The Visitor Doesn't See Boundaries. That's Actually Good News.
Updated: Oct 20
Heritage Tourism Conversations, Episode 2 · Recorded live on Zoom July 16, 2026
Wanda Maloney of Corridor Solutions joined Heidi Schlag to talk about a challenge every heritage tourism organization runs into: visitors experience a region as one connected trip, while parks, DMOs, and byways are all organized around jurisdictional lines. Drawing on scenic byway research, Wanda explains who scenic drivers are, what information they rely on, why RV travelers and motorcyclists need something different, and how a byway can bring visitors to a community and extend their stay rather than pull them away.
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About the Guest
Wanda Maloney is the principal of Corridor Solutions, based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she works with scenic byways and heritage corridors on planning, research, and visitor experience. She brings a deep understanding of how state departments of transportation, communities, and tourism organizations share responsibility for a byway.
What We Talked About
Byways are built for cooperation. Unlike most tourism structures, byways are designed to connect communities and landscapes, and they're grassroots-driven: communities bring a corridor to their state DOT for designation, and a local stakeholder group manages it. Because corridor management plans require stakeholder engagement, there's a built-in seat for tourism. If you're not involved yet, contact your state byway program or tourism office to find the managing group.
About half of Americans go scenic driving. Research from the U.S. Forest Service and more recent surveys in Maine and Montana put participation at roughly 50%. Scenic drivers trend 55 and older, though younger travelers are growing, and they tend to be educated with middle to higher incomes. Alongside driving, their top activities are cultural attractions, exploring small towns, and dining, so they're heritage travelers by another name.
One-third of scenic drivers don't plan ahead. Many decide to drive a route after seeing a roadside sign or picking up a brochure at their hotel. That makes on-route information as important as pre-trip websites: map panels at pull-offs, kiosks with QR codes, easy-to-find restrooms, and signals that local businesses are open, like flags and sandwich boards. The more confident travelers feel about where they are and what's next, the more they enjoy the trip and the longer they stay.
RV travelers are overrepresented on byways. About 7% of Americans own an RV, but byway surveys regularly show around 20% of travelers prefer RV and campground lodging. Route materials should address RV suitability, and campground hosts are an underused way to get information directly into travelers' hands. The KOA North American Camping Report and the RV Industry Association are good sources on this segment. Motorcyclists are understudied but popular on scenic routes, and they value weatherproof maps and secure parking.
Byways can extend stays rather than send visitors away. Heidi named the tension directly: hotel taxes fund DMOs, so why promote a route that leaves your jurisdiction? Wanda's answer is that a connected corridor is often the reason visitors come in the first place, and a DMO can position the byway as a day trip with its community as home base, which means dinner, a hotel night, and breakfast.
Residents are a visitor segment too. Locals show up consistently in byway survey data, including on the Natchez Trace Parkway, and they bring out-of-town guests and serve as informal tour guides. Keeping residents informed with current information pays off well beyond their own visits.
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Heritage Tourism Conversations happen monthly on Zoom, and each one brings together people working in museums, DMOs, scenic byways, heritage areas, Main Streets, and outdoor recreation to learn from each other. Join my email list to get the invitation for upcoming conversations, and see what's coming up next on the Heritage Tourism Conversations page.
Full Transcript
This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.
Heidi Schlag: All right. Well, thank you, everybody, for joining us today. Sorry, I'm trying to admit people and talk at the same time. We're thrilled to have you with us today. We hope you're surviving the hot weather if you're on the East Coast, at least. For those of you who have just come in the room, we'd love it if you could introduce yourself in the chat. Just let us know where you are and what you do and what you'd like to get out of this session.
I'm going to do a quick introduction. I've started this session — this is the second of four heritage tourism conversations I have scheduled through the summer. This really came out of an observation I made as I attended conferences over the spring and summer and worked with clients across the spectrum: DMOs, museums, byways, heritage areas, parks and outdoor rec. I'm hearing a lot of the same issues coming out of all of those sectors, whether it's how to tell good stories, how to develop relationships, how to find new audiences, how to collaborate with other similar organizations in your region. I felt like it would be beneficial for all of us practitioners, whichever of these sectors of heritage tourism we sit in, to just get in a room together and talk about ideas, talk about best practices, what's working, what's not working, so that we can learn from each other. That is why I put these together.
I started with four and I would love to continue it if the interest is there. After this session wraps up, I'll be sending out a quick survey. I'd love it if you could just take a couple of minutes and tell us what you thought. If there are other topics you'd like us to cover, or if you'd like to be a guest, let us know how you think we could continue this heritage tourism conversation.
We did a session at the end of June with Jake Winn. As soon as I have Wanda start talking, I'll put the URL for my YouTube channel in the chat — you can catch up on that first webinar there. Wanda's conversation will be up tomorrow, and all subsequent conversations will be there as well.
I want to introduce Wanda. I'm so thrilled to have her here today. She's a colleague of mine and a good friend. We have been traveling across the country spreading the good word about byways and heritage tourism. Wanda, would you mind quickly introducing yourself, where you're based, and a little bit about your work?
Wanda Maloney: Sure, and thank you, Heidi, for inviting me. I really appreciate you creating this forum — I think it's a great idea. My name is Wanda Maloney. My company is Corridor Solutions. I am based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I work with byways and corridors across the country, and some of the areas I focus on are the visitor experience and coordination planning. I've been fortunate to connect with Heidi over the past couple of years, and we have found a lot of areas where there's so much overlap in the work that we do. It's been really interesting to explore that, and I'm happy to have an opportunity to talk about it today.
Heidi Schlag: This talk was titled "Visitors Don't See Boundaries." As Wanda and I drive along the scenic byways — we were recently in Duluth and in North Carolina — we talk a lot about this concept. It's a challenge, because visitors are coming to destinations and they just want to have the experience. They want to find the fun places, the good food. Our tourism organizations aren't really set up for that. We're all very jurisdictionally based: you've got your park that has boundaries, or your DMO that has boundaries. This concept of helping visitors explore an area without them needing to be aware of the boundaries is something that comes up a lot. Wanda, could you talk a little bit about how you think about travel, especially with scenic byways and trails where visitors are having more of a linear experience crossing over multiple boundaries?
Wanda Maloney: The thing that's important to remember is that travelers are following their interests. They make choices and decisions about where they're going to go and what they want to see based on their own interests that they've developed over time. At the same time, they're looking for authenticity. What I think is unique, and the real value in byways and heritage corridors, is that they offer diverse experiences — experiences that may be spread geographically, but travelers are able to look at the information provided to them (which is our job, of course) and make decisions about what they want to do and how they want to explore, based on their own interests. The opportunity, then, is to work together. Byways are built for cooperation. They connect communities and landscapes, and they're designed to make those connections and communicate the types of experiences available within the corridor.
How we leverage those is through coordination. Ultimately, what we want to do is encourage people to stay longer and explore more throughout a region, versus maybe only being aware of a single resource that aligns with their expectations and interests.
Heidi Schlag: Another challenge is that besides all of these jurisdictions operating independently, byways tend to live in the Department of Transportation of a state or local government, which is not usually equipped to promote those routes for tourists. How, in your work, have you seen that dynamic play out, and what would you recommend to folks who might be sitting on this call, knowing that the DOT is controlling those routes and they might be looking for ways to tap into that?
Wanda Maloney: The programs, particularly byway programs, reside in the DOT for good reasons. In some states it's a shared responsibility between DOT and tourism, but mostly they're managed out of Departments of Transportation. They do have websites for the routes they manage, but promotion is just not their area of expertise. The byway program is structured so that it's designed for communities who are interested in designation, because byways are grassroots driven. DOTs do not go out and seek and identify corridors — communities bring corridors to them and say, "We're interested in this designation. We want to be a scenic byway." Then it becomes the responsibility of that grassroots group to go out and find stakeholders. And of course, the stakeholders you want to bring to the table are the tourism folks. So they become part of the managing entity.
Byways have what are called corridor management plans, and tourism should definitely be at the table when those management plans are being developed — the promotion part becomes integrated into the management of the byway overall. If you're not involved yet but you know there is a byway in the region, go out and discover who is managing it. If you're not sure, start at the state program level and ask them to connect you with contacts for the byway or through the tourism office. That's a good way to get plugged in.
Heidi Schlag: Another thing we sometimes hear, for DMOs in particular, is that their revenue comes from hotel stays within their boundaries. That's how they get the budget that funds their work. So there are folks who are hesitant to promote byways because they see that as helping visitors leave their jurisdiction and taking tax dollars to the next jurisdiction. How do you help those folks understand the larger benefits of scenic byways and themed itineraries that may move visitors outside of a jurisdiction?
Wanda Maloney: If you give someone a map and guide them out of your community, yes, there's the possibility they'll leave. But there are a couple of other perspectives to consider. If you think about people traveling and looking for experiences that align with their own interests, it may be that a byway or heritage corridor that connects similar experiences is actually what creates their decision to visit your community in the first place. Otherwise, there may not have been a large enough attraction or draw for them to plan that trip. Having that connected experience may be the actual reason they show up.
The other way to frame it is to promote the byway as an attraction — you can loop visitors out and back. The byway may go one direction without looping back, but you can map that for them. What I've seen work effectively is to offer the byway experience as a day trip: your community is home base, they stay overnight, have dinner and breakfast before they leave, and that day trip on the byway may be the thing that encourages them to stay an additional night. So there is some risk of visitors leaving, but there's a greater opportunity to enhance the overall experience and extend it.
Heidi Schlag: Just changing topics a little — I know you've done a lot of research in your career on who a scenic driver is and what that demographic looks like. Could you talk a little bit about what you've found in your research on this segment of traveler?
Wanda Maloney: Sure. First, let me talk about how popular scenic driving is. The data is not as widely available as we'd like, but between the 1980s and the late 2000s, the US Forest Service was collecting data routinely on scenic driving, which was showing that about half the population was participating in some type of scenic driving annually.
More recently, we have data coming out of tourism offices — scenic driving isn't tracked in every state, but we're beginning to see it more again. As an activity showing up among travelers in places like Maine and Montana, again around 50% of travelers participate in scenic driving. So it's very popular, with a pretty broad audience.
We can narrow it down demographically. Scenic drivers trend a little bit older — 55 and older — although there is participation in every age group, and we're starting to see some growth in younger generations. They tend to be educated, middle to higher incomes. The types of activities they enjoy alongside the scenic drive: cultural attractions and exploring small towns round out the top three alongside scenic driving itself, plus dining and restaurants. They're also very much engaged in outdoor recreation — the top activities tend to be hiking, camping, and wildlife viewing.
The other thing we know about byway travelers is that it is a linear experience: they are moving through a place. So they rely on very good and accurate information, and they rely on us to provide it. That includes information in the trip-planning stage, knowing maps, accurate and clear maps about the route itself, how long it takes to drive the route. Location is always important — not just the route itself, but where it is relative to where they're going to stay or where they want to go. More so than travelers who have a single destination in mind, byway travelers rely on not only DOT but also on those who are promoting the routes to provide accurate information about navigation, locations, and visitor services.
Heidi Schlag: I do want to turn to a smaller segment of that scenic driving audience that you've written about on your LinkedIn lately — the RV segment and the motorcycle segment. Could you talk about those two sub-segments and how they play into this larger conversation?
Wanda Maloney: Sure. I'll start with RV travelers. Every year, KOA Campgrounds of America publishes a huge study based on surveys and other data they have related to the industry. It's free and you can find it online — it's a great data resource. In the most recent one, I believe there were just over 50 million people who took an RV trip in 2025. They characterize the interests of those travelers similarly to the byway traveler: interested in small towns and cultural attractions, they enjoy a slower pace of experiencing places, and they tend to have a little more flexibility.
When we look at survey data on preferred lodging for byway travelers, mostly it's hotels — but the percentage selecting RV/campground lodging is higher than general RV ownership in the population. About 7% of the population owns an RV, but we'll see percentages as high as 20% in surveys of byway travelers who have that lodging preference. That segment is overrepresented with byway travelers.
That's an important thing to know. We need to understand how to cater to their needs — how to make sure we're providing the information they need for navigation, because navigating an RV is not the same thing as navigating a route in a car. We need to let them know: can you drive this route in an RV or not? And we need to think about how to distribute information to travelers by making the campground experience part of the information ecosystem. Campground owners know that there's generally a campground host, and they provide information to people who are traveling there — that's another way we can connect with travelers and share information about things to do and where to go. These folks are face-to-face with that segment of travelers within the corridor.
Motorcycle touring is also really popular on scenic routes, and we saw both of those segments show up in the project Heidi and I worked on with the Natchez Trace Parkway. They have a very large segment of RV travelers and also a large segment of motorcycle tourists. The motorcycle traveler — we don't have a lot of information about their travel preferences, and there are very few studies. It's an area where we really need additional information. But from what exists, they have preferences for the types of maps they like to use (related to durability — they need to work in all weather conditions) and for the types of lodging they prefer (they want their motorcycles nearby, and they appreciate dedicated stations where they can clean them). If you're able to identify that motorcycle touring is a significant visitor profile in your area, it's important to understand what their needs are and think of ways to provide information specific to them.
Heidi Schlag: We have a question from Paul. He's asking: what is currently the best way to capture the scenic driver? Keyworded websites, state partnerships, printed material, social media? Wanda, can you talk a little bit about how scenic drivers are researching and finding routes?
Wanda Maloney: That's a great question, and there's no really concise way to answer it. In the trip-planning stage, the most frequently cited source for byway travelers is friends and family. Beyond that, they do online searches. What we see in terms of SEO is that people will search "scenic drives near me" most often — folks usually don't know the name of a specific route they're looking for, but that is the most common search term. Designing and ensuring your content shows up in those searches is important. I can't tell you exactly what's happening with AI and scenic byway searches specifically, but recommendations from friends and family are still the most frequent way folks are finding trip-planning information.
The other important thing to know is that not everyone who drives a scenic road is planning in advance. We know from survey data and anecdotal evidence that about one-third of them do not plan in advance — they see a sign (most byways are signed with the route name), or they pick up a brochure at a hotel or visitor center and make the decision to drive the route at that point. They haven't arrived with downloaded maps or any materials we've made available online. So we have to think: how will the person who just arrives with nothing experience the route? How will they understand what resources are there and what experiences they might have? That's when the planning shifts to physical infrastructure: where do you build pull-outs so you can have map panels that orient people, show where they are, where they can find restrooms, where they can find more information, and offer interpretation along the way.
How do you access them? They're looking in the same places everyone else looks for information. The important things are: make trip-planning information available online; deliver a visitor experience people will talk about (that's how word-of-mouth recommendations get generated); and think carefully about how to deliver information once people arrive. There are lots of different strategies for doing that.
Heidi Schlag: Yeah, and I think before we hit record, Wanda and I were talking about SEO — search engine optimization, just in case you're not familiar with that acronym — and how AI is now changing how people plan trips. I heard a speaker just yesterday who was saying that the more detailed information your website provides, the better it does in AI search. To relate that to byways and trails: if your website provides specific information about mileage between towns, where restrooms are, where people can get a bite to eat, hours (especially if you're in a more rural area where you might not have consistent Wi-Fi or regular business hours), and if you're describing those really unique places that make your destination special — that's what AI starts to grab onto. There's so much generalized information out there that AI can surface without touching your site. The detailed, specific information is what gets pulled. I found that really interesting as we talk about how people plan before they get on the road.
But then, Wanda, you made the excellent point that a whole segment of people don't plan ahead and are having that experience as they go. Could you talk a little bit — especially for folks in Main Streets, business owners, or even parks along the route — about what they can do to signal to scenic drivers and passers-by that there's something worth stopping for?
Wanda Maloney: I think an important thing to remember if you're a Main Street or a small community on a scenic drive is that we need to take care of travelers' basic needs first. And I hate that I talk about bathrooms so much in my professional life, but I do. If they can clearly locate a restroom when they arrive, that's tremendous, because we have to accommodate those basic needs first: where they can find a restroom, where they can find something to eat, some coffee, fuel for their car, an EV charging station. Focus on how visible those amenities are in your community. Once you've taken care of those needs, people can start thinking about what else they want to do or what they're looking for.
Then the question becomes: where is visitor information available to them? If you don't have a visitor center, or if you have one with limited hours, have an alternative way folks can find information about what might be open. Is there a kiosk? Does it have QR codes where they can access online information?
Another thing: when you're exploring a byway and you arrive in a smaller community, it can be hard to know what's open. Even when things are open during business hours, if there are no cars out front, people may believe everything is closed and there's nothing to do. I encourage businesses to make it obvious they're open. If that means putting out flags or signs or A-frame boards — something that clearly signals to travelers that the business is open. Think about the difference between someone who arrived because they planned to be there (they may already know which cafe they want or which yarn shop) versus someone just passing through, who has no advance information but is looking for a place to stop, eat, or shop. Designing for the spontaneous visitor means making your presence visible and legible even to someone who knew nothing about you five minutes ago.
Heidi Schlag: So we have some great comments and questions in the chat. Laura is asking: she has a lot of DMO partners that have created driving tours — should they include public restrooms as part of that, or is that taking it too far? They do include a link to their websites typically for additional info.
Wanda Maloney: Absolutely, yes. Include the restrooms on your materials, including your maps. It just takes a little icon, but I think that's a standard of best practice, and people will absolutely appreciate you for including that information.
Heidi Schlag: And then John is talking about when we were discussing RVs — this goes to town planning and tourism planning. He says they struggled with accommodating RV parking when he was in Colorado. They got a lot of RV traffic through town, but the downtown land was too valuable for large parking lots.
Wanda Maloney: I don't think it matters where the parking is as long as people can find it. If you have to park them on the edge of town — and I'm thinking about Bar Harbor, Maine — and it's actually too far to walk, then yes, you might have to think about shuttle strategies. But the most important thing is telling people, directing them to where it is, and that means signage as you're coming into town. I remember asking questions of a server in a restaurant: "We want to go into this downtown area, but where is RV parking?" So there's a hospitality training issue as well — making sure frontline staff can direct folks to RV parking. But making it clear where parking is available is more important than exactly where it has to be, because that's just what you have available. Communicating it is the key.
I
talk with Heidi a lot about building confidence with travelers. The more information you have available to them along the way, the more confident they become about where they are, how they're traveling, and what they're going to experience as they continue their journey. So they're less distracted by wondering where the next restroom is or whether they're going to run out of gas. When they're not thinking about those things, they're enjoying the experience instead.
Heidi Schlag: Susan makes the great point that another user segment is cyclists and backpackers who may be using the byways. And you and I have done some work with corridors, rail trails, bicycling routes also where people are using those types of corridors for outdoor recreation over longer distances. She says a percentage of them do seek experiences along their trek, not just lodging and food. I experienced that with my work for the C&O Canal Trust, which is a 184-mile-long outdoor recreation corridor. We had ten canal towns that lined that corridor and we did a lot of work helping those towns promote what they had to offer to all of those recreational users. Could you talk about what you've seen in terms of trails as economic drivers?
Wanda Maloney: Absolutely. A cyclist isn't only interested in cycling — they have other interests too, or they may be traveling with folks who have other interests. So they're looking for experiences along the way and within the corridors. The economic impact of byways is something that's difficult to measure, because we don't sell tickets and we don't have entrance gates. The challenge is determining how many people are in a place or on a road because of the scenic byway designation. But if we look to existing studies — again, mostly scarce because they're too expensive for most byway communities to fund — there is evidence of significant economic impact from increased tourism from byways and byway travelers.
And there's a diversity of interest. Most recently, we were able to collect a lot of data regarding travelers to the Natchez Trace Parkway, and we see that the folks who have interest in heritage and cultural attractions are equally as interested in outdoor recreation. That's the beauty of a byway: you're able to offer these types of diverse experiences so that folks can find things to do that align with their interests and allow them to increase their stay or plan an overnight versus just a one-time experience.
Heidi Schlag: Leanne is asking: any tips for creating historic walking tours — hard copy map or digital linked with an audio tour?
Wanda Maloney: Creating walking tours isn't my area of expertise, but I think keeping in mind the basic principles of visitor experience applies — thinking about how someone might want to plan that trip, find information in advance, and then what happens when they arrive. The same principles of meeting basic needs and then engaging with the experience in a way that builds confidence apply here.
Heidi Schlag: Yeah, I do have some experience. I would say, like most things, you want to think about your audience first and foremost. You've got multiple kinds of tours you could develop — if you're doing a guided walking tour, that's a different set of principles than a self-guided one, and then whether that's carried as print material or as an audio tour. But no matter which of those you're creating, what people are really looking for — especially heritage tourists who want to connect to place — is stories. Stories about the place, about the people who live there, the foods and customs, the history, what makes that place different from any other place they've visited. Those tours should include historical facts, but you don't want to bog people down and make them feel like they're in a history class. Infuse those tours with personal stories and the unique character of a place. And Leanne, I'm happy to talk further after if you'd like to reach out.
Heidi Schlag: Kimberly asked: could you share again the website that has collated the visitor data for byways?
Wanda Maloney: I'm not sure what I may have been referencing, but there is no single website that correlates all of that data, I'm afraid. The KOA report was for RV travelers specifically. Another source for RV traveler data is the RV Industry Association — RVIA — which collects data annually, and some of it is available for free online; not all is available without membership. We need more data regarding byway travelers generally.
It falls between the cracks in some ways because the Federal Highway Administration and the US Forest Service both define scenic driving as outdoor recreation, but if we look at state outdoor recreation plans, mostly scenic driving is not included. We can speculate that it's likely because folks perceive scenic driving as passive rather than active recreation. But scenic driving is actually the most accessible form of outdoor recreation — it allows people to experience the landscape in a way that meets their abilities. Some folks experiencing a byway may only be able to stop at overlooks, get out of the car, read the interpretive panels, take photos, while others may be able to take a hike or do something more physically demanding. Unfortunately, scenic driving is under-measured, which means it receives less attention and certainly less funding than what's needed for enhancing the experience along scenic byway corridors.
Heidi and I do everything we can when we're at conferences and other venues talking to folks in tourism offices to ask: can we measure this better? Can you add a question? There has been some progress — Maine's Office of Tourism has tweaked a question on their annual survey so that it now captures more information about scenic drivers. We can make progress and learn more, and with more specific data available, make the case for scenic driving more effectively.
Heidi Schlag: So we've talked a lot about how these linear corridors connect all of these different types of experiences. As we talk about cross-sector partnerships and collaboration — that sounds really great in theory and, as we all know, is much harder in practice. Everybody's stretched thin, may have competing priorities. Do you have any tips or best practices on ways that all of these organizations lining a corridor could go about working together?
Wanda Maloney: The key is always to find alignment. Find where there's overlap in your goals and what you're trying to accomplish, and it'll be easier to support each other. The thing I witness that I wish would happen less is competition for resources, when everyone working together could accomplish their own goals and maybe more.
It's the rising tide theory — we're all better together than competing for the same resources. I was on another meeting earlier this week where someone asked me how to get communities along a route to support the byway, and my response was: talk to them, but don't tell them why they should support you. Ask them what they want and what's important to them. It's communication, finding overlap, places where you align, and trying to work together. And structurally, the byway program is sort of built that way because the management plans require that you work with stakeholders. You have a built-in opportunity to bring everybody together and look for those areas of alignment.
Heidi Schlag: We have just about 10 minutes. I wanted to circle back to a segment that you touched on briefly that I think is an important one for all of us to consider, and that's residents. DMOs typically focus on tourists, defined as people traveling farther than 50 miles. But we all know that a good amount of the people visiting our sites are from within 50 miles or live within our community. Could you talk a little bit about the local resident as an audience segment, and how you can help them explore the routes around them and become advocates for that type of travel?
Wanda Maloney: Absolutely. In surveys, particularly in the open-ended sections, there are always lots of folks who say, "I live here" — if you ask how far they drove, they say they live locally. We saw a significant portion of respondents for Natchez Trace Parkway surveys were people who lived in the area and routinely used the roadway for different reasons, some for pleasure, some commuting. So residents are absolutely present on scenic drives.
The first challenge with these folks is that they think they know everything already. There may be something they actually don't know — maybe they don't know everything about an attraction, or there may be something new. It's hard to get new information to folks who think they already know the route. So think about strategies: you may need a special campaign to reach people who already live there. The other thing to remember is that they have friends. A lot of the time, residents drive the routes when they have out-of-town guests, so they become the tour guide. That's the other reason you want them to have up-to-date information about experiences and what to do — because they're actually guiding people through the experience for you. If you can determine how significant that resident segment is along your route, design special campaigns for providing them with current travel information.
Heidi Schlag: Yeah, and to give one example happening locally here: as part of the America 250th, the Lincoln Highway in Pennsylvania has put together a road trip linking Independence Hall, Gettysburg, the Flight 93 Memorial, Fort Pitt in Pittsburgh, and a couple of others, with a challenge coin at each location. It's inspiring people — I have a friend in Pittsburgh who drove the whole way east to Philadelphia and visited all of those spots because he wanted to get his passport stamped and earn his challenge coins. Those types of initiatives can be targeted at tourists, but they have great appeal for people living nearby too.
Wanda Maloney: Absolutely. And the resident becomes an ambassador and a tour guide when their out-of-town friends and family visit. That's really where the value is.
Heidi Schlag: Paul asks: is there a growing segment of travelers who like to stay in small roadside motels? And he's seeing them trending on Airbnb.
Heidi Schlag: I can say the same thing — there is one on the Lincoln Highway that some younger folks just purchased, renovated, and opened up, one of those old roadside motels. I don't have data on it, but I would imagine that makes a lot of sense. People are looking for authentic, one-of-a-kind experiences, and a restored roadside motel fits right in.
Wanda Maloney: My gut tells me that if it's a trend, it may be particularly among Gen Z. I'm not familiar with any data that would tell me which travelers trend more toward brand hotels versus unique ones, but it sounds interesting. Route 66 would probably inspire people along that particular corridor. And yes, there have been HGTV and Netflix shows on that topic.
Heidi Schlag: So we'll wrap up — we're right at 2:00. Thank you, Wanda, for your time and sharing your insight. And thank you, everybody, for the questions and the comments. I really love hearing from all of you. Our next session is on Wednesday, August 5th at 1 o'clock, featuring Heidi Kerr-Schlaefer, who does a lot of work with Main Streets and small towns — she'll be talking about how Main Streets are economic drivers and heritage tourism magnets, and her work getting residents to love where they live and become ambassadors for their own communities. And then on Wednesday, September 2nd, we'll have Laura Scharle with us, and we'll be talking about how heritage tourism and outdoor recreation overlap. Most of you have signed up for all of them, but I just put the link in the chat if you want to sign up for either of those. Thank you so much for your time, and I hope to see you in August!
Wanda Maloney: Thank you!
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