Miriam Atria’s title is president/CEO for the Capital City/ Lake Murray Country Regional Tourism Board (CCLMC). This organization promotes the tourism program for Lexington, Richland, Newberry, and Saluda Counties and the City of Columbia. Atria has served in this position since 1983.

Prior to joining CCLMC, she was the director for marketing and communications at BlueCross/Blue Shield. A native North Carolinian, Atria moved to Columbia in 1973 after serving as communications director for Charlotte’s Johnson & Higgins, an insurance brokerage.

She and her attorney husband Nick have twin boys, 17– year–olds, and they live on Kennerly Road in Richland County, while they weekend at their Lake Murray house in Lexington County.

Graphic courtesy of the CCLMC Atria’s office is recognized and titled by the state as the region’s marketing arm for leisure traffic, for people not necessarily holding business meetings as much as people holding together for leisure activities, golf and fishing being the big draws. CCLMC’s official SC Parks, Recreation, and Tourism designation is the region’s destination marketing organization, or DMO.

Greenville operates in a similar fashion with its convention and visitors bureau coordinating regional marketing with Greenville’s DMO, Discover Upcountry Carolina.

Typically Atria’s DMO office lines up long weekends for golfers among greater Columbia’s 10,000 hotel rooms and 22 golf courses, but they also send groups into town for culture and food. Dianne’s on Devine doesn’t regularly open for lunch, but Atria reserves the whole place for her clients’ lunches, after which a tour of the State Museum is usually scheduled.

This February, the CCLMC has already coordinated with the Harbison Wal–Mart to put up a circus tent in their parking lot. Under the tent a stage and its fishing tournament proceedings will be televised to every Wal–Mart in the world.

Harbison events, obviously, fill up Harbison hotels, and that’s real money. The Harbison area hotels last year generated almost $370,000 in accommodations taxes to the City of Columbia. That’s 28% of the city’s total accommodations tax take, according to Atria. Another $60,000 comes to Columbia out of Harbison restaurants in hospitality taxes.

Atria’s CCLMC annual budget is $679,000, and the City of Columbia contributes $36,000 to CCLMC from its accommodations tax. The City of Columbia funds its convention center marketing team, separate from CCLMC, annually with about $1,000,000.

There is another $15,000 Columbia coughs up from its hospitality tax, something Lexington County doesn’t have. Lexington County did, though, pledge $20,000,000 to help cover the Metropolitan Columbia Convention Center development costs.

A direct beneficiary of CCLMC’s successful marketing of the region is the City of Columbia and its purveyors of food, lodging, culture, and general capital city trappings, all frequented by most any visitor to the greater Columbia area.

Other sources covering Atria’s budget include the county governments of Richland, Lexington, Newberry, and Saluda, and altogether they kick in $259,000. Another $193,000 comes from the state to its destination marketing organization.

Atria argues Columbia needs all the cheerleaders it can get. To have in–town convention sales overlapping with regional leisure sales is a formula for higher area visitor counts, filling hotel rooms, and taking restaurant tables.

Miriam Atria