Small business in Rappahannock: Changes in tourism, demographics, consumer behavior and Internet use pose new challenges and opportunity
First in a series of articles on small business in Rappahannock County
By James P. Gannon
More than three dozen small business owners in Rappahannock County gathered Tuesday to discuss how to succeed in a small, rural county amid changes and trends in tourist traffic, demographics, consumer preferences and technology that pose serious challenges to traditional ways of doing business here.
About 45 people packed into the forum on “How to Succeed in Business in Rapphannock County” and heard a panel of five veteran business owners describe how they cope with changes affecting small business in the county. The forum attracted owners and managers of a wide variety of businesses, including bed & breakfast places, shops, vineyards, a bookstore, theater, printer, a bank, computer service, home-based business and others.
Among the major themes that emerged from the two-hour session, which was held at the Rappahannock County Library, were these:
- Tourist traffic and tourists’ interests and habits are changing in ways that are hurting traffic to Shenandoah National Park, long a major magnet for attracting people to Rappahannock County. The trends are impacting tourist-dependent local businesses, especially near Sperryville, a gateway to the park.
- Use of the Internet is growing more crucial to small business success, as a way to market and promote local businesses and to operate a business from home, but the county’s relative lack of high-speed broadband services is a detriment to doing business here.
- Demographic changes, including the aging of Rappahannock’s population and the influx of affluent, well-educated property owners and weekenders, is changing the kinds of businesses that work well in the county. The days of the old-fasioned apple stand by the roadside is giving way to the age of high-end galleries, pricey restaurants and shops featuring expensive gifts.
- New businesses come and go at a fairly frequent rate in Rappahannock County, sometimes because of poor planning or “romantic” notions that turn a pipedream into a business that can’t work, but not always because a business is a “failure.” Often, small business owners sell out or close down because of life-changes, desires to pursue new interests, or other reasons even though their businesses become successes.
The most important consensus that emerged from the meeting was a widespread agreement that Rappahannock County needs a single, active, county-wide business organization that promotes cooperation and co-ordination among all types of local businesses here, and that aggressively markets and promotes Rappahannock County as a tourist destination. While there was disagreement over what to call such an organization, and uncertainty over how to make it happen, a key part of the plan would be a one-stop, all-inclusive website marketing the county as a getaway destination.
The forum was sponsored by The Rappahannock Voice and moderated by RappVoice Publisher and Editor James P. Gannon. Over coming days, RappVoice will publish a series of articles exploring the major themes and findings of the business forum. The rest of this article will focus on trends in tourism that are having major impact on tourist-dependent businesses in the county.
A significant decline in tourist traffic to Shenandoah National Park, part of which lies within the county, has hurt patronage of businesses along Route 211 and in the county generally, but especially in Sperryville.
At the forum, Gannon cited visitor statistics supplied by the park that show a steady decline in the last 20 years–a decline which has accelerated sharply in the past five years.
In 1986, Shenandoah National Park recorded 1,874,684 visitors. Park visitation held steady for a few years but then declined to 1,600,136 by 1996, a decline of 15%. In the next ten years, the decline grew steeper, and by 2006, the Park recorded only 1,087112 visitors, a loss of over half-a-million visitors in ten years, or a 32% fall-off. Last year’s total represents a loss of more than 787,000 visitors compared to 20 years earlier.
There are undoubtedly numerous reasons for the downward trend, including rising gasoline prices, increased park entrance fees, worsening air pollution in the Park that spoils the scenic view vistors come to experience. But broader cultural trends that are unlikely to be reversed, also seem to be taking a toll, according to local business owners.
“I don’t think the Park is an attraction like the way it used to be years ago,” said panelist Martha Hitt, who owns an manages the Sperryville Emporium, along Route 211 nearest the park entrance. “It used to be the main thing to do here. Now families are not coming to the park. Eighty percent of Americans are overweight, and they don’t want to come to the park and hike. They say the kids sit up there with their little Game Boys and they are bored to death. They don’t want to be there. There are too many other things they would rather do–amusement parks, shopping malls, whatever.”
Hitt hears from plenty of visitors on the way to and from the Park. Some complain of increased entrance fees, especially if they just want to take a half-hour look at the scenery from Skyline Drive. Others, especially from the Luray Valley side west of the Park, totally miss the left-turn entrance to the park and wind up at her shop, down the mountain, to ask her where the park entrance is.
Erik Kvarnes, who owns the Glassworks Gallery and Oldway Art Center on the highway west of Sperryville, says his and other nearby businesses are highly dependent on traffic to and from the park. “One thing that’s an annoyance for me is that they close the Park so much in the winter. They used to keep it open, keep it plowed. Now they will close for a month sometimes. We will run for four days without seeing a single person come in the door.” Winter traffic used to be much stronger than it is now, Kvarnes said.
American consumer habits and preferences are changing, noted Barbara Adolfi, who owns The House on Water Street, a tourist home, in Sperryville and also works as a mental health counselor. “People don’t go on Sunday drives the way they used to,” she said. “When they go out, they want to be entertained, rather than go for a drive for the scenery.”
One reason for that change, added Kvarnes, is that commuters who live in the Metro Washington, D.C. area spend so much frustrating time in their cars during the week that they can hardly bear the thought of a weekend drive to the county.
“Traffic in the DC area is so brutal, that after fighting it five days a week, they don’t want to fight it on Saturday to drive out here,” he said. “Just the thought of driving for the fun of driving is not the way it used to be.”
Sandra Cartwright-Brown, who manages Conyers House Inn & Stable, a B&B in the southern part of the county, said she advises weekend guests from the DC area to leave there by 1 p.m. on a Friday “unless they want to spend three hours getting out here.”
She’s also seen changes in tourist trends. “Our business is seasonal–we have spring, and we have fall. It has changed. For the first seven or eight years, we had guests every weekend of the year, all year ’round. That is no longer the case at all. That is because there are so many more B&B’s in the county.”
Conyers House was the first bed-and-breakfast lodging in Rappahannock County, opening in 1981. In the next few years, many more sprang up–some to fade fairly soon. “Some started up out of a romantic notion” that it would be fun and easy to run a B&B lodging, but quit the business after a couple years, she said. “At one time there were 26 in the county, but now it is down to about 16″ B&Bs, Cartwright-Brown said. A dozen of them are members of the Bed & Breakfast Guild of Rappahannock County.
All agreed that the county and its businesses need new and better ways to attract more tourism and to promote co-operation among the county’s small business. That topic will be explored in our next article in this series.
-- James P. GannonComments
Comment from stevenkenny
Time: March 29, 2007, 4:36 am
I didn’t attend the small business meeting but I have had an interest in
this topic since moving to Rappahannock in 1997. Can’t anyone else see the
dynamics of all this? More promotion, more traffic, more business, more
tourists simply results in accelerated growth, sprawl, crime, demands on
infrastructure, pollution and a general decline in the quality of life for
those who live here now. The Rappahannock I knew only 10 years ago is
largely gone. One of my earliest memories was having to stop my car to wait
for a dog to get up and move that had been lying in the road in front of
what is now the Thornton River Grill.
I’m not proposing a solution … I’m just saying that these days you can’t
have one without the other. Farming is in decline, resulting in the turnover
of farmland to those wealthy enough to buy it and build on it. Low income
families are being forced out resulting in a very unbalanced economy. To
some this is a blessing, to others it is heartbreaking.
In case you’re curious, I own my own business. I am an artist who doesn’t
need to generate income locally although I do sell my work here. As the
president of the Middle Street Gallery (a not-for-profit artists’
cooperative) I struggle with these issues on a daily basis. I used to
grimace when people would tell me that change is inevitable. But you know
… it’s true. I give in. But we mustn’t fool ourselves into thinking that
advertising will magically solve all our problems. The truth is that it
creates just as many as it “solves.” As Dorothy didn’t say, “We’re not in
Rappahannock any more.”
The small business forum was an excellent idea. People (not just business
owners) need to come together and decide not what sort of advertising to do
… but what sort of RESULT they would like the advertising to produce!!!
Steven Kenny
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