The city of Charleston believes it can capitalize on a major influx of our-of-state tourists during the month of July. The 2013 Boy Scout Jamboree is slated for the middle of July in Fayette County, but the director of the Charleston Convention and Visitors Bureau wants to go after the parents and siblings of those scouts while they are attending the event.
“Many of the folks will have their scouts at the Jamboree and they’ll go down and visit and take their other children to be inspired,” said Bailey. “But then we want them in Charleston where so much is going on.”
To start their quest for the scouting families, the Charlston CVB this week released a video aimed squarely at those people. It will be posted to a number of Boy Scout related websites as an advertisement to bring them here.
It’s estimated 40,000 will attend the week long Jamboree. Bailey says a large number of those will stay in Charleston and many will be flying into Yeager Airport.
“We expect a lot of them to fly in and take motor coaches,” she said. “Our goal is to get them to stay here Charleston. We think we have a great opportunity to do that. Once they stay here, we got ’em because they’re going to enjoy it so much they’ll want to come back year after year.”
The city is planning a number of special events just for the Boy Scout event. Baseball at Appalachian Power Park, movie nights at the University of Charleston, events at the Clay Center, and the State Culture and History museum plans to do a showing of October Sky and have hobbyists on hand shooting off model rockets.
The city hotels are also teaming to provide special rates for the week and the University of Charelston is offering accomodations as well. Banners welcoming the scouts into Charleston will hang at the airport and in town and four information booths will be established to help scouting families learn all of the attractions in the city.