Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 25, 1990 TAG: 9006250080
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A3 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER SOUTHWEST BUREAU
DATELINE: WYTHEVILLE LENGTH: Medium
So they found a way to provide a spot for $300 a year.
They call their concept Hot Spots of America Inc., and the first one is scheduled to open July 14 in the Columbus (Ohio) City Center mall. Another will open Aug. 9 at the new Bellevue Center in Nashville, Tenn.
"This is probably unrealistic, but our goal is to have 100 stores by this time next year," said Robert Heafner, vice president. "Our goal is to do it the best, do it first, make it cheap."
Unlike most mall vendors, he said, Hot Spots doesn't sell products - it gives them away. The products are brochures from places catering to vacationers and other visitors, displayed so the full covers are visible in regional and state groupings for easy access to the thousands of people passing through the malls each day.
"In the last 22 months, we've processed requests for over 3 million brochures," Heafner said.
His criticism of the tourism industry is that it depends on getting the word out about its visitor attractions, "and yet we make people jump through hoops to find out about us."
This way, he said, the service and materials are provided to the customer without processing or mailing costs, and before the vacation starts rather than in hopes of catching someone already on the road.
Each store will be about 600 square feet and include three overhead monitors where videos will run continuously. Wall-mounted glass display cases will show crafts or artifacts from specific areas. The annual $300 fee to tourism advertisers allows them to provide videos and display items on a rotating basis, and even send representatives to the store for three days to promote their particular area.
"They get a lot," said Phil Tobleman, the group's president, who came to Wythe County a few years ago to help get the Factory Merchants Mall at Fort Chiswell started.
Tobleman described the Hot Spots as similar to retail stores, "not just a bunch of brochures sitting there and gathering dust." Hot Spots will advertise to draw people in with offers of drawings for free vacations and other promotions.
A full-time employee will staff each store - not to recommend one place over another but to help people find what they want, said Fred Ziegler, a Wytheville radiologist and secretary-treasurer of the group.
"We're not a young society anymore. The baby boomers are middle-aged. They want to grow old young. They want to do more things," he said.
The three have been working together so intensely on the venture that, when they talk about it, one will find himself completing sentences for another. "It's the only firm in America that has addressed itself to national tourism marketing . . ." Heafner began, ". . . that is affordable to everybody," Tobleman added.
"The whole concept is just that it opens up an avenue for the small and medium-size businesses that have never been able to participate in something like this before," Heafner said. "But they are all on an equal footing, so to speak . . . whether they're a mountain bed-and-breakfast or a foreign country."
Phil Tobleman, who came to Wythe County as a Factory Merchants Mall representative during the construction and opening of its mall at Fort Chiswell, is president of Hot Spots.
Heafner has been involved in tourism for years, as publisher of the Mountain Laurel since 1983 - a job he has turned over to his staff since joining Hot Spots - and as one of the leaders in Southwest Virginia's Blue Ridge Highlands, a regional tourism group for Southwest Virginia that grew out of the Lacy Commission. His organization will still supply support services for that, such as a computerized data base for marketing the region.
It was Heafner who thought up ways to use computers and toll-free numbers to provide information on Southwest Virginia to people with inquiries. In retrospect, the Hot Spots seem only the next logical step in such marketing.
"They always say I came up with the idea, but I came up with a seed. . . . We've all taken turns watering it. It's evolved into what it is now," Heafner said.
"I envision this company being the McDonald's of tourism. This is the way to reach mass markets with minimum dollars," he said. "It's the only time there's ever been an outlet like this . . . where the little guy could reach a major metro market with so few dollars. The potential is awesome."
The U.S. Data Center has projected tourism as becoming the largest industry in the country by the year 2000, Heafner said. "It's becoming more and more a factor in international trade. . . . I honestly believe that our company could play a role in that."
by CNB