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New Internet Magazine Helping Vermont Attract International and “Green” Visits

Tuesday March 11, 2008

By Ed Barna

   James Kelly grew up in Maine and Massachusetts, and when he decided to return to New England from southern California, his father said, “I thought you hated the cold!”

    Though living in Weybridge is bringing back old coping skills, Kelly doesn't think temperature is  one of the state's strong points. What warms his heart, he said, is getting to know the people of a state that in his experience is unique in its combination of hardiness, resourcefulness, kindness, and willingness to come to the aid of others.

    Now he's trying to help the world see Vermont in that light, through an Internet magazine called Vermont Nation. He said it wouldn't be right to call it simply an Internet tourism site, because he wants to be able to express a viewpoint-for instance on “green hotels,” one of the major components of Vermont Nation.

    The effort to describe and designate such lodgings (they're not just big hotels) has enlisted the Vermont Small Business Development Center, the Agency of Natural Resources, the Vermont Hospitality Council, and the Department of Tourism, Kelly said. Clients can expect to find recycling programs and information, environmentally friendly products, composting, energy efficiency upgrades, and other components of explicit environmental missions and plans.

    More and more such lodgings are announcing themselves all the time, Kelly said. For those who want to learn more, not only can they log onto www.vermontnation.com, there is also www.vtgreenhotels.org, the Internet home of these establishments and their “environmental partners.”

    As for the name Vermont Nation, Kelly said it seemed appropriate even before he learned that the 14th state spent an interim period between the Revolutionary War and statehood as the Republic of Vermont. “Most people do like it, for whatever reason,” he said.

    There were other candidates for the name. Kelly said that one evening he and his wife Carolyn Kelly, a local attorney and a former Trustee of Public Lands in Montpelier, sat down with a bottle of Jamison's Scotch, and by the wee Scottish hours had brainstormed about 40 possibilities. Then, in the stone cold sober light of the following day, they assigned numbers: four number 1's, 2's, twelve 3's, and so on.

    “Vermont Nation,” a number 1, got the nod. “I thought Vermont people really stood alone,” he said. A check with the dictionary showed that if fitted: “A group of people who have their own culture,” he recalled. And he found that one of the earliest news publications in this country was titled “The Nation.”

    Setting up the website wasn't a first-time venture. Before the brief time in southern California, Kelly had spent years in Ireland, where he developed a highly successful Internet node called “Tour Clare.”

    The Vermont Nation site has a link (or you can go directly to www.tourclare.com). There, a visitor will learn what Irish readers probably knew already: the main focus is on County Clare in western Ireland.

    Heritage tourism? The site notes that “In Western Ireland, alone, there are over 3,000 earthen and stone forts, 130 megalithic tombs, 300 castles, 250 ancient churches, seven cathedrals, 12 monasteries, 20 stone crosses. This is not to mention 15 round towers, a delight to behold, and numerous lesser monuments. In fact, County Clare, where this site originated, is practically in ruins with all the castles abbeys, and other bits and pieces of antiquity lying around.”

    On the modern side, Tour Clare got a million and a half web page hits last year, Kelly said. Vermont Nation isn't as well known-yet-but has been getting 20 to 40 hits a day.

    What may be more significant is that about 80 percent of the Internet visitors are from the United Kingdom of Ireland. Kelly said the plunge in the value of the dollar has made New England a bargain for European tourists-at the same time that it's enabled a family to spend $100 for a fast food restaurant meal in London.

    So Kelly is working to put useful information about lodgings, car rentals, and so on in front of financially qualified and seriously interested visitors who stand a reasonable chance of coming over and spending some serious money. And for Vermonters, he has been adding similar information about vacation places he knows, such as Ireland and Aruba in the Caribbean.

   “It just takes a while for us to be noticed,” Kelly  said of Vermont Nation. But he's confident that it will become a respected resource-“an in and out of Vermont site that's a place to go.”

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