My favorite DMO and destination with the best practice of
sustainability and/or resilience.
My favorite destination to visit is Savannah, GA. I have cousins that live nearby in Bluffton
and this is not too far from where I live in Orlando. We have met up there a few times and I really
enjoy the historical buildings, beautiful gardens, and park squares. Their DMO website is https://VisitSavannah.com
“America’s first planned city” (https://visitsavannah.com/article/history-savannah)
has been working hard to improve their sustainability practices. Savannah’s office of sustainability has focused
on the following initiatives to improve the lives of both Savannah residents
and visitors:
·
To reduce reduce carbon emissions and help the
area with energy cost savings, the city is adding solar panels to nineteen government
buildings. Examples are the civic center,
police department and the public works building. Doing this will help to provide enough to
power just about 375 homes.
·
There is a project called “100% Savannah” which
has a goal “to achieve 100% renewable energy consumption for all electricity
used within the city by 2035 and by 2050”. (Sustainable Savannah: City Takes
Bold Actions to Reduce Carbon Footprint. 2023)
·
Savannah
is known for having 12 miles of bike paths that tie different neighborhoods together
making it an easier choice for residents to not take the car. On July 1st,
they began phase 2 of the new Truman Linear Park Trail and this will add
another 15 miles of trails.
·
The “Keep Savannah Beautiful” initiative organizes
neighborhood cleanups, advocates sustainable environmental practices, and provides
educational outreach activities.
·
In May of 2022, the Savannah City Council unanimously passed a
resolution to go plastic free. They will
be working hard to phase out single-use,
non-essential plastics in just a year.
The best practice of sustainability and/or resilience
I have noticed, while
visiting Savannah, how easy it is to get around the Historic District near
River Street. Everything is very
walkable with so many shops, restaurants, monuments, square gardens, and
historic buildings close by. For me, the
best practice Savannah has for showing sustainability is their transportation
strategy of having so many fun ways to get around the area – You would not even
think about driving around in a car.
Once you park, they have
Trolley tours that can take you all around the area. The trolleys will make many stops and allow
you much time to explore. There are also
ferries, a riverboat cruise, and horse drawn carriages.
Dark tourism is popular here due to a history of war, yellow fever, fires, and pirates. This city has shown resilience time and time again and, therefore, In the evenings, you will see visitors taking a ghost tour trolley/bus.
Why this is the best practice?
Anything that Savannah can do to make getting around easier
for visitors and residents benefits everyone.
Savannah is very lucky that it has so much history, green spaces, beautiful
homes, and monuments right there next to the restaurants and shopping on River
Street. The use of trolleys, ferries,
riverboats, and bike rentals all combine to make this a great experience. Promoting the use of these modes of
transportation also helps to reduce carbon emissions. So many visitors choose to walk through the
historic district on foot, so reducing traffic makes them feel safer.
Benefits and consequences for consumers
With more people using these different modes of
transportation, walking around is safer and easier. Also, if the visitors can park in one of the
parking lots or side streets, they should not need to be calling for an uber. The
DMO website acknowledges that downtown Savannah has been at risk for overcrowding
and the Marriott, Hilton, and Ritz-Carlton has responded by opening new hotels
wherever they can find somewhere in the area.
Many existing buildings have been
repurposed for hotel rooms. The historic
district needs to continue to find ways to keep the area from being over utilized.
Another benefit for
Savannah is the good weather and the stability of visitors coming every month
of the year. Other than the very popular
St. Patrick’s Day parade, the four quarters of the year have almost the same
number of tourists coming to town.
Benefits and consequences for the destination, tourism
industry and the local residents
According to module 5 in our online class material, Savannah’s
transportation strategy is successful in all three areas: economic, social, and
environmental goals. Having shops and
restaurants easily accessible can help increase visitor spending and business
profits since this will help them stay longer and visit more
establishments. Less traffic and gas emissions helps protect
Savannah’s natural assets and manage uses and assets. The addition of more bikes and walking paths
helps the community by improving services and quality of life.
A Wikipedia search of the Port of Savannah states that as of
2021, it became the third busiest seaport in the United States and this has not
helped the condition of the Savannah River.
When the port became unable to handle any more growth, the Georgia Ports
Authority created satellite terminals and methods of inland distribution. With so many different sources of pollution,
it is hard to clean up all of the sediment and heavy metals
How can this best practice be encouraged for other DMOs
To offer these same modes of transportation, each DMO would
need to look at the layout of their area.
Obviously, they would need a waterway for many of the transportation
services. Do they have an ample amount
of restaurants, hotels, and shopping nearby with enough parking spaces? If so, they could also consider trolleys,
horse drawn carriages, bike rentals and walking paths. They can offer coupons on their DMO websites
for use of these modes of transportation and advertisements to remind them how
easy it would be to park their car and just leave it there for the day. I do not remember having to pay a fee to park
in Savannah so it would not be a best practice to charge a large fee to park
when you are going to charging for the other services.
The organization that should be in charge of encouraging
more sustainable and/or resilient practices by DMOs
In Savannah, The Office of
Sustainability provides all of the resources and programs pertaining to healthy
living and protection of resources. This
is an organization dedicated to sustainability for the Savannah/Chatam County
area and I believe that this is the best type of department to be in
charge. The office of Sustainability
listed 4 main responsibilities on their page of the Savannah.gov website and
this is shown below.
- Help develop sustainability initiatives that align with the City's strategic plan
- Develop external funding and partnerships to support City sustainability goals
- Provide technical assistance on strategies to achieve cost savings through resource conservation and efficiency
- Develop and implement community education, outreach, and forums for stakeholder engagement (Office of Sustainability | Savannah, GA - Official Website (savannahga.gov)
While clicking on links contained
in either the Savannah.gov website or the Savannah chamber of commerce website,
any links that pertain to visiting Savannah will take you straight to the https://VisitSavannah.com DMO site. There seems to be an easy, effective synergy among
these departments.
The success of the Savannah Office of
Sustainability has attracted partners that would like to help Savannah with its
efforts. They were recently chosen by Bloomberg Philanthropies to be one
of 25 U.S. cities included in the Bloomberg American
Sustainable Cities.
It is a three-year program helping to use federal funding to find
and carry out local solutions for building communities with low-carbon emissions
and economically prosperous communities.
“It is clear Savannah is leading the charge in
reducing emissions and building an equitable, prosperous future for our
communities,” Mayor Van R. Johnson, II said. “We are grateful to Bloomberg
Philanthropies for investing in this shared vision.” (https://www.savannahga.gov/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=2906,
2024)
If
I were in charge of this organization, strategies, tactics and actions that I
would use to encourage more sustainability and/or resilience
This is a
very exciting time for Savannah. The
office of Sustainability is going to be able to have three experts onsite from
the Bloomberg Philanthropies for the next three years. It would be a good idea to listen to their
advice, spend much time with them and learn all that I can. This partnership will be amazing and many new
initiatives can be started and completed during this three year window.
Discovering more ways to lure some of these visitors out of the downtown historic district to other exciting destinations in Savannah would help with overcrowding. The DMO website does a good job of promoting areas like Tybee Island, Moon River District, and Canal District with its EnMarket Arena, but finding an easy way and sustainable ways to get the hotel guests back and forth would be helpful.
I
would also work closely with the Savannah Riverkeepers, which is a group of
residents who joined together to address their concerns with the governance of
the Savannah River Basin. They felt that
the 50 different organizations that share the responsibility were in conflict
and that their activities were counterproductive. They are part of the Water Keeper Alliance
movement. Since the drinking water for
our residents comes from the Savannah River and it is so polluted, working
alongside these citizens to make the river cleaner would be a good strategy.
Citizens also are alarmed by the number of warehouses popping up in many different areas. These are the ones I mentioned before that are taking the stress off of the Port of Savannah. These warehouse are replacing green spaces and some of the historical communities. There seems to be a perception that there is no planning or coordination involved into building these warehouses and that is going to cause serious damage to the wetlands. I would find out more about what is happening and do all I can to get it under control.
My
role in supporting and improving sustainability and/or resilience of tourism
destinations as a consumer and/or industry practitioner
References:
Visit Savannah DMO Website https://visitsavannah.com/
Information page from Savannah.gov https://www.savannahga.gov/2464/Tourism-Management
Information page from Savannah.gov https://www.savannahga.gov/507/Office-of-Sustainability
https://www.georgiatrend.com/2024/02/29/sustaining-appeal/
Wikipedia search for Port of Savannah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Savannah
https://bikewalksavannah.org/our-work/
