After a first year of many successes for the Historic Guilford Walking Tours, we started this year earlier but not necessarily wiser. Most of the month of June our attendance was low except for the Connecticut Museum Open House Weekend where we joined the five house museums in Guilford and provided free tours on Saturday, June 8th. Over forty people took the tours that day.
Our tours have had three goals: to promote local tourism, to support our house museums and local merchants, and to get the high-school-aged students of our town to engage and interact with the history and preservation of our community. We have had great support from the Guilford Preservation Alliance, The Guilford Foundation, The Food Center, Breakwater Books, Page Hardware, Mix Design, and the Greene Art Gallery.
The early summer tours were not so well populated often because of the extreme heat. Our first-year and experienced guides sweated and persevered through the tours refining their scripts and presentation skills. As the weather became more Shoreline seasonable, the tourists returned to the streets of Guilford.
We did some special tours this summer; first for the children’s program at Melissa Jones School, then for an exchange group from Turkey, and finally for the performing arts camp sponsored by the Shoreline Arts Foundation. Each tour was customized for the group (and in one case we even added interpreters).
A bright note over the summer was guide Megan Vanacore’s creation and implementation of the Historic Guilford Bus Tours. Megan created, marketed, and led tours of various historic neighborhoods in Guilford from Meetinghouse Hill in North Guilford, to Nut Plains, and to Sachem’s Head. These tours used the Park and Rec bus and driver to bring groups of guests on these tours, which incorporated a favorite stop at the Dudley Farm market on Saturdays. We supported Megan and her goal towards receiving her GSA Gold Award.
In September, as we struggled with experienced guides leaving for college and new guides becoming overscheduled with academics, athletics, and extracurricular activities, we found that the demand for tours continued to stay steady. When surveyed to find where customers were finding out about the tours in Fairfield, Hartford, and Middlesex counties, we were informed that under the Google search “CT Walking Tours” our website and Facebook pages are popping up in three of the top four listings. Furthermore, when searching for “New England Walking Tours” on Google, we show up as the ninth listing. I also have been active on Twitter posting as @GuilfordHistory and we now have 150 followers, many of whom are involved in Connecticut and New England broadcasting, the local print media, and the tourism trade. We have been re-tweeted by Guilford’s own Ryan Hanrahan and @CTGirlAboutTown. I think that our online footprint may allow us in the future to have a steady foundation of guests while always searching new markets.
As always, we are looking to the future. With Guilford’s 375th celebration next year, we have already been asked to develop custom tours for two of the feature activities. The first request is for a tour associated with the Civil War Encampment for the weekend of 31 May 2014 on the Guilford Green, and the second is for the Guilford Covenant/New England Trails Weekend in early June. Both tours will be a programming challenge but will allow continued positive exposure of the Walking Tours while we bring tourists and townies into and through our community to enjoy our heritage and spend a little of their money.
We appreciate the first two years funding of the tours by the Schmitt Fund of the Guilford Preservation Alliance as well at the generous funding of the Guilford Foundation. Although we are aiming towards becoming self-sufficient, our marketing, payroll, and training expenses at this time exceed our expected revenues in the near future. We hope to secure continued funding by a private or organizational donor to ensure that the Historic Guilford Walking Tours continue to meet our three goals of promoting local tourism, supporting our house museums and merchants, and educating our future leaders in the history and preservation of our wonderful and unique community.
