Kansas’ Your life ends here.

Kansas’ Like a whole nother planet.

Kansas’ the pulse of a dead skunk.

Kansas has the injun statue in Wichita (Plains Keeper or whatever it is called) and they also got that big ball of string in Cawker City which is the states biggest tourist attraction. I have heard that up to a half million people go to see that big ball of string every year! In fact the new Cawker City International Airport will be one of the biggest in the USA when they add the 3 additional runways to handle all the traffic!

Kansas … billboards as far as you can see!

Those pheasant hunters are tourists.

So are the geneoligists who who up to find great-great-grandad’s grave.

That’s kinda of the point of our approach to Kansas “tourism.”

Nobody in their right mind would make Kansas a tourist destination, but there are all sorts of distractions that might pull people off I-70 for an hour or two.

Minivan owners would probably pay big bucks to drive a couple of laps around Kansas Speedway. Just how fast is your SUV? Show up at Heartland Park and get a sense of perspective.

Anyone who’s driven across Kansas knows how boring it is… unless you know, you’re transportint cocaine. Then it gets interesting.

But a lot of people who pass through Kansas might give up an hour or two to see where Custer lived or Eisenhower grew up, or to get a great fried chicke dinner or to see the stuff eccentric people left for the rest of us to see.

As much as we hate to admit it, we Kansans are an odd bunch.

Perhaps Kansas should be promoted as the world’s largest theme park, albeit kinda sparse betwwn the attractions.

Never solved anything, and certainly will not pay for itself by bringing millions of tourists into the state.

I believe the state has take the reasonable approach, by not sinking more money in what someone, somewhere, has viewed as,”A Problem”.

There is no problem.

Why and to whom do you want to promote Kansas to? That should be the first question:

Bring in more businesses? Economic Growth – then address the high taxes placed on new and existing business operations in Kansas.

Bring in or retain our young people? Provide the businesses where they can make high paying salaries. At our state when funding higher education institutions, direct the counselors to promote Kansas jobs and provide students an incentive to stay in Kansas. Tie student loans to a promise to stay.

Tourists? Forget it. Kansas is Dorthy land forever.

Don’t waste precious money to promote what is NOT here. Try to figure out what we NEED here, that will bring the people.

THe answer will not be a state funded program.

It was reported a while back that some Kansas ranchers were making money letting tourists set the annual grass fires.

So, take the old Wichita buildings schedule for demolition to accommodate the arena. Charge tourists $200 to torch them. Then charge other tourists $500 to put the fires out.

Some of them might have to go to the burn center: that’s where Wichita can make some BIG bucks. Plus their families will have to stay in local hotels and eat in local restaurants while the treatments are ongoing. Ca-ching!

Some farmers could feed deer out in front of the farmhouse. Wichita could make genyouwine world record fiberglass replica Boone and Crockett white-tailed-deer antler sets. Then the farmers would catch does and superglue the antlers on. Tourists could take a short diversion off the Interstate, make a quick trophy kill in the farmers’ front yard. The butchered and packed venison and trophy “buck” heads mounted on real nice locally carved and stained cottonwood wall plaques would be shipped to the tourists when they got home. That should be worth at least a grand a head.

We could charge adventure tourists to base jump into Greensberg’s world’s deepest hand-dug well. The only indoor base jumping on the planet. If this doesn’t bring hoards of Japanese tourists to take pictures (at $50 a pop), I’ll eat my corn-stalk hat.

Oops, this guy’s chute didn’t deploy in time. Okay, send him to the trauma center. Ca-ching.

Outside Abilene, the Eisenhower Museum could stage Battle of the Bulge reenactments. Fifty bucks to watch, $500 to drive a Sherman or Panzer. $250 to shoot a howitzer. With this kind of action, somebody’s going to have to go to the hospital, I GUAIRONTEE it.

At Jabarra Airport operators could give tourists 2-hour flight lessons, like they do for scuba in Cozumel and the Virgin Islands. Have genyouwine Clyde Cessna 1911 aeroplanes. Install remote controls operated by Wichita’s ace RC flyers (who’ve been left with nothing to do since Raytheon sold the model airpark to the Waterfront developers) to take over when the tourists get in trouble. And did I mention the trauma service revenue potential?

Keeper of the Plains climbs: Mocassin Base Camp II. South Face. The Nose Route. The Feather Bonnet Free-Hang.

Arkansas river water chugging contests. $100 to enter. $200 prizes to anybody who drinks at least a gallon in less than a minute and doesn’t either puke or get dysentery.

Take people blindfolded deep into the Hutch salt mines. Turn off the lights. Entry fee $50. $100 prize for getting out within 15 minutes.

Playing with the Wichita Wingnuts for 50 bucks an inning. Complementary “I Played Semi-Pro Baseball” T-shirts. Tomato-hawking vendors working the stands.

“The Only Sod-Dugout Motel in the World! ” with miles of big billboards like Missouri has on I-70 for its casino resorts.

“The Best Little Whorehouse in Kansas” reproduced to exact 1872 specifications, in Cowtown.

Tornado hunting tours, where the driver gets to a half-mile in front of the funnel, tells out-of-state tourists to get out, and takes off.

There’s so much off the charts tourism potential here it’s ridiculous. People just need to visioneer it.

Posted by: An American for Trade | November 12, 2007 at 09:06 AM

Yes, the salt flats in and round Salt Lake City. From the air, it looks like a place one definitely would not want to be.

I do like Kansas, and I do think there are many beautiful things to see and do here. However, if I were living in another state, and trying to decide where to vacation, I do not think Kansas would be anywhere near the top of the list.

I think it is important that money be spent on marketing, advertising, etc., but we do not need to spend vast sums.

For the State, as with the City of Wichita, I would advise money be targeted at infrastructure improvements for the residents, rather than trying to attract people that would not otherwise visit. Having a nice, clean modern city will bring more net money than spending on advertising and trying to attract tourists.

Seems like that caught on better than any of the old or new slogans. I wonder why?

I rest my case. It was sold!

Here was, basically, our approach:

Kansas has no Orlando or mountains or sea shore or anything that’s gonna make it a destination. But there are a lot of things the might attract people to spend an hour or two off the Interstates and spend a little time and a little more money for food, lodging, gasoline…

We proposed a series of advertiser-financed (not taxpayer funded) magazines to be available at the borders and turnpike stops, each targeted to specific interests that might attract out-of-state visitors to spend an extra day in Kansas.

For example, we’d (ghost-write) articles by former Kansas residents who’ve achieved a certain amount of celebrity status.

One idea was: “Kirsty Alley’s Favorite Leg,” a summary of all the great fried chicken places in Kansas… from Chicken Annie’s to the Brookville Hotel…etc.

Another idea was Colin Powell writing about Kansas’ military importance… with features on Ft. Leavenworth (where he attended military college), Ft. Riley (where George Armstron Custer’s home is a museum), Ft. Scott, the Eisenhower museum, etc.

Another angle was the Wild West. Features would include Old Abilene, Wichita’s Cow Town, Dodge City’s Front Street, the authentic Flint Hills cattle drives, working ranches, and chuck wagon excursions… (I’ve forgotten who the celebrity “author” would be, but we found someone at the time who’d been associated with Hollywood westerns.

I do remember we had a deal in place (had our pitch been accepted) to have Dodge City-born Dennis Hopper write about Kansas Excentrics… places like “The Garden of Eden,” the lady with the $1 lunch in Yates Center, yeah, even the ball of twine (this was before the Meade Hotel, but they’d probably qualify.)

The whole idea was to get people off the Interstates and explore for a day or an afternoon some aspects of Kansas they might otherwise drive past.

The whole idea was recognizing Kansas isn’t a tourist *destination,* but a pretty interesting place to pass through and worthy of a few extra hours.

I think we lost that pitch to the folks who came up with the slogan after “The Land of Ahs.” Anyone remember what that was.

So, “As big as you think” means what, exactly, to people whose only goal in life is to get from Denver to Kansas City? I dunno.

Today, if I were publishing a, say, quarterly edition of Kansas stuff, I’d make my fall edition about the Smith Center football team. No, it wouldn’t attract DisneyWorld numbers, but there’d be some people who might veer off the Interstate for a night to experience a small-town phenomenon.

The Winfield bluegrass festival and the Humboldt Biblesta and the Wilson Czechh Festival are odd little moments in Kansas lives that are genuinely Kansas and might attact a tourist or two for an hour or an afternoon or a day.

“The Messiah” at Lindsborg, the Strong City Rodeo, Big Brutus in Southeast Kansas…

There’s not a one thing that can increase Kansas tourism 100%, but there are at least a hundred things that might increase Kansas tourism 1%.

Do the math.

I admit I am not well traveled. The travels I have made? I wasn’t going to see things privately funded or maintained. My interest and dollars went to public spaces like National parks. If I want to see someone counting pennies I can stay right here in doodah.

wheeee.

Course, it doesn’t help when our own governor disses our state and its products.