"Cape Fear," starring Nick Nolte, 

 Robert DeNiro and Jessica Lange, 

 was a publicity dream come true. 



"That's about the best marketing 

 piece you could have," she says. 



Natural history is a drawing card 

 along all 320 miles of the Tar Heel 

 coast. 



"We're promoting ecotourism in 

 which people can come down and go 

 to the Cape Hatteras National 

 Seashore and other sanctuaries like 

 the Alligator River National Wildlife 

 Refuge to canoe and to go bird- 

 watching," says O'Bleness. 



Promotional brochures advertise 

 the Outer Banks as the "natural 

 choice." 



"We've always sold our environ- 

 ment — the air being clean, the 

 water being clean and beaches being 

 clean and uncrowded," says John 

 Bone, executive vice president of the 

 Outer Banks Chamber of Com- 

 merce. 



"There's a lot of undeveloped 

 oceanfront property, which makes 

 this area very attractive," he says. 

 "People can be in areas like Nags 

 Head and Kill Devil Hills, where 

 there a lot of things going on, and 

 then drift off to Ocracoke and 

 Hatteras and be relatively by 

 yourself." 



O'Bleness says the 90 miles of 

 national seashore is his area's golden 

 egg- 



"You're always going to be able 

 to drive to Whalebone and south and 

 be as isolated as you want to be," he 

 says. 



And prudent zoning and plan- 

 ning along the northern Outer Banks 

 has kept the beach from being 

 striped with shadows of high-rise 

 hotels and condominiums. 



"We're not building a wall of 

 buildings to block out the sun at two 

 o'clock," O'Bleness says. 



In fact, many folks to the north 

 are fleeing cluttered beaches for 

 southbound vacation destinations. 



Studies have shown Dare County 



that 40 percent of its tourist traffic 

 comes from Virginia. Twenty percent 

 comes from within North Carolina, 

 and the remainder funnels from 

 northeastern states such as Ohio, 

 Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey 

 and New York, says Bone. 



"The central coast and the 

 southern coast have a strong North 

 Carolina market and what I would 



The Outer Banks' 

 first true publicist, 

 Aycock Brown knew 

 the meaning 

 of free ad copy. 

 He sold the coast 

 to big-city magazine and 

 newspaper editors 

 through photographs 

 of choice channel bass, 

 shipwrecks, 

 banker ponies and 

 scantily-clad women. 



describe as a growing midwest 

 market," says Trammell. 



The business and convention 

 market is feeding the travel and 

 tourism industry in all coastal areas. 



"We are seeking conventions and 

 group meetings ranging from 25 to 

 400 or 450 people," says O'Bleness. 

 "We had over 260 such groups last 

 year." 



A group of General Motors vice 

 presidents rented 16 cottages for a 

 northeast regional convention during 

 a recent off-season month, he says. 



In the summer, the cottage 

 industry usually serves families with 

 children on the traditional one- to 

 two-week vacation. 



"In larger cottages, 'cottage' is 

 really a misnomer," he says of the 

 million-dollar 12-bedroom homes 

 that rent from $3,000 to $6,000 a 

 week. 



And of course there are cottages 

 in the three-figure range for a homier 

 vacation, he says. 



"In the fall, we begin to see 

 couples, childless families, senior 

 citizens coming down with tour 

 groups as well as independently, a 

 lot of fishermen and a lot of golfers," 

 he says. 



Dispelling the seasonal image of 

 beach communities is a challenge — 

 both to tourists and to the employees 

 in the industry who have become 

 favorably accustomed to their 

 irregular work lifestyle, says 

 NCSU's Gustke. 



But Dare County representatives 

 say their area has already flowered 

 into a 12-month industry. The "open- 

 all-year list," once contained on two 

 8 1/2-by-l 1 sheets, is now a veritable 

 encyclopedia, says Bone. 



"In September and October, the 

 beaches are still nice," says Bone. 

 "We have a lot of people that come 

 here at Thanksgiving for family 

 reunions. A lot of people come here 

 at Christmas." 



About 212,000 visitors stopped 

 by Dare County's three visitor 

 centers during 1991. Studies have 

 shown that 58 percent of those 

 visitors will come again. 



Dare County has an estimated 

 $500 million in gross retail sales 

 receipts and 23,746 permanent 

 residents, almost half of whom are 

 employed by the travel and tourism 

 industry. 



"If you were to divide into $500 

 million every man, woman and 

 child, no matter what their age, they 

 would have to spend in excess of 

 $24,000 each in a year," says 

 O'Bleness. "That's a roundabout 

 way of saying how much the tourism 

 industry is really worth to us." E 



COASTWATCH 1 1 



