Tourism on rise in Scranton/ Lackawanna County. Years of effort paying off...
Coal mines and Rails packing them in:
08/22/2006
More and more, tourism is becoming big business
BY ROGER DUPUIS II
STAFF WRITER
By the numbers
The Alliance of National Heritage Areas has released a study depicting the impact of heritage tourism on the local economy. Among the 2005 findings:
Monetary
Visitors: 200,000 tourists visited area historic attractions. That figure includes repeat visits and visitors counted at multiple attractions. Individual visits were still over 100,000.
Spending: $13.6 million.
Jobs: An estimated 294 jobs were supported by that spending.
Overall impact: $7.7 million — excluding money spent on items that weren’t produced locally.
Visitor profile
Stay duration: 57% day trip; 43% overnight.
Overnight stays: Average length of 2.6 nights.
Lodging: 65% hotel, motel or B&B; 10% campground; 20% friends or relatives; 16% staying overnight outside local area.
New visitors: 65% first-time visitors, 35% repeat.
Cross visitation: 61% multiple sites visited, 39% single site.
Places visitors planned to see
Steamtown National Historic Site: 85%
Electric City Trolley Museum: 35%
Lackawanna Coal Mine Tour: 38%
Anthracite Heritage Museum: 22%
Lackawanna County Stadium: 11%
Everhart Museum: 11%
Scranton Iron Furnaces: 11%
Other: 4%
Decades after coal and railroads ceased to dominate Northeastern Pennsylvania’s economy, both are starting to make a significant contribution again — as tourist attractions.
A new study finds that nearly 200,000 tourists visited area historic attractions in 2005, including the Steamtown National Historic Site, Electric City Trolley Museum, Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum, Scranton Iron Furnaces and the Lackawanna County Coal Mine Tour.
That figure includes repeat visits and visitors counted at multiple attractions. However, individual visits were still over 100,000, officials estimate.
“Heritage development is economic and community development,” said Natalie Solfanelli, executive director of the Lackawanna Heritage Valley Authority. “This bears that out.”
According to the recently released report by the Alliance of National Heritage Areas, those tourists spent $13.6 million while visiting Lackawanna Heritage Valley national heritage sites. That reportedly supported an estimated 294 jobs at the attractions, and added $7.7 million overall to the local economy — excluding money spent on items that weren’t produced locally.
LHV efforts have borne significant fruit, officials say, because local officials have worked hard narrowing the focus of preservation projects to accurately reflect the era and industries that made Northeastern Pennsylvania an economic titan.
“Lackawanna is really, really good at interpreting how the anthracite coal industry was significant to the region and fueled the industrial revolution,” said ANHA Executive Director John W. Cosgrove.
Across the country, there are 27 congressionally designated National Heritage Areas, which generated $8.5 billion in spending and supported 152,324 jobs last year.
ANHA surveyed five of those areas, including LHV, as part of a study examining how heritage tourism affects local economies. The agency took raw data from the individual areas and estimated its impact, using an economic model developed at Michigan State University for the National Park Service.
“The focus of this model is on the credibility of the numbers,” Mr. Cosgrove said.
From July through October 2005, 523 visitor surveys were conducted between the Lackawanna County Visitor Center at Montage, Steamtown, the Everhart Museum, the trolley museum and anthracite museum for submission to the ANHA project.
Some heritage areas, like the nearby Delaware and Lehigh area, are huge. Designated in 1988, that area covers 2,600 square miles and takes in 252 national register properties. Lackawanna, designated in 2000, covers 350 square miles and 64 national register properties.
Many LHV attractions don’t just recreate history, Mrs. Solfanelli noted, but use surviving facilities to do that. The coal mine at McDade Park, former Laurel Line trolley tunnel and structures at Steamtown, for example, are among actual industrial structures used to tell the story of our history to visitors.
For officials, the challenge is getting visitors to stay longer and spend more.
Almost 60 percent of those surveyed locally visited historic attractions for a day trip, and just over 40 percent came for an overnight stay. They also shopped and ate here.
He doesn’t have empirical statistics, but Jim Walsh, general manager of the Mall at Steamtown, knows the pedestrian bridge connecting his shopping center with the train and trolley museums acts as a conduit for tourists to visit the mall.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if as many as 25 percent of (museum) visitors patronize the Mall at Steamtown,” he said.
A large number of those visitors may be attracted chiefly by the food court and restaurants, but their presence has also been a selling point with many of the mall’s retailers, he added.
Mrs. Solfanelli also believes the increase in gas prices has been a boon for local tourism, making Lackawanna a more attractive destination for the millions of potential tourists who live within a day’s drive throughout the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic.
More than 65 percent of visitors surveyed were making their first trip here, the study found, and more than 60 percent visited more than one attraction while here. Being fairly compact, LHV makes it easy for tourists to see most attractions in a day or two.
Then again, distance isn’t everything.
“Even people from Wilkes-Barre, Shamokin, Tunkhannock, they’re tourists,” she said.
Contact the writer:
rdupuis@timesshamrock.com
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