Big Picture Of Tourism Under Way Industry Leaders Start Process Of Creating Umbrella Agency

Tourism leaders from across North Idaho laid the groundwork Thursday for what could become a Panhandle-wide tourism marketing agency.

Resort marketers, chamber of commerce leaders and hoteliers gathered at Templin’s resort to pound out the issues that such a big organization would face.

Bob Templin of Post Falls hatched the idea last year, when, as the region’s Idaho Travel Council representative, he looked at all the various grants from around the five-county region.

“I saw that we had a lot of overlapping,” Templin said. “I thought we could eliminate a lot of it if we did one grant for all of North Idaho.”

The Panhandle region could receive up to half a million dollars each year for marketing from the state, said Carl Wilgus of the Idaho Department of Commerce. Each year, Sandpoint, Coeur d’Alene and Post Falls have competed for that money.

Under a proposed unified North Idaho Travel Council, a director would write and administer the grant. An advertising agency would coordinate the marketing campaign.

A board of directors made up of 14 to 17 representatives from Priest River to Plummer would oversee the whole thing.

“I think the concept is great,” said John Hunt, head of the Resource Recreation and Tourism Department at the University of Idaho in Moscow, who laid out his department’s resources for the group.

Hammering out the details will be tougher, Hunt cautioned. Coeur d’Alene and Post Falls, each with their own tourism agencies, have been reluctant to join forces for Kootenai County, much less the whole region.

Post Falls recently changed its visitor bureau’s name to Kootenai County Convention and Visitors Bureau, and expanded its board of directors to include members from around the county.

Nancy DiGiammarco, the group’s executive director, said she believes her group would dissolve into the proposed umbrella agency.

Stacy Becker of Visitors Plus, Coeur d’Alene’s tourism development group, said she couldn’t say what her board would want to do if the region-wide organization emerges.

The tourism organizations at Thursday’s summit will give the idea some thought before an April 11 meeting in Coeur d’Alene.

“I think if we get this thing to work, it’ll have to produce opportunities for communities to have site-specific events that they want to do,” said Jonathan Coe, executive director of Sandpoint’s Chamber of Commerce.

Templin said he believes communities still will create their own brochures touting themselves, but added that everyone’s effort would fit into a coordinated plan to market North Idaho year-round to target markets such as Seattle.

Time works against the tourism leaders’ plans, as grant applications to the state for marketing money are due in early June.

, DataTimes