Vice receives tourism award
By Arthur McLean Editor

Linda Vice

Thomasville resident Linda Vice was honored as Tourism Employee of the Year Tuesday by the Alabama Bureau of Tourism and Travel in the 2007 Alabama Tourism Awards.

Only 12 awards were giving this year in a statewide program honoring excellence at the state's $8.3 billion tourism industry.

"I was quite surprised," Vice said. "Because historically, the state hasn't paid much attention to rural tourism."

But it's clear from talking to Vice, that she believes in rural tourism.

Vice has been working with the Alabama-Tombigbee Regional Commission, Ala- Tom RC&D and the Center for Economic Development at the University of Alabama to pull together and promote tourism in southwest Alabama.

"We were looking for a way to do community development, and tourism is a natural avenue, because southwest Alabama is a treasure trove, from the original state capitol, we have To Kill a Mockingbird, we have Kathryn Tucker Windham, Indian tribes, geology, paleontology and more all here."

But it wasn't always so obvious. "First we had to identify our resources and then convince people we had them! So I did a lot of public speaking, and people would come up to me and tell me about things that I didn't know."

Vice said the natural avenue for tourism in southwest Alabama is cultural and heritage tourism. Vice and the organizations she works with have been working over the past several years piecing together historic trails, black history trails, arts and cultural trails and now they are working on a birding trail.'

"The key to tourism is packaging all this," she said of the four-year process.

Along the way there's been pleasant surprises. "When we opened Blackbelt Treasures, I thought we'd need to go outside the region to find enough artists, I'm glad to say I was wrong about that."

Vice said that while the Interstates bypassed southwest Alabama to its detriment in the past, it might now be a mixed blessing. "That kind of isolated this area, and the culture hasn't changed much, that makes it a unique place in the world that attracts people."

Vice sees tourism being a part of community and economic development together. "That may well be the greatest contribution of rural tourism," Vice said. "Getting people in communities to better their communities and linking together with other communities for a better region."

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