By Pete Kendall/reporter@trcle.com
October 15, 2008 05:37 pm
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Carl Watson, Cleburne’s recently hired director of tourism, spoke Tuesday on subjects related to his job and the promotion of Cleburne in the following question-and-answer exchange with the Times-Review.
Q: What basically is your job description?
A: Basically, it’s to put heads in beds. That’s it in a nutshell. It gets a lot more involved than that. My responsibility is use funds given to us by the city to help market the destination.
Q: What is your background?
A: I’m from South Florida. I ran hotels for 25 years and got into the chamber business about 12 years ago. In South Florida, if you’re in the chamber business, you’re in the tourism business. I’ve been here since April 1.
Q: Was a tourism marketing plan in place when you got here, and what are some of the things you’ve done so far?
A: Not really a marketing plan per se. We started putting together our new visitors guide about three months ago. It’s being printed as we speak. It’s three times the size of what we had. It will be in every state welcome center. It’s going to be in Beaumont and Fredericksburg. We’ve got a $95,000 advertising budget for next year. Now that we have the tools to work with, we’re going to be promoting the heck out of [Cleburne].
Q: What kind of tourism does Cleburne have at the moment?
A: Cleburne is primarily a commercial destination because of the Barnett Shale. Sunday through Thursday is the busy time. Primarily what I’ll be working on is that off-area, Friday and Saturday, which is kind of slow at this point.
Q: What can be done to lure weekend visitors to Cleburne in the future?
A: With the new conference center coming in, and with the new sports complex, we’ll have a good nucleus of things. Probably about summer of next year, once we really get the conference center moving, we’ll start promoting that niche market of conferences with 50 to 300 people. We don’t want to go too much over that. We have a 300-seat performing arts center that’s going to be part of [the conference center].
We’re going to start working on youth [sports] tournaments, maybe junior college tournaments, softball and soccer tournaments to take advantage of that 90-acre sports complex, which rivals anything in the Metroplex.
Q: What are the different forms of tourism markets you’ll be targeting?
A: The leisure market is what everybody thinks of. You come in, you go to Disneyland, you eat dinner, you go scuba diving. You have your sports market, commercial market. You have sub-markets — educational market, religious market.
We’ve got plenty here to work with. I was pleasantly surprised when I stated finding out what we did have. Now, the city is looking at a master plan for the lake, which is going to be really nice. Hopefully, there will be a path all the way around the lake. The new [Winston Patrick McGregor] Park is going to be absolutely beautiful. That in itself will be something worth coming to see. And then you have other things like Splash Station, the history of the railroad, [the locomotive engine] in the park, which is something that not every town has. I think it’s exciting that Santa Fe Railroad was here for nearly 100 years.
Q: Is there enough for a tourist to do in Cleburne?
A: I think there is. For someone coming to a two- or three-day conference, bringing a family in, we can put some things together as a package. We’re not Disneyland or Orlando. That’s not what we want to be. But we have the Chisholm outdoor museum with the stagecoach station. That’s really going to be exciting.
We’ll have a state-of-the-art golf course hopefully opening the first or middle part of next summer with a fantastic clubhouse. You’ve got a pretty good start downtown with the antique shops. We’re getting some good restaurants. As the population grows, our restaurant variety will grow.
We’ve got the nucleus in Cleburne. And even though we’re Cleburne, we’re a region. You can set up a day at Fossil Rim or other things within the general area. We can be the base.
Q: What is the mindset of Cleburne? Does it view itself as a destination for tourists?
A: I would think the mindset is like any other smaller town. Most people, if they’re not in the tourism industry, would think of this as a nice place to live. It’s our job to go out and promote what we have and how important it is to Cleburne from the dollars and cents standpoint.
Tourism is the third largest industry in Texas. A lot of people don’t realize that. In 2007 in Johnson County, there were like 854 tourism-related jobs. So, it brings in a substantial amount of money in tax dollars. People don’t think about retail stores being part of that, but they are. People have to have a place to shop when they come in. Two of the major things people like to do on vacation are shopping and eating.
Q: What has a tourist destination like Granbury done that Cleburne can learn from?
A: They’ve been very smart. They’ve used their natural resources and expanded on those things. They’ve got a 28-mile lake, and we don’t have that, but we do have a lake that we can promote to bring people in. We have four boat ramps. People can come in for the weekend, bring their boats, stay in the hotels, use the lake.
Granbury was very smart in revitalizing the downtown area. I would hope that’s something Cleburne can learn from. And we are. Look at the new Plaza Theatre downtown. Forty percent of the people who go there are from out of the area. They’re doing their own marketing to bring in people.
Same thing with the Chisholm outdoor museum. It’s going to be a big draw for history buffs. Carnegie Players are a big draw as well as the Brazos Chamber Orchestra that plays four times a year. We have a lot of stuff here. It just hasn’t been put together in one package.
I have a 28-page marketing plan I’m going to be presenting to city council in a couple of weeks. We have everything you need to start expanding. It’s not going to happen tomorrow or maybe in six months or a year, but once we get the conference center and golf course going, people will come in and enjoy themselves and tell others. The best kind of advertising is referrals.
Q: When will Cleburne be able to attract a Hilton Garden Inn or another upscale hotel, as Granbury has been able to do?
A: Once 121 comes in, and you cut the [travel] time in half to downtown Fort Worth, you’ll start seeing more people move into the area. Most of these hotels have formulas they work on [to gauge] the economic base of the town.
Not only do we need one of those [upscale hotels], but we also need a full-service property. I would love to have a nice full-service property, one that will hold about 500 people, sitting out by the lake. And there’s no reason we can’t have that. But you also have to go out there and let people know you’re here.
The lake can be a jewel for us if we use it properly. There’s no reason we can’t have lake events. They may not be speedboat races, but we can do sailboat races. There are tons of things we can do.
Q: For tourism to expand here, do city leaders have to be on board with it unanimously?
A: Cities that have the backing of city officials obviously expand much faster. We have the full backing of city council. But I also have to explain to them what we’re doing to market the destination so they feel comfortable. I think as long as we show them we’re progressing, they’ll be 100 percent behind us.
Q: Besides the lake, Layland Museum and some other things you’ve mentioned, what infrastructure presently exists that will help promote tourism?
A: The airport is a major plus for this area. I think it’s the largest airport outside the Metroplex in this area. A lot of jets and private planes land out there. The city stepped up to the plate and cleaned up that terminal. The airport has courtesy transportation.
Q: A lot of people fly in to Fort Worth to use the sportscar track in Cresson. But this airport is much closer to Cresson than Fort Worth is, and it can handle jet traffic.
A: That’s something we can promote. I’m very pleased with the airport. I think that’s one of our hidden jewels, like the lake.
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