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New Website, smallwander.com, Promotes Small Towns and Offers Training for Merchants, Leaders
Posted: 05-30-2008 : HILLSBOROUGH, N.C.
HILLSBOROUGH, NC – Searching for travel information about small towns? A new Website, www.smallwander.com, has just been launched to help you. It features charming walkable towns with fewer than 10,000 people, cultural or historical heritage and locally-owned businesses, including accommodations. Towns must feature a distinct viable downtown, not one spread out or one with lots of empty store-fronts.
The idea is that you can park your car, wander, shop, eat and spend a day or two without having to get back into your car until you leave the town.
Any town that meets the criteria can sign up for free. However, all towns are welcome to participate. Options are available for those not meeting the criteria. The site includes towns in mid-Atlantic states with more being added monthly. Plans are to expand the site nationwide.
To date, this is the only Website that promotes small town tourism information and blogs to the traveling public – coupled with educational seminars and networking opportunities for government officials, merchant association directors and retailers.
Smallwander.com is the brainchild of John Delconte, a pharmaceutical technical writer by trade and an avid fan of visiting small towns.
"I moved from Philadelphia to Hillsborough and fell in love with the small town charm. Then I got involved with the local arts council and soon became the president." He continued, "I decided to start helping other arts councils in small towns when I saw there was no vehicle to promote the overall town itself. I felt compelled to correct this wrong."
In 2007, Delconte launched smallwander.com and hit the road calling on towns. Then he hired Greta Anita Lint, a tourism consultant and writer, Rob Ainbinder, owner of Deep River Communication, a Website marketing firm and Interactive Communications, Inc., a company recognized for developing tourism Websites. They advised him to overhaul the site, do some advertising, provide a platform for visitors to comment about their experiences, and become an educational resource for town leaders and retailers.
Lint, who has been promoting tourism attractions, destinations, events, small towns and regions since 1986, says she was astonished to learn about Delconte's efforts. "John's a visionary. The site fills two needs: promoting towns to the traveling public and helping educate downtown leaders, merchants and government officials."
Since January 2008, smallwander.com has been providing educational teleseminars. They're held on the last Monday of the month at 10 a.m. and last about an hour. They're accessible by phone or the Internet. Recordings of the teleseminars will soon be available via podcast.
Lint said, "I've witnessed that if a town has a city administrator, chamber of commerce or merchants association leader, they often don't have time nor funds to attend educational and networking meetings. Many of these positions are filled by people who aren't formally educated in running a town or an organization and desperately need help. Some are paid; others volunteer. And sometimes they only work part-time. They need mentors, on-the-job training and guidance. John's teleseminars supply them with an inexpensive educational and networking outlet."
And smallwander.com is a one-stop shopping place for tourists looking for information about small towns.
"Many times they're sparkling gems that need specific attention," Lint explained. "Often small towns don't have the financial resources to promote themselves and depend upon larger tourism offices for that service. However, since most tourism agencies depend upon hotel occupancy taxes to provide operating and marketing budgets, marketing managers must tout their main draw – and a small town may not be it. So smallwander.com provides a new promotional resource."
"Through this process we have been helping small towns identify what they need in order to present themselves fully and accurately on the Internet to the traveling public," Delconte commented. "Some towns have good Websites. Others don't have one at all. Smallwander.com provides them with a site that is part of an overall network of similar towns that attract cultural travelers. Internet savvy domestic and international travelers researching trips depend upon town Websites that are truthful, interesting, functional and enticing. We make the cultural traveler's shopping for small town adventures easy and fun. You no longer will have to dig through the big cities to find the small town gems."
For more information, contact John Delconte at 919-241-5001 or email john@smallwander.com.
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