Tourist Commission meets to discuss possibilities

BY KYLE BARNETT

Staff Reporter

LAPLACE – “You have world class resources here,” tourism consultant David Dahlquist said. “You have wonderful stories to tell.”

“The Great River Road” and Louisiana’s scenic byway program were the topics last week in a meeting hosted by the River Parishes Tourist Commission at the St. John Community Center.

The meeting brought together a state-funded tourism consulting team with local tourist commissions and tourist destination managers-comprised mainly of plantation owners and managers.

The goal of the meeting was to discuss the expansion of the Louisiana River Road Scenic Byway and to seek national designation for the byway.

The byway program was enacted in 1992 in an attempt to increase tourism in the state but has been dormant in the last few years.

Dahlquist said he has a map of the entire River Road from Minnesota to Plaquemines Parish. On the map are dots denoting places of interest. He noted Louisiana does not have as many places designated as the other states do and attributed this to a marketing problem.

Dahlquist should know. He has been involved with a number of byway projects across the country and driven thousands of miles. Since the beginning of the year he has made the trip to Louisiana from his native Des Moines, Iowa eight times.

“I’ve driven the entire state as well as the river road up and down. I’ve been all the way from Venice (La.) to Texas,” said Dahlquist.

The biggest issue brought up in the meeting was the lack of roadway signs to alert tourists to attractions off the River Road.

“We get a lot of internationals. To them the Mississippi is like the Nile,” said a local plantation operator. “They want to see how the river affected our culture and cuisine. But they don’t know where to go because there are no signs.”

Dahlquist said the byways need the following five things:

-Signs to inform tourists when they are in the environment and when they are exiting it.

-Places for people to stop once they get here to get their feet on the ground.

-Repetitive mile markers people so tourists know they are on the road still

-Good directions to planned stops

-A good map so tourists always know where they are

To accomplish the goal of promoting the River Road Scenic Byway, Dahlquist asked local group members to take a byway trip both on their computers and in person, take photos and identify examples of historic resources.

The group will meet again at the end of January 2008 to further develop their plan.