Hudson: To improve image, residents need to be proud of state
Simon Hudson came to South Carolina three years ago, and every day since, it seems, someone has asked him why.
“I get asked every single day what I’m doing here,” Hudson said after a lecture Tuesday evening. “That’s wrong, isn’t it?”
Those interactions highlight what the SmartState-endowed director of the Center of Economic Excellence in Tourism and Economic Development thinks is a key problem holding the state — and its tourism industry — back: South Carolina isn’t sold on itself.
Tourism is already the state’s biggest industry, but Hudson, an industry expert, thinks it could do much better.
The first step, he said, is convincing South Carolinians that their state is something to be proud of.
Some of that is accomplished by major festivals and events like the PGA Championship on Kiawah Island last year, but speaking at the monthly EngenuitySC Science Cafe at Delaney’s Speakeasy, Hudson suggested the state could use an internal public relations campaign.
Conceptually, such a campaign wouldn’t be too different from USC’s “No Limits” rebranding effort.
The university’s reputation has been limited, in part, by people’s negative associations with the state, administrators have said, and selling its successes has been difficult because its students and faculty don’t see themselves as particularly exceptional.
Likewise, Hudson said, the world won’t see South Carolina as a destination until its residents are convinced it is one.
But the tourism industry has also been held back by some of the state’s outward displays, he said, like the controversy that stewed in 2008 over a U.K. ad campaign that proclaimed “South Carolina is so gay” and the Confederate flag’s spot outside the Statehouse.
“The flag is a huge issue. It’s something that we need to address. I think we lose millions and millions of dollars,” Hudson said. “I sometimes feel when I’m here that we’re kind of 10 years behind everyone else. We’ll get there ... but it’s going to take some time.”
Hudson said South Carolina will also need to update its advertising efforts, moving away from 30-second TV spots to draw in golfers and beachgoers and toward innovative, Web-based campaigns to get more upscale, international travelers who will spend upwards of $400 in a night.
And it could do so, he said, by promoting historical and culinary tours in the rural areas of the state, opening the waterways between Columbia and Charleston and making flights cheaper and more accessible.
If it encouraged tourists to explore the state beyond the coastline, like in the rural Pee Dee or the Upstate, it could spread the industry’s wealth and grow the state’s economy.
“We are one of the poorest states in America. We have a lot of issues here,” Hudson said. “Tourism can help that — It really can. It’s got so much potential here.”