South Carolina moves up the rankings of business-friendly states.

According to Chief Executive Magazine, South Carolina is now the fifth best state in the U.S. to run a business, moving up from its 2013 ranking of eighth. In their 10th annual survey, the magazine questioned over 500 CEOs across the U.S. asking them to grade states with which they were familiar on measures including tax and regulatory regime, the quality of the workforce, and the quality of the living environment. Texas continues its 10-year historical position as the best state overall; but Florida, which ranks No. 2, is edging up and even overtaking Texas in its quality of living environment. Tennessee edged out North Carolina to take third place with North and South Carolina respectively capturing 4th and 5th place.

 

 

 

Responding to ‘Think Aiken Think’

Dr. Hudson was a guest of Aiken South Carolina’s Chamber of Commerce yesterday, where he was acting as a ‘responder’ to a community leader’s think-tank called “Think Aiken Think”. The Chamber was looking for someone from outside the community but with a background in economic development and planning to come in and sum up the planning session. “My job was to listen to all the various group discussions and then give a summary based on what I had heard, reacting to the level of creativity and identifying common themes” said Hudson. Participants were asked to debate various topics including how to create a more progressive and future-oriented leadership, how to attract more investment and create jobs in Aiken, and how to improve and promote the quality of life in the city. “It is just great to see these rural communities in the state realizing that inaction is not a viable option if they genuinely want to improve local prosperity. So they are bringing leaders of the community together to create a vision for the future – such stakeholder engagement is a crucial step in the community development process.” Last year, Hudson’s team in the Center of Economic Excellence in Tourism conducted a similar project for the Town of Bluffton. Their report can be found at: http://www.hrsm.sc.edu/CoEETourismandED/PDFs/BlufftonReport.pdf

Great customer service should be delivered with a compliment or two (or five).

Dr. Hudson was a guest of the Members Club at Woodcreek and WildeWood in Columbia this week delivering a customer service seminar to employees. As part of a general training day, Dr. Hudson was giving some tips on how to provide superior customer service. “It’s actually not that complex,” he said “But few organizations really get it right.” One of the problems, he says, is that many companies think they are providing good customer service, when, in actual fact, their customers are saying otherwise. Hudson refers to a recent study that found 80 percent of companies believe they deliver superior service to their customers, but only eight percent of their customers actually agreed! “It is refreshing to see an organization like Woodcreek & Wildewood recognizing the significance of customer service, and investing in their employees. Customer service training is often viewed as a cost rather than an investment, and even if companies recognize the importance of customer service, they don’t know how to deliver consistent, high quality customer service on an on-going basis.” One of Hudson’s tips on how to wow your customers: pay them a compliment. He refers to one study where hairstylists compared the tips they got when they complimented their customers versus when they did not compliment them. In the study, tips were significantly higher when the hairstylists used compliments. “Did you know the key to a successful relationship is to pay your partner a compliment five times a day?” says Hudson. There’s food for thought.

Hotels add health to the menu

An increasing number of hotels are responding to growing global demand for health and wellness and are catering to the physical and psychological needs of guests while promising enhanced wellbeing – benefits that visitors can take home when the holiday is over. A far cry from more traditional vacations spent lounging on a beach or poolside chair. Intercontinental Hotel Group (IHC), for example, created EVEN Hotels after conducting research that found there are 17 million travelers who want hotels to accommodate their healthy lifestyle needs. Westin hotels also recently launched a Well-Being Movement and even Las Vegas’s MGM Hotel has Stay-Well rooms.

A recent article by Simon Hudson published in Hotel Business Review focuses on this trend and spotlights certain hotels around the world and the specific services they are providing for the growing number of health-conscious visitors. The full article can be found at:

 https://hotelexecutive.com/business_review/4024/hotels-add-health-to-the-menu

Santee Cooper Research Uncovers Yet Another of South Carolina's Hidden Treasures

Beautiful sunset in Santee Cooper Country

Kayaking, motorized boating, fishing, geocaching, hiking, bird watching and golfing are just some of the outdoor activities available along the Blue ways of Santee Cooper Country. Through  a project supported by Santee Cooper, Santee Cooper Country and University of South Carolina, the SmartState Center researchers are conducting a study examining  the development of opening up the waterway for tourism all the way from Columbia down to Charleston. The study aims to assess the current resources and potential tourism attractions, conduct a comparative analysis of similar waterways, measure the interest and demand for tourism along the waterway and examine the attitudes for future tourism development among the key stakeholders in the region. Through this research project, the team has had the pleasure to discover more of South Carolina's bounty of natural resources!



Drs. Hudson and Cardenas at the lock

Can destinations attract tourists via branded entertainment?

I am ‘In Bruges’ this week presenting a paper at the Travel & Tourism Research Association annual conference. My paper is about America’s use of branded entertainment as a way of attracting international tourists. Branded entertainment is a relatively new term to describe a more contemporary, sophisticated use of product placement, and involves co-creation and collaboration between entertainment, media and brands. Although there are only a few examples of destinations employing branded entertainment as a communications tool, it has been acknowledged that placing a destination in a film or television is the ultimate in tourism product placement. Just witness the success of In Bruges. Tourists have been flocking to Bruges since the debut of the 2008 movie (despite the fact that it depicted a city full of contract killers, racist dwarfs and prostitutes), and I used the movie map yesterday to get around the beautiful city. 

 

But the resulting tourism from this film was more chance than actual marketing strategy, whereas the U.S. recently has been more proactive in using TV and film to attract tourists. Last year, Brand USA, the group that is spearheading the nation’s first global marketing effort to promote the US overseas, launched a website in London accepting confidential television ideas from producers. Following an external committee selection, entries were shortlisted to three, and the first program to be produced was Extreme Frontiers: USA, which was broadcast in the UK on Channel Five late in 2013. Produced by director Russ Malkin, owner of Big Earth, the four-part series followed well-known thrill-seeker and adventurer Charley Boorman, whose expedition began in Hawaii before he and Malkin travelled over 8,000 miles across 22 states. 

Brand USA developed a dedicated web page on their consumer website for the show featuring video excerpts from the series, photographs, and links to Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. On the website were also links to travel information and to the show’s own website. The program is currently being sold globally and will appear in over 90 territories, but as a result of the program being broadcast in the UK alone, EagleRider, an official sponsor of the show created an, ‘Extreme Frontiers Guided Tour’, of which they have already sold 60 packages.  

Building on this initiative, this April, the US Travel Association, in conjunction with Brand USA, launched a new broadcast/production program at the annual IPW conference in Chicago. This allowed broadcast and production media from the UK, Ireland and Australia to participate in face-to-face appointments with US travel and film organizations to find out more about filming in the US. Once again, the idea was to encourage producers to feature the US as a premier destination and leverage the new brand promise. In addition, Brand USA is spending $10m on an IMAX movie that will showcase the country’s national parks, and the group has also teamed up with National Geographic Travel on a digital campaign to showcase iconic road trips across America to international travelers.

What all this shows is that if destinations can think creatively and work closely with the film and television industries to facilitate production, they will capitalize on the subsequent exposure. Brand USA not only exploited the power of entertainment to promote the US as a travel destination, they supported the initiative with a promotional campaign around the brand integration, a tactic that has proved successful in the past with consumer brands.

Center intern meets with entrepreneur and economic expert

Chip Harriford, Always Fresh Farms, LLC and Daniel Beasley

On June 9th, 2014 , the Center welcomed a new intern, Daniel Beasley. Daniel is a promising young student from the Governor's School of Mathematics and Science who has interest in economic development and economic drivers, such as tourism. Daniel will intern with the Center for approximately 6 six weeks this summer. Daniel, from Florence SC,will be assisting with tourism and brand development projects in the Pee Dee region of South Carolina and the Santee -Cooper region of South Carolina.   He will also have the opportunity to interview and visit with local economic experts such as Chip Harriford, pictured above. Welcome, Daniel!