3rd Quarterly Report. 2021. Appalachia Sustainable Tourism Collaboration, LLC

ASTC 3rd Quarter Report. 2021

Even though ASTC is an LLC, we are not in competition with others. Our legal structure does not require us to be transparent with stakeholders, but our value innovation prevents us from hiding information from others. ASTC becomes stronger when stakeholders better understand the atmospherics, and economic development potential of tourism, particularly nature based tourism in our 5 state service areas.

Our primary objective for 2021 is to network and develop our brand while making our 3 websites more robust,

ASTC Home. Appalachiastc.com

Touring Events & Activities. astctour.com

Stakeholders astcstakeholder.com

Press Release

None.

Overview

The first major focus for this quarter was overhauling the stakeholder site.

We are glad to finally create a format that will grow and help others over time.

Another major focus was to look for revenue streams to support this social enterprise. After reaching out to numerous stakeholders and getting only a response from one (The city of Norton), we decided to make some radical changes to the social enterprise.

We believe we are so far out in front with our solutions to market failures that it would take years for other stakeholders to catch up. Please see this blog.

On September 6th, the 3 sites finally hit a point where the foundation is stable. The idea is to passively let the social enterprise diffuse into the region and focus on core areas such as,

Policy Formation

Outfitters

Travel Specialists or Travel Agents

Tourism Consulting

Just as in the 1st and 2nd quarter, we have learned much about our 5 state service area.

Current Events

Kentucky Wildlands to promote southern and eastern Kentucky as tourist destinations

Looking ahead, Nazario explained that the next phase of The Kentucky Wildlands initiative will be designating the region as Kentucky’s first and only National Heritage Area. At the direction of Congress, the National Park Service is determining if the region’s natural, cultural and historic resources combine to form a cohesive, nationally important landscape. If the National Heritage Area status is achieved, then the region will receive technical assistance and federal funding through the National Park Service.

St. Paul Virginia to host the annual ARC meeting in October.

“St. Paul leveraged the town’s proximity to beautiful mountains and the Clinch River, one of the most biodiverse rivers in the Northern Hemisphere, to create new opportunities for outdoor recreation.”

New reports make case that natural gas production boom was a bust for Appalachia, urge economic transition

“We know that the Appalachian natural gas boom hasn’t just failed to deliver growth and jobs and prosperity so far. We now know that it’s structurally incapable of doing so,” Ohio River Valley Institute senior researcher Sean O’Leary contended during a webinar on the reports Tuesday. “[That] means that a lot of economic development strategies in the region need to be rethought.”

W.Va. parks to spend $42 million on infrastructure improvements

There will be new connecter tails that will link the Hatfield-McCoy Trails at Chief Logan and Twin Falls Resort State Parks with lodging. More than 350 cabins will also be remodeled.

One_base data had a interesting find

“One bright spot to highlight: Entertainment and hospitality businesses are now employing more people than before COVID-19.”

Rock climbing booming in Kentucky as sport debuts in Olympics

“People don't really know there's a climbing mecca tucked away in eastern Kentucky,” said Billy Simek with the Red River Gorge Climbers’ Coalition.

Develop trails, ‘develop the entire region’: Counties join forces to help clear the way for adventure tourism

“Develop the entire region. You know, we can’t look at county lines anymore. We’ve kind of got to go past that,” said Slone.

The Remote Johnson City program offers up to $5,000 to move to Washington County. The cash value of the incentive depends on an applicant’s income level.

Earthlink bringing 285 jobs to Southwest Virginia

Internet provider Earthlink plans to bring 285 jobs to Southwest Virginia when it opens a $5.4 million “customer support center” in a Norton business park.

Lewisburg, WV is now taking applications for their ascend program. Results were great from the town way up north (Morgantown).

The class of 53 includes people from 21 states and the District of Columbia, one as far away as Berlin, Germany with the most new residents coming from California. The average wage of the class is $105,000 annually.

New EarthLink facility will bring 285 jobs to Norton

The company is returning its customer service operations to the United States and will build a 30,000-square-foot facility at the 200-acre Project Intersection development at the junction of U.S. 23 and U.S. Highway 58.

We will continue to push the agenda that we are on the verge of a huge change in our Coal Country service areas. Smith sees West Virginia 'on the cusp of greatness' with entrepreneurship.

Zoom Meetings

They are the second Tuesday of each month.

The 1st zoom meeting was on July 13th. No one was present.

The 2nd zoom meeting was on Aug 10th. No one was present.

The 3rd zoom meeting was cx for Sep 13th.

Zoom will be cx for the next 2-5 years; however, if you want to schedule a meeting to talk or zoom, let us know.

ASTC Community Service

ASTC President bikes/hiked the Russell Fork Trail and reported back all of the issues that the trail has. This was reported to various stakeholders. See our flickr Outings Collection for details.

New Sponsors

No Sponsors were created. No interest was shown.

ASTC Hall of Fame

This is cx for the next 2-5 years. However, if you would like to promote a steward let us know and we will help.

Financial Supports

No financial support was given.

New ASTC Contributors

None.

New ASTC Interns

Internship Program. No Interns. No interest shown.

This is cx for the next 2-5 years.

New ASTC Volunteers

Volunteer Program. No Volunteers. No interest shown.

This is cx for the next 2-5 years.

Community Stewards

None recommended to us.

Community Volunteers

None recommended to us.

ASTC’s 5 Goals for 2021

Logo Submissions:

No submissions. Click here for more details

Help Facilitate a Regional Trail Crew/s:

Back in the 2nd quarter we created a blog on Becoming a Trail Coordinator. There are similarities to this job/career and our 2021 Goal of a Trail Crew/s to help fill the void between small rural towns and the massive acreage on public domain land.

There will be hundreds of miles of trails built that need to be looked after by future Trail Coordinators and Crew Leaders, and communities. KY has just now begun creating their own legal ATV and SxS trails in earnest.

Adopt an Organization:

No interest was shown here. We did make one update to the basic plan. An organization's Logo will be on each state trip planning page that applies. We also have it set up on the Stakeholder site for a Logo and a Twitter feed on our 4 landing pages.

Entrepreneur Incubator:

We did not have anyone reach out to us for a free consultation. We did add many twitter accounts to the List, and added a few links to the Information and Calendar page.

We are now on the Business Link website under Resources!

Tourism and Social Media

Flickr

We added this to the footer of the hand held device (phone) format, and began to follow other organizations more frequently.

Linkedin

Although we had created this account in early 2021, the president started to connect with some accounts and improved the ASTC page.

YouTube

We picked up no new Subscribers to our channel. We are currently at 9.

Twitter

We actually have 2 Twitter accounts. One has a list of accounts for the 65 topics on our Tourism Site, plus a few others to help with trip planning. In time that will be how we communicate with tourists who need help on the fly.

The main twitter account is how we communicate to the world.

We hit the 400 follower mark September 5th.

Followers: We ended the quarter with about 415 followers.

ASTC Blogs

Major Change in ASTC's program over the next 2-5 years. Beginning in mid Sept. 2021

Entrepreneur Incubator Blogs

Bridging the gap between Travel Agents and Tourists in Coal Country.

Community College is Helping to Improve Outdoor Tourism Services in Coal Country

Rangers to help bridge the gap between Rural Towns and Federal Public Domain Lands

ASTC Forums

We did not have any activity in our forums. We picked up zero online members

ASTC Groups

No Groups were requested to be started.

Tourism Site

We created a Wedding Page under the Culture category. We created a Go-Kart page, and a Transporter page. We created a Indian Country page. We only have The Eastern Cherokee Tribe on this page because we do not want it to seem like Indian Heritage is past tense, because they are are present.

We worked on adding more Guides to help Connect Tourists to the region, and improve the navigation and ease of use by adding categories of activities.

We never had anyone ask us to put anything on our 60+ Calendars.

Twitter feeds were added to each Category page (what shows up on the menu bar). If someone Adopts an Organization their twitter feed and logo would go there.

Stakeholder Site

This site was completely overhauled. A brand new house, with different rooms. We gave ourselves more work, but in 2 years it will be fine. We got rid of the old categories and created 4 new categories that correspond with the name of the LLC. We then looked at our Twitter Lists and decided to make pages that corresponded to them, for example, Environmental Sustainability.

We streamlined many of the pages. For example we created an Events page that will take you to all of the separate calendars.

One thing we did was created pages for people to relocate to the area, such as the Public School and relocate page.

A neat feature is how we have a general consulting page, and a specific consulting page for Tourism.

The Higher Education, 4 year degree page was heavily worked upon for our region. We even got to do the Community College page a good work over.

Environment

Not having a brick and mortar office, the carbon footprint of ASTC is extremely low.

We did not volunteer for any improvements to the environment.

Economy

ASTC should be considered a Chamber of Commerce for 112 counties. We find organizations and put their links on over 60 pages on our Tourism site. We also help entrepreneurs by offering free consultations.

We added Outdoor Marketing Pros, to our Stakeholder site. This is important because we are networking and building a system to help with tourism advertising and marketing.

We promoted the brand new West Virginia Business Link with various tweets.

We made three Entrepreneur Blogs.

Community College is Helping to Improve Outdoor Tourism Services in Coal Country

Bridging the gap between Travel Agents and Tourists in Coal Country.

Rangers to help bridge the gap between Rural Towns and Federal Public Domain Lands

Society

The work that was put in the stakeholder site (overall) was substantial. We also created many links to organizations that help with improving communities.

Final Thoughts

We are happy with the 3rd Quarter. We now have a 2-5 year strategic plan! Instead of creating service revenue, the President will take temporary jobs inside the general 112 country area to improve skills, learn more about the region, and network while funding the LLC. The first job is with the Southern Appalachian Wilderness Stewards. He will be on a Trail Crew on the Bald River Gorge Wilderness from Sept 7th- Nov 24th. Stay tuned for some blogs and pics before the New Year.

If you need clarification or more information on a subject, please contact ASTC and we will try to help you.

Travis Stanley

President

Appalachia Sustainable Tourism Collaboration, LLC

Where Tourists Become Stakeholders.