The Labor Day crowd had barely left, but Hulene Morgan was already counting strands of Christmas lights for Cannon Village square in Kannapolis. "In the past," she says, "a lot of areas didn't understand how important tourism was as a tool for economic development. Now we do."
Morgan is marketing director for the Williamsburg-style mall of retail outlets off Interstate 85. By fall, 50,000 visitors from 36 states and six foreign countries had signed the Cannon Village Visitor Center register.
In some ways, Cannon Village's numbers sum up state travel in 1995, says Ralph Peters, former director of the North Carolina Travel and Tourism Division. For many, it was a record 12 months. Foreign visitors and strong convention bookings offset fickle weather and, in the view of many in the hospitality business, the state's failure to adequately promote tourism.
Peters estimates that 1995 expenditures were up 6% from 1994, when travelers spent a total of $8.3 billion in the state. In total impact, that makes travel as …
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