OCR Text |
Show I Spotlighting L utah 1 Spotlighting Utah Column To Wind Up Career Four years old last June, the Spotlighting Utah column appearing ap-pearing in practically all of the weekly newspapers of the state will wind up its career with this writing. A brain child of the Utah Department of Publicity and Industrial In-dustrial Development, the column has been written and distributed once a week during the past four years to the t4 state weeklies. The major objective of the column col-umn was to spotlight developments, develop-ments, trends and news regarding regard-ing Utah's tourist business, Utali industries and natural resources. Every effort was made to keep the column strictly on a news and human interest basis to sell i ! Utah to Utahns. A goodly part of ! the items appearing in the col- limn wt re gleaned from the pag-i pag-i es of the weeklies themselves on I the assumption that Utahns were ! interested in the growth and de- V( lopment of every section of I the .state. I The reason for the column'.--; demist the Utah Department of Publicity and Industrial De-i De-i velopment is going out of busi-i busi-i ness. The department, its func-i func-i tions and objectives are still on j the statute books of Utah, how-i how-i ever, the last legislature failed i to appropriate any money to car-1 car-1 ry on the work and while more than $100,000 was salvaged by i the commission, Utah's attorney general has announced that he can see no way clear by which , the department could legally use : the money to continue its activi-, activi-, ties. j An important function of the I department was publicizing Utah 1 with the idea of developing a ' greater tourist business. In line i with this objective, brochures, booklets and other literature were carefully prepared, some in color, portraying Utah's scenic, historical and industrial attractions. attrac-tions. This literature, along with thousands of photographs, news releases, and motion picture shorts on Utah have been distributed dis-tributed to all sections of the nation. na-tion. Among the net results, the I'lD mail, representing out of state inquiries, has doubled itself many times in the past four years Editors of magazines, newspapers newspap-ers and trade journals, their attention at-tention directed to Utah and the grandeur of its scenic attractions have generously given hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of space to the state and what it has to offer the traveler. Requests lur the use of P1D motion picture pic-ture shorts have come from all sections of the nation. Most important im-portant among the net results, however, is the fact that the Utah tourist income has jumped from $37,000,000 in 1939 to more than $75,000,000 in 1949 a one hundred hund-red per cent increase. The tourist tour-ist business as an industry has risen to number three in industrial indus-trial importance to the state. Tourist dollars spread from one end of the state to the other enrich en-rich the pockets of nearly Ml residents directly or indirectly. Tourists carry away Measant memories, and nothing else, it is hoped, but they do leave their dollars which at this time are contributing tremendously to the economy of the state. It is unfortunate that the Utah Legislature allowed the work of developing the tourist business to stop. While Utah has taken a step backwards in this respect, other state legislatures are enlarging en-larging the financial grants to their respective tourist travel promotion departments. With the j national tourist and vacation ex penditure now amounting to $12,-1 000,000,000 (12 billion) no wonder j states are after their share of this, huge amount now spent by vaca- tionists throughout the nation. It Is hoped by this writer that the I time will come when Utah legis- j lators will be progressive enough ; to be able to see that the Jourist dollar is a prosperity builder; that it is a vital economic factor in building a more prosperous state. I |