Brunswick and The Golden Isles of Georgia – St. Simons Island, Sea Island, Little St. Simons Island and Jekyll Island – are featured on DiscoverAmerica.com, a new web site that is designed to encourage Americans to discover and travel within their own country.
DiscoverAmerica.com was launched by the U.S. Travel Association to help Americans learn about domestic travel destinations and activities.
The site includes an interactive map that gives mileage from city to city, and an activity finder that lists more than 3,000 experiences, attractions and events, including museums, gardens, ski slopes, festivals and parks. The site also offers links to tourism information for all 50 states, as well as for more than 100 cities and other destinations, and includes content from the National Park Service, the National Scenic Byways program and useful Web sites like GoogleMaps and Weather.com.
The site offers photo galleries organized by location, with pictures of everything from a historic district in New Braunfels, Texas to wild horses in North Carolina's Currituck Outer Banks, to the Volcanic Legacy Scenic Byway in the Shasta Cascade region of California, to Mystic Seaport in Connecticut. Visitors can also upload their own images and comments about places they've been by clicking on the "Stories" link at DiscoverAmerica.com.
"DiscoverAmerica.com is the latest in a series of online media outlets that feature content related to Brunswick and The Golden Isles of Georgia," explains Bill Tipton, executive director of the Brunswick-Golden Isles Convention and Visitors Bureau. "In addition to our official website, ComeCoastAwhile.com, we are distributing online information via a .mobi site, a blog and on several social networking sites including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Squidoo.
"It's all part of an aggressive effort to promote Brunswick and The Golden Isles of Georgia as a preferred destination for families, groups, meetings, reunions, weddings and other facets of tourism and travel. It's a relatively low-cost way to promote our area, with the potential to connect with millions of prospective visitors."
U.S. Travel is a private agency authorized by the U.S. Commerce Department to develop and market an official travel planning web site targeting the top five international markets that send visitors to the U.S. — Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Japan and Germany. Launching DiscoverAmerica.com for domestic travelers was an outgrowth of U.S. Travel's outreach to international visitors.
Brunswick & The Golden Isles of Georgia – St. Simons Island, Sea Island, Little St. Simons Island, Jekyll Island – are located on the Georgia coast just minutes from I-95 at Exits 29, 36, 38 and 42. Visitor information, including discounts and other special offers by area hotels, attractions and restaurants, can be found online at ComeCoastAwhile.com. For information “on the go,” text BGIGA to 95495 or go to ComeCoastAwhile.mobi on your web-enabled phone or PDA.
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Georgia Voyager Magazine has launched its first online issue, according to editor and publisher Cathy Hodge. The online magazine features "page-flipping" technology that replicates the look and feel of the printed version, as well as links to featured attractions, sound files and more.
"The special features of our new online publication make it fun for adults to read, and provide interactivity for children," Hodge explained. "Among other things, there are links to learn more about historic sites and educational places to visit, and downloadable contests, games and educational activities."
The current issue includes features about Georgia's Fall Line, Georgia's prehistoric peoples, the Civil War in Georgia, The Great Locomotive Chase, Famous Georgia Women, and more.
Now in its 13th year, Georgia Voyager was created for children who requested information about the state during the 1996 Summer Olympics. In 2000 the magazine won the Georgia Outstanding Program of the Year award from the Georgia Council of the Social Studies. Since its founding more than 2 million copies of the quarterly magazine have been distributed to Georgia teachers and school children.
The Brunswick-Golden Isles Convention and Visitors Bureau is a proud sponsor of Georgia Voyager Magazine and its programs, including the annual Georgia History Essay Contest for Georgia students in grades 4-12. Essays are judged by a panel of historians, teachers and others, and the winners are announced during a special Georgia History Day ceremony at the state capitol in Atlanta.
The Convention and Visitors Bureau also has partnered with Georgia Voyager to offer educational study tour programs designed to meet the needs of every school and youth group. Standards-based lesson plans are available for students in grades 4 through high school, and include pre- and post-visit classroom activities which are tied to the latest state and national educational performance standards in history, geography, economics, science and language arts.
These programs are offered through a special teacher planning guide developed by the CVB and Georgia Voyager.
According to Bill Tipton, executive director of the Brunswick-Golden Isles Convention and Visitors Bureau, the educational travel planner has been very well received by Georgia teachers. "We've been extremely pleased with the response that we've gotten to the planner," Tipton
The travel planner is available free of charge from the Brunswick-Golden Isles Convention and Visitors Bureau. Call 800-809-1790 to request a copy. Or, you can download a copy of the guide from the CVB's official website. explained. "Because of our natural environment and variety of attractions, museums and historic sites Brunswick and the Golden Isles are an ideal destination for educational field trips."
