The Visitor Doesn't See Boundaries. That's Actually Good News.
- Heidi Schlag
- 7 days ago
- 5 min read
There's a tension that runs through almost every heritage tourism conversation I have. Visitors experience places as connected ecosystems — a scenic drive, a canal town, a farmers market, a historic site — and they move through all of it without thinking twice about which organization manages what, or which side of the county line they're standing on. We, on the other hand, are organized around jurisdictions, budgets, and mandates that have nothing to do with the way visitors actually experience a place.
I named this second Heritage Tourism Conversation after that tension: "Visitors Don't See Boundaries: How Routes, Trails, and Byways Create Connected Visitor Experiences". And for the conversation itself, there was no one better to call than Wanda Maloney.
Wanda is the founder of Corridor Solutions, based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She has spent her career studying how visitors travel scenic byways and heritage corridors, what they need from the organizations along the route, and how those organizations can work together more effectively.
What sets her apart is a genuine commitment to the data. In a field where evidence is hard to come by, she's the person in the room who knows the US Forest Service scenic driving participation figures from the 1980s, can cite the difference between RV ownership rates and RV lodging preference rates in byway surveys, and has thought seriously about what motorcycle travelers need from a map that a car traveler doesn't. The field badly needs more of that kind of rigor.
Travelers follow their interests, not your organizational chart
One of the core ideas Wanda returned to throughout our conversation is that travelers make choices based on their own developing interests and a search for authenticity. They're not thinking about which DMO covers which county, or whether a scenic byway is managed by a Department of Transportation or a grassroots coalition. They're asking: does this connect to something I care about? Is this real?
"Byways are built for cooperation," she said. "They connect communities and landscapes, and they're designed to make those connections and communicate the types of experiences available within the corridor." That structural fact about byways is worth contemplating. Unlike most of our other tourism structures, a byway is explicitly designed to cross boundaries and to require the organizations along it to work together.
That's the opportunity. And it's also the challenge that DMOs, in particular, often wrestle with.
I asked Wanda directly about one of the most common objections I hear: a DMO's budget comes from hotel-tax revenue within its jurisdiction, so why would it invest in promoting a route that might guide visitors into the next county?
Her response reframed the question entirely. "It may be that if there is a byway or a heritage corridor that connects similar experiences for them, that actually creates their decision to visit your community in the first place. Because otherwise there may not have been a large enough attraction or draw for them to plan that trip."
She also offered a practical framing that I also use with my own clients: position the byway as a day trip, with your community as home base. Visitors stay overnight, have dinner, have breakfast, and spend the day on the scenic route. Done right, it extends the stay rather than ending it.
Who's actually driving these routes and what they need from you
The scenic driving data Wanda shared is worth knowing, because I don't think most heritage organizations have any idea how large this audience actually is. Between the 1980s and 2000s, the US Forest Service was tracking scenic driving as an activity, and the participation rate was around 50% of the American population annually. More recent state-level data from Maine and Montana puts the number in roughly the same place. Half of Americans participate in scenic driving in a given year. It's a bigger audience than most of us are treating it like.
The demographic profile is also good news for heritage organizations: scenic drivers trend older, 55 and up, though younger generations are growing in the data. They're educated, middle to higher incomes, and their interests alongside scenic driving line up exactly with what heritage organizations offer: cultural attractions, small-town exploration, dining, and outdoor recreation. These are our people. If you work in a museum, a heritage area, a Main Street, or a park anywhere near a scenic byway, you have a ready audience you may not be marketing to at all.
One data point from Wanda that surprised me: about 7% of Americans own an RV, but in surveys of byway travelers, as many as 20% report preferring RV or campground lodging. RV travelers are overrepresented on scenic routes relative to their share of the general population. That has real implications for how you design your visitor information — not just what you publish online, but whether you've told RV travelers if the route is even navigable in their vehicle, and whether the campground hosts in your corridor have your brochures.
One-third of scenic drivers never planned to stop
This is the number I keep coming back to, because I think it changes how you have to think about your visitor information strategy.
"About one-third of them do not plan in advance," Wanda told our audience. "They see a sign, or they'll pick up a brochure at a hotel or a visitor center, and make the decision at that point to drive the route." They arrive without downloaded maps, without pre-researched stops, without any prior awareness of what you have to offer. Your website didn't reach them. Your email list didn't reach them. The entire digital strategy you've spent years building didn't reach them.
What reaches them is a roadside sign, a well-placed kiosk, a brochure rack in the lobby of the motel three miles back, or a campground host who knows what's worth doing in the area and is happy to say so. And for small towns and Main Streets specifically: a business that looks visibly open. Wanda made a point I'd never heard stated quite this plainly — in a small community with little foot traffic, even a business that is open during its posted hours can look closed to a passing traveler who sees no cars out front. Flags, A-frame boards, sandwich signs signal that you're open and that you're worth stopping for.
The broader principle underneath all of this is what Wanda calls building traveler confidence. "The more information you have available to them along the way, the more confident they become about where they are and what comes next. So they're less distracted by wondering where the next restroom is or whether they're going to run out of gas. If they're not thinking about those things, they're enjoying the experience instead." I've thought about this in terms of reducing friction, but "building confidence" is a better frame. Confident travelers linger, extend their stays, and recommend you to their friends.
This is also exactly what makes detailed web content so valuable right now. A speaker I heard just a day before recording with Wanda made the point that AI search surfaces specificity — the mileage between towns, the hours of the park, the location of the nearest restroom. Generic destination content is everywhere; AI doesn't need your site to produce it. What it does reach for is the specific, locally irreplaceable detail. The same information that builds confidence for the in-person visitor also makes you findable by the one who's planning ahead.
Wanda and I also got into cross-sector collaboration (her best advice: don't tell organizations why they should support your byway, ask them what they want), residents as an underappreciated audience segment, the economic impact of byway travel, and why scenic driving is technically classified as outdoor recreation but almost never shows up in state outdoor recreation plans. There's a lot worth unpacking in this one.
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