetings with a goal of delivering more visitors, spending more time and more money in the South. This regional appointment-style marketplace offers the most targeted opportunity for tour operators and wholesalers to meet face to face with Southern Suppliers, such as the Cartersville-Bartow County CVB. Matthews and Sims met with more than 45 tour operators and travel media to convince them how attractions, hotels and more in the Cartersville area would create profitable tours for them.

“We are thrilled to rekindle relationships within the group travel market,” said CVB Executive Director Ellen Archer. The CVB last attended Travel South Showcase in 2014. “We felt compelled to make a strong return to the group marketplace this year and signed on early as a sponsor and also promoted our community destination with Travel South magazine program advertising and more. From what I’ve seen, the heightened presence at Travel South has already created a new interest in our community as a group tour destination. Archer added that members of the CVB’s public relations firm Laurie Rowe Communications were also present to share the story of Cartersville and Bartow County.

Travel South USA is America’s oldest and largest regional travel promotion organization formed in 1965 by resolution presented at the Southern Governor’s Conference. The long-standing regional collaboration of 11 states connects southern destinations, attractions, entertainment venues, and hotels with tour operators and journalists from around the world who influence more visitor spending in the region. For consumer travel information see www.TravelSouthUSA.com or for tourism industry employees see www.TravelSouthUSA.org.

Photo via Travel South USA