EDITOR'S NOTE

Is Your Business Ready or Not: The tourists are coming

To rewrite a bit from the movie "Field of Dreams," the saying could be "If you build it, they will come." Here on the Seacoast we’re in the enviable position of having already built much of it, or it was supplied by Mother Nature. So the tourists, they will come to our beaches, our towns and our attractions.

And while here they will spend money in our businesses.

In 2004, for instance, statewide they spent an estimated $916 million in restaurants, $501 million in hotels, $849 million in retail stores and $698 million in recreation. The total spending was almost $4 billion. The Seacoast’s share of all that was $693 million. There also were almost 80,000 jobs in the state that were related to the tourist trade. But that money and those jobs are not a slam dunk.

The Seacoast is competing with the rest of the state and all of New England for tourism dollars. We have Boston and its suburbs to the south, Portland and the Maine coast to the north and the mountains and Lakes Region to the west.

As was pointed out at the Greater Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce summit on tourism in April, the Seacoast needs to be smart about the way it markets itself, think about ways to collaborate, think strategically and plan for the baby boomers who are reaching retirement.

In this issue we take a look at some of the statistics involving tourism. We also include an in-depth report on the state of museums in the region that cater to history. They are all facing declining attendance and are trying to determine what they need to do to turn those numbers around.

Two of our beach towns, Hampton and York, have groups that are trying revitalize the seaside resorts into something akin to their former glory at the turn of the last century.

In our Entrepreneur Watch this month, Peter Hamelin, answers questions about going from president of the Greater Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce to co-owner of the Stone Church in Newmarket.

And The Last Word takes a look at the hospitality management program at the University of New Hampshire, which considers itself "the Porsche of hotel programs." And, according to our writer, it serves a seven-course dinner that’s not too shabby.

Now into our second edition at Seacoast Ventures, we still want to hear from you, our readers.

Please drop me an e-mail or phone call, letting us know what you like, what you don’t or what you would like to see included in the publication.

A recent addition to our Web site will let you take advantage of our Online Tool section. We've included several online financial calculators to help you determine just about everything from "Storm Damage: Can I deduct my property damage?" to "Start-Up Costs: How much will it cost to start my business?" For a complete listing of our online calculators, go to www.seacoastventures.net/tools/ to see what might be helpful to your business.

Reach CAL KILLEEN via e-mail or 610-1193.