Washington County tourism rebounding

Washington County Supervisors met with members of the tourism board last week for the group’s annual report, with members saying the industry was rebounding in the area.

“We just recently got notification that the road trips within Iowa have actually reached a level higher than what they were at 2019, pre-pandemic,” Washington Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Michelle Redlinger said. “We’ve also received information that hotel/motel tax revenue statewide has also reached their pre-pandemic 2019 levels.”

Redlinger said that uptick in road trips could benefit the county.

“What we’re seeing as a big opportunity for Washington County is people are driving somewhere within a day or so of travel, doing a short staycation somewhere nearby, and we think that that’s a really nice opportunity for our communities,” she said. “We work a lot with visitors to the community … we do have a fair amount of people that are just driving through. We really have to put ourselves in a different mindset than what a tourism professional might be thinking about if they are part of Disney World or something a little bit more familiar.”

While the rebound is encouraging, Kalona Historical Museum Managing Director Nancy Roth said local tourism was not yet out of the woods.

“COVID completely wiped that out, last year I could count probably on one hand how many buses we had come through our community,” she said. “This year I’ve got a handful scheduled for April and a handful for May, but I don’t really have much for the rest of the season … we need to figure that out.”

The group requested resources from the county government to raise awareness of local communities across the state.

“We’ve got great food, we’ve got wineries, you look at the whole perspective of what’s out there,” Roth said. “It’s just a matter of pulling it all together in a promotional way to let people be aware of what we actually have … we need a bigger perspective and different ideas on how we can reach out further.”

Roth said those efforts to keep the communities on the map would keep them competitive with other attractions in the state.

“It’s really hard to stay up to speed with it for a small town like Kalona, like Washington, we are kind of the little fish in this state,” she said. “We do have a super county, we have great towns, we have great local support in all directions.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com