Awards honor rural tourism volunteers

As representatives of the tourism industry in Nevada's rural areas got together in Pahrump last week, they paid a lot of attention to the importance of volunteers to their efforts.

In fact, many of the 250 who gathered for the state's annual rural tourism conference themselves were volunteers.

"Volunteers are the lifeblood of tourism in the rural areas," said Bruce Bommarito, executive director of the Nevada Commission on Tourism.

"It really is operated primarily by volunteers."

During the conference, six people were honored with the commission's "VolunTourism" award for work in building the tourism industry in the state.

Honored from northern Nevada were:

* Sue Barton, director of sales and administration for the Lake Tahoe Visitors Authority, for excellence in promoting attractions of Reno-Tahoe area, which encompasses Nevada's second largest metropolitan area and tourism destination.

* Sheree Tibbals, events complex operations manager for the Winnemucca Convention & Visitors Authority, for her work for more than decade.

* Patti Heinbaugh of Ely, a director of the White Pine County Tourism and Recreation Board and llama-packing company operator, for her work coordinating familiarization tours for journalists and tour operators.

Bommarito said tourism is a major piece of the economy in most rural areas of the state just as important, in proportional terms, as tourism in Reno or Las Vegas.

But most small communities don't have the resources to hire fulltime staffs for their tourism efforts and rely instead of volunteers.

Last week's conference covered subjects such as marketing rural Nevada to international travelers, creating dynamic advertising and Web sites and promoting rural Nevada among travel writers and tour operators.

Bommarito said volunteers who attend the rural tourism conference work hard to take workshop lessons home with them.

"They have a tremendous amount of pride in Nevada," he said.

"These people are intensely interested in the success of their communities.

They pay attention.

They ask questions."