The Trends in Travel and Tourism » Blog Archive » Humboldt’s New (Creative) High

The Trends in Travel and Tourism » Blog Archive » Humboldt’s New (Creative) High

I had a good laugh today after I watched a video attached to an email from Tony Smithers, the Executive Director of the Humboldt County Convention & Visitors Bureau in California. But before I get to that, a little background.

A couple of years ago I gave a keynote speech at a California Travel Industry Association (CalTIA) conference in Santa Rosa, CA (a good place to visit if you’re ever in the area north of San Francisco — and don’t miss the Charles Shultz Museum, for starters).

Anyway, since my talk was about how various destinations had successfully changed their image, at the end I asked the audience if they had any questions. One guy in the back of the room stood up – it was Tony Smithers, if you hadn’t already guessed — and explained that with so any marijuana plots planted out in the forests up north in Humboldt County, that all of the police raids had given the county a reputation as the “pot capital of the U.S.” And he wanted to know what they could do to combat the image. “Oh crud,” I thought, “of all the gin joints in all the world….”

But I know that when you’re in the tourism business and faced with something like that, it can quickly spiral out of control and become national news should the media misinterpret anything you say on the subject. So I made a suggestion — “make a joke of it,” I told the audience.

Fast forward to Universal Studios in Orlando last May. I bump into Tony and the subject of “not only the birds fly high in Humboldt” comes up once again. And I give him my same opinion. If people laugh at something, any criticism of it is really negated. Criticize something people remember as funny, and you only make them laugh again.

So back to the point. In my inbox this morning I found an email from Tony saying “Following our conversation in Orlando last May, I took your advice…”

To see how he handled the situation go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glm97au0b_Q or the website at www.hookedonhumboldt.org. It’s good to see someone creatively use a small budget to get some big results.

Okay, so maybe it won’t win an Academy Award. But as a new creative high for Northern Californian tourism, someone should surely nominate it for something.

Well done, Tony.