For the South County Tourism Council’s $100,000 investment in the new statewide tourism marketing campaign, George said she didn’t see one scene of South County in the promotional video.

“Not that I could identify on my iPhone,” she said. “They took it down too quick!”

The Blackstone Valley Tourism Council put $40,000 toward the campaign. For both agencies, it represents about 10 percent of their overall budgets – or the amount agreed to last legislative session when Governor Gina Raimondo decided to tackle tourist marketing centrally at the state level.

Neither are thrilled with how the new relationship has worked to date.

“We didn’t have much of a stake in it,” said Billington of the new logo and marketing campaign. “Trickle down doesn’t work,” said George.

Both said the regional council directors were given 51 requests for proposals to tackle the entire marketing campaign for the state.

“They were book thick,” George said. “They did a boatload of work on them.” Both she and Billington said they were each tasked with scoring individual aspects of each proposal – and thought one proposal would be chosen at the end of the process.

“It didn’t happen that way,” she said. “They fractured it into little pieces. Glaser got the logo, Havas got branding…”

Billington added, “We weren’t really allowed to be part of the process. They gave us a rubric and asked for our ten favorites. We thought the next step was going to be get together as a group and sit down with the finalists.”

George suspects this process has something to do with the resulting product. “You can’t have diverse groups in silos,” she said. “You can’t just hire a pr firm, you need to understand the DNA of our region.”

Billington, who was an ardent opponent of statewide tourism marketing, said he’s ready to move on. “They told us it would only make things better but it worked out differently. It’s painful to watch because it could have been done so much better. I’ve reconciled and am ready to move on. We can’t expect a logo, or a campaign to fix things. It’s got to be the rank and file, it’s got to be a million people strong.”

“When I moved here from Utah, everyone said “Oh, Newport, Providence!” People already know about Newport and Providence and I would say “No, Narragansett,” and nobody would know what Narragansett was. I have a really difficult time turning a portion of our money over from South County to help promote more Providence and more Newport.” she said, citing that the South County tourism board works very hard to market their area of the state.”

In response House Speaker Nick Mattiello said, “Despite that wonderful job, everyone still talks about Providence and Newport. It’s the integrity of the entire system that we’re looking at, and you need a Rhode Island brand. It’s not about localities. The current system doesn’t work, and we cannot go back to a system that doesn’t work.”

Their disagreement stems from Governor Gina Raimondo’s idea to centralize state tourism spending. Currently, Rhode Island has no unified state marketing efforts and instead dives proceeds from hotel tax receipts between 8 regional tourism agencies. The money will now go more towards the state Commerce Corporation, rather than the tourism bureaus themselves. In the House version of the budget, $4.7 million goes straight to the Commerce Corporation, while less than a million goes to the actual tourism district. In Gov. Raimondo’s version, $6.4 million would go to the corporation, leaving the districts with $1.7 million.

After the hearing, Tanzi continued to express her concerns about the funding cuts, and how they will harm her district as a whole.

“I think that the way that the South County tourism board is run is actually very effective. We have been compliant, we turn in our reports when we’re supposed to, our production cost of our marketing materials, everything is done in house. We’re very conscientious about how the money is spent,” she said, especially in comparison to other tourism boards across the state. Tanzi believes that this will only disserve the southern portion of Rhode Island, especially because Newport and Providence, in her opinion, do not need more marketing.

“The beaches are their own unique part of it,” she said. “We need to have our own budget to market that appropriately. We’re competing with the Cape, we’re not competing with Massachusetts.”

As the budget is currently written, Tanzi stated that to “cannibalize” the smaller parts of the state in order to market Rhode Island as a whole is not the best use of money, and it will only show poorly within the coming years.

“My guess is that my businesses in South County, who have five months out of the year at most, to make their living to make it through the entire summer, are going to suffer as a result of this,” she said. Tanzi has spoken to many of the businesses in her district since the budget first came out in March, adding that such funds are always a concern for business owners in the area.

But, the prospect of Tanzi submitting a successful amendment to support her district is slim to none, in her view, calling South County the “small fish,” in comparison to Newport and Providence.

“Just the basic numbers of looking at it, you’re talking about a couple of South County people, versus the city folk and the Newport people, who outnumber us on the floor. So, my chances of an amendment passing are ridiculously infantile. They’re infinitesimal, they’re so small, so, no, I won’t,” she said.

Even without the hope of amending the budget, this year, though, Tanzi still holds out hope for next year, planning to bring forth data showing the exact effects of these cuts on South County tourism, and maybe even get to create a separate brand for her district in the process.

Some hotels downtown pay fair wages and are willing to negotiate with their employees about working conditions. The Providence Renaissance Hotel next to the State House and the Providence Hilton next to the Convention Center do not. The practices at these hotels have been shameful. And to a casual observer, it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that the management at these hotels are specifically targeting young mothers for harassment and termination. (See the pieces I wrote in collaboration with Krystle Martin and Adrienne Jones.)

In response, the hotel workers and Unite Here! 217 have planned an ongoing series of pickets at both hotels, called Working Women Wednesday. Each week a team of protesters will be raising a ruckus at each hotel. Attention will be called to the fact that the profits of the Providence Renaissance Hotel and the Providence Hilton Hotel made by treating working mothers as disposable commodities.

Let’s demand that hotel management do better.

Parking lots from Wickford to Westerly, vacant all winter, will fill with nicer-than-average cars bearing out-of-state plates. Those same cars will help turn otherwise rural routes 1 and 4 into a twice-a-day traffic jam. Every errand will take twice as long. All of a sudden it costs money to go to the best beaches. And your dog is no longer welcome.

For the next 90 days or so, we have to share our coastal paradise with the rest of the world. It’s really a tiny price to pay to get to live in one of the most beautiful corners of the country. “You should see it in September,” a Rhode Islander will inevitably say to someone visiting for a week in July.

With about a fifth of the state’s population, South County is essentially Rhode Island’s company town. The beaches are the Ocean State’s factory. And our chief export is an amazingly healthy and renewable resource: rest, relaxation, good times and memories.

Tourism is Rhode Island’s second biggest industry. It contributes billions annually to the economy and is responsible for almost 10 percent of total employment. It plays to our natural strengths and is a historically strong driver of growth here.

After the Ocean State unsuccessfully tried to boost business by cutting taxes and giving money to a baseball player to develop a video game, Democrats running for governor are beginning to understand tourism’s importance here. Providence Mayor Angel Taveras and General Treasurer Gina Raimondo both recently released plans to reinvigorate the vacation sector.

“A progressive government understands that our tourism industry is more than an amenity – it is crucial to economic development and to Rhode Island’s economic recovery,” said Taveras in his plan to invigorate the tourism economy.

“Tourism can be an incredibly powerful engine of economic growth, and Rhode Island is ideally suited to take advantage of it,” Raimondo said in her tourism proposal released in April.

Each offered similar bullet points to boost out-of-state visitors. Improve infrastructure, market the state better, support the arts and entertainment.

“Our tourism economy is a driving force in our sense of pride and sense of place,” Taveras wrote. “We have so much to be proud of in Rhode Island. It is time to let the world know.”

They each said they could create thousands of new jobs.

Raimondo, who often invokes her family vacations to Sand Hill Cove in stump speeches, said Rhode Island “on the whole spends less on investing in tourism and travel than almost any other state in the country.”

No wonder the Ocean State is mired in a recession! Rhode Island made big bets on tax cuts and Curt Schilling to grow our economy when perhaps we would have been better off doubling down on our natural and historical strong suit: tourism.

We may be the smallest state in the nation, but there’s no good reason we can’t also be America’s best destination.

“An important barometer of economic activity, hotel-occupancy rates, topped 80 percent in the capital city for the first time since 2004, a very encouraging bit of news,” according to the Journal.

And who does Rhode Island have to thank for this economic shot in the arm that was lauded by the anti-progressive Providence Journal editorial page and the business-friendly Providence Business News: progressives, of course!

The big draw to Providence in June, of course, was none other than Netroots Nation, the annual conference of progressive activists and journalists that descended on the city early in the month and the event brought thousands from across the nation right to downtown Providence for a weekend that not only packed the hotels but also the bars, restaurants and other downtown amenities.

“Netroots Nation certainly played a role in Providence having its highest hotel occupancy since 2004 but its economic impact is only part of its importance,” said Martha Sheridan, president and CEO of the Providence Warwick Convention and Visitors Bureau. “In addition to boosting the local economy, it shined a national media spotlight on Providence and gave the city a prominent role in the political discourse that was taking place.”

I know many of the Netroots attendees were just as happy with Providence as the city was to have them here spending their money, so maybe we should make this a bigger part of the solution to Rhode Island’s economic woes: invite progressive people here to spend their money. Really, it’ll work. Progressives love Providence. The mix of old and new architecture, its hip restaurant and nightlife scene and all the other great things going on in and around the city make for the perfect progressive playground.

In fact, maybe we’ve been going about this economic development thing entirely wrong … maybe instead of cow towing to those who want the state to slash taxes, we should start catering more to those who know the value of the public sector and all the good it grants on society.

Special thanks to Providence Mayor Angel Taveras and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who worked hard to bring Netroots to Providence. If not for their efforts, not only would I probably not have gone but, more importantly, the city wouldn’t have got this nice summertime economic boost.

Right on cue, Summer Solstice arrived on June 20 and ushered in temps well into the 90’s, providing the first blast of real heat for Southern New England this year. It was about time too, the choruses of “When is it going to warm up?” were getting a little stale.

Well, warm up it did. With schools out and summer vacation just getting into full swing, the shoreline beaches were packed today and the roadways leading to them were clogged starting early in the morning. Routes 4, 1 and 102 were at near standstills around noon today and the traffic was sustained well into the afternoon as those who couldn’t get to the beach early,  made their way down later in the day.

Across the bay in Newport, the situation was much the same, except in the case of the City by the Sea, there is a cruise ship anchored offshore and plenty of tourists were on hand in the city’s shopping and tourist areas, spending money and providing a much-needed boost to the state’s economy.

The tourists in Newport also got to see a real show today, as the eight teams vying in the America’s Cup Race Series were all in the water today, testing the carbon fiber hulls and various sails in advance of next week’s races, scheduled to kick off on Thursday.For those unfamiliar with America’s Cup racing, the ships have evolved over the years but the premise is the same; just think of it as NASCAR, for the very rich.

The RIEDC has done a fantastic job putting this event together, partnering with America’s Cup Race Management and NBC Sports, among others. Unlike America’s Cup races here in years past, these races will be visible from shore and the base at Fort Adams will provide spectacular views of the action from very close in-shore. There will be plenty of other activities on site with action taking place from 11 am – 7 pm from June 28-July 1. Prior to the 28th, entrance to Fort Adams and the racing facilities will be free, anyone wishing to attend on race days will have to purchase tickets and pay to park.