Annual Rural Roundup focuses on foreign tourists

Carson Valley, near the small town of Minden in northern Nevada, was the venue for the 2015 Rural Roundup this month.

The annual three-day event provides tourism officials an opportunity to foster networking relationships and engage in educational opportunities in an effort to boost Nevada’s rural tourism.

Pahrump’s Director of Tourism, Arlette Ledbetter, said a delegation from Pahrump’s tourism committee made the trip last week, which she deemed a “great success.”

“The Rural Roundup was phenomenal,” she said. “I was there with some of our tourism advisory committee members and it was a great opportunity to meet with members of the Commission on Tourism at their offices, as well as meeting with the people from Nevada Magazine. We also had a separate meeting with the state public relations director.”

Attendees began the Rural Roundup last Wednesday by exploring the historic town of Genoa, where roughly 250 residents call home.

Tourism officials attended several presentations throughout the week geared towards travel trends and using Nevada history as a “hook,” for potential visitors.

Ledbetter said one particular presentation drew much interest from attendees regarding rural Nevada and the Australian traveler.

She noted that on average, an individual or family from Australia typically visits Nevada for a period of 3-to-5 weeks.

“When they come over, they usually head toward the western United States, which is a really popular destination for the Australian traveler,” she said. “We also know that the German traveler visits Nevada for extended periods of time too. A lot of people from overseas countries take much more vacation time than we do and I think we could learn from that.”

Ledbetter said Nevada tourism officials are also focused on luring more travelers from Europe.

“We partner with our state officials on drawing tourists from Europe and a lot of our material goes out through the state in their marketing effort,” she said. “We do what is called familiarization tours where the state will organize tour operators from a specific area. They will bring anywhere from 6-to-20 people who are tour operators and/or journalists. They will tour our community and we get business from that.”

Early next month, Ledbetter said a European delegation will visit Pahrump and tour the community.

She said the hope is the delegation will return home and tell others about their experience in the “Heart of the New Old West.”

“On May 5th we will be at the Pahrump Nugget for hotel rooms and we will be visiting Jack Sanders’ winery for wine tasting at 5:30 p.m.,” she said. “We also plan on having dinner at the winery at 6:45.”