Chamber gets $18,526 matching grant to help attract more tourism to Wilkes

The Washington-Wilkes Chamber of Commerce has received matching grant for $18,526 to help attract more tourist dollars to Wilkes County businesses.

The matching grant funds may be spent for marketing purposes only, Tourism Director Ashley Turner said, and the funds are already allocated.

"We will be doing a huge mar- keting and advertising campaign in Atlanta with billboards and new television commercials, two Southern Living magazine ads, and new marketing initiatives in online media," she said.

The Co-Op Marketing Reimbursement Grant from the Georgia Tourism Foundation is part of $1 million granted to some 70 tourism programs across the state. An industry panel of judges reviewed 115 applications from all over the state, and selected the Barnett's marketing proposal as having merit.

"I'm just thrilled to have this matching grant," she said. "We can go above and beyond with our marketing and advertising strategies!"

Using an Economic Impact Module designed by Dr. Bruce Seaman of Georgia State University, tourism industry experts and local tourism directors will be able to calculate the economic impact of their selected programs.

"It's proven that a really sharp marketing program will bring dollars and jobs in Georgia's secondlargest industry, which is tourism," she said. "This grant will give us not only advertising money, it'll give us tools to measure how much impact tourism has here, and I believe we'll be surprised when we see how much it is."

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