Co-op Brings Visitors

By Bruce Tepper Published Mar 13, 2013 04:36 pm Updated May 31, 2019 07:12 pm

Artificial boundaries like county or state lines have little effect on visitors to our area or other areas of the country. Visitors come to experience Yosemite, the scenery, outdoor recreation and of course the colorful gold rush history and old west flavor found all along Highway 49.

Visitors from outside California are likely to arrive by air via the Bay Area, primarily through San Francisco.

For those reasons the Tuolumne County Visitors Bureau (TCVB) is an active member of three organizations that have a regional focus and address the needs of different types of visitors to the area.

The TCVB is a member of the High Sierra Visitors Council (HSVC,www.visitcalifornia.com/Explore/High-Sierra), a group of tourism organizations covering the area from Lake Tahoe down through Yosemite Park. As a group, we promote tourism into most of the Sierra Nevada mountain communities and recreational areas. The focus is mainly on outdoor recreation and scenery.

The TCVB also belongs to the Gold Country Visitors Association (GCVA, www.calgold.org). This group of tourism organizations spans the length of California’s Historic Highway 49. The GCVA promotes tourism related to the history of the area, the burgeoning wine industry and outdoor recreation. Because so many Tuolumne County visitors originate in the Bay Area, we are also a member of the San Francisco Travel Association (SFTA, www.sanfrancisco.travel). This allows us to reach many visitors who are less familiar with the area and are looking for other nearby places to visit. SF Travel has a link on their website called Beyond San Francisco (www.sanfrancisco.travel/beyondsf) that showcases things to do and see throughout northern California including Yosemite and the Gold Country.

In many cases, other county and city tourism organizations belong to these regional marketing groups. Doing so enables us to create materials and websites focused on the entire area and to attend many more industry trade and consumer shows than would be possible for any of our organizations individually.

By sharing costs,for example, Tuolumne County can be represented at a number of events as part of the GCVA or HSVC where neither we, or any of our neighboring tourism organizations would have the resources to go individually.

This cooperative effort has benefited the entire region and goes a long way in creating interest in the Mother Lode than would ever be possible for any of us to do on our own.