USA: THE SOUTH
Flag wavers T
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War, and big events being planned across the south states provide more selling ammunition for agents, says Peter Ellegard
he USA’s southernmost states had to negotiate their share of troubled waters in 2010, most obviously the BP Deepwater
Horizon rig catastrophe in April, which poured almost five million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The spillage impacted on all the region’s states bordering the Gulf. According to the US Travel Association the economic impact of the oil spill on tourism across the Gulf Coast could exceed $23 billion over three years, in a region generating $34 billion per year in tourism revenue. Yet the south is putting the disaster
Clockwise from top: Visitors to the southern states in 2011 can expect re-enactments to mark the 150th anniversary of the start of the US Civil War; Alabama's RTJ Golf Trail; Cherokee dance in North Carolina; Jazz in New Orleans, Louisiana; the Atlanta Motor Speedway Georgia
behind it. Indeed, Cheshire travel agent Kristina Hulme, a partner in Alderley Edge-based Travel by Design, believes the television coverage of blackened beaches and oil-covered wildlife dominated last year may even have had a positive effect. “The region is on the up again,” she
said. “The coverage of the oil spillage showed life there as it really is, and people found it interesting and different and made them consider going there.”
Although not an actual geographic
entity, ‘The South’ comprises the Gulf states of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida as well as Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee and North and South Carolina. At a far different time in the nation’s history, the region was set to break away from Washington DC and the North – until, under the banner of 'The
the first shots were fired in anger at Charleston’s Fort Sumter. Sesquicentennial events are taking
place throughout the southern states during 2011 and will run until 2015 (150 years after the war ended). A new, expanded North Carolina Civil
War Trails map guiding visitors to nearly 300 sites is available from state welcome centres and online (at www.
Premier Holidays, America As You Like It and Complete North America now offer Alabama music tours
Confederacy', they were defeated in the devastating six-year American Civil War., Still working together, but these days to
attract international tourists, the Southern states will embrace several key anniversaries during 2011, particularly the 150th anniversary of the start of the war, which was sparked by the secession from the Union of South Carolina, where
visitnc.com/travelpubs), while events during 2011 can be found on www.
nccivilwar150.com. Georgia has also created a special website (
www.gacivilwar.org) to commemorate the anniversary, outlining events and attractions together with timelines, maps, image galleries and stories from the era.
www.sellinglonghaul.com • February 2011 35
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