OurView
Tourism bureaus could be more hospitable ­ toward each other

With autumn’s arrival ­ in spite of the 90-degree weather as of this writing ­ the tourism directors of the counties of the lower Hudson Valley region are busy extolling the sights, tastes and virtues of their respective geography.

We can recite them by rote ­ from Lyndhurst to the south to the Rondout Lighthouse to the north with Bear Mountain State Park and West Point in between, even the “secret places” like Hammond Museum and Japanese Stroll Garden in North Salem or the unusual roadside attractions such as the “Fork in the Road” in Rock City outside Rhinebeck.

The one mighty thread that runs through these counties is the Hudson River. It can be a uniting force and yet it isn’t. Each tourism director politely fights the other for the tourist’s dollar. “Visit here! Eat here! Spend the night here!”

A more egalitarian approach may be in order, but a county worker knows who pays his wages and whose fiefdom needs to be hawked.

We most certainly understand the economic aspect of tourism, but we don’t understand why a team effort is not exerted in these times of high gas prices, a weakening dollar and a federal report citing a dip in consumer spending, all of which are playing against a backdrop of the worst housing slump in more than a decade. How this will play out for the tourism departments is difficult to predict, although some economists are already predicting a drop in holiday spending by consumers.

Tourism directors in the region should get together and plan how they can equally share in the dwindling dollar. They might want to take a look at the farmers and grape growers in the region. The Hudson Valley is the place to be. Just ask Cesar Baeza, wine master at Brotherhood Winery in Washingtonville.

“Napa Valley, it’s beautiful,” he says in an article in this week’s edition. “But the Hudson Valley really is the place we want to be.”

His winery is an example of taking advantage of the valley’s attributes. A majority of the grapes are grown on the winery’s farm in Columbia County, but it also considers the fruits of other vineyards when creating its wines.

Black-dirt farmers from Warwick Valley to dairies across the river in the Harlem Valley have been pushing more and more collectively the imprimatur “buy local.” And when they say “local” they mean the Hudson Valley, not their respective counties. Small farmers have known pretty much forever that they can’t make it on their own, but with a cohesive and well-thought push that buying apples from Oregon or Washington burns an ever-larger hole in the ozone due to carbon emissions from trucks hauling the fruit cross-country, they know they can get “the locals” to buy their produce and at the same time do their part in reducing pollution.

In an article in Hudson Valley Business, a Business Journal sister publication, earlier this year, the directors of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum and the Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt said visitors come from around the world and the one segment that was slumping were visitors from the region. How difficult would it be for Westchester tourism to sell visitors on the “political trail,” something akin to the wine trails that have sprung up over the past decade. Start off with a visit to Kykuit, the Rockefeller estate, followed by a train ride to Hyde Park. The next day a trip to Washington’s Headquarters in Newburgh. Or reverse it; just sell it as a package that unifies the region’s strengths.

We think tourism officials should at least give it a shot.

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