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Economy

New Website Should Bring More Tourists to the Miss. River

Credit WVIK News / WVIK News
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WVIK News
Jim Dion from National Geographic explains the new Geotourism website at the regional rollout in Moline.

The Quad Cities is part of a new effort to bring tourists to the Mississippi River. With local assistance from ten states, National Geographic has launched the Mississippi River Geo-tourism website.

During the regional rollout of the new website, Jim Dion from National Geographic said now people can plan trips along the river using stories, pictures, and maps supplied by people who live along the river. 

 
"All of these points of interest, more than 2,000, come from people that are local from the river. This is insider knowledge of people that are the keys to the experience to be able to share that with people from other places."

 
The new website is mississippiriver.natgeotourism.com, and so far 12-hundred people have made contributions - about restaurants, museums, bed and breakfast inns, and other points of interest. 

Dion says the inter-active website is aimed at what he calls "experiential travelers."

 
"These are the type of people that spend, on average, at least four times a year taking trips to different places and that are looking for deep experiences when they're doing it. They also spend about 20 per cent more than other visitors."

 
The website is compatible with tablets and smartphones, and visitors can bookmark and download articles, pictures, maps, and videos - to plan, and then to use on their trips to the Mississippi River from New Orleans to the headwaters in Minnesota. 
 

A native of Detroit, Herb Trix began his radio career as a country-western disc jockey in Roswell, New Mexico (“KRSY, your superkicker in the Pecos Valley”), in 1978. After a stint at an oldies station in Topeka, Kansas (imagine getting paid to play “Louie Louie” and “Great Balls of Fire”), he wormed his way into news, first in Topeka, and then in Freeport Illinois.