HCF's History of Advocacy and the Future of Responsible Tourism
Historic Charleston Foundation is in the tourism business. We have house museums, we orchestrate a month-long Festival every spring, and we host special groups and tours throughout the year, all with the purpose of highlighting the history, culture, and architecture that makes our city so special. The goal is to inspire others to see the power of preservation as the foundation for community, economic development, and place making. Charleston’s economic success is inextricably tied to our commitment to preservation over the last century.
However, Charleston—especially the historic district south of the Crosstown—is compact and predominantly residential. People are coming to Charleston to see neighborhoods and private houses. We don’t have major landmarks like other cities; it is the wonderfully preserved, intricate collection of buildings, ranging from the early 18th to the 20th centuries, that are the draw. Our commitment to the public realm—the streets, parks, alleyways, and promenades—stitches these neighborhoods together and has resulted in international accolades and increased visitation. Tourism is a key part of the Charleston economy, and it certainly imparts many benefits for locals—no one is disputing that. However, we periodically need to take a pulse check and see how and where we need to improve, pivot, adjust.
The Foundation has a long history of advocacy in this area. More recently, we convened a group of community leaders to update the city’s Tourism Management Plan in 2015. This comprehensive document charted an exciting path forward, and many of its recommendations have been implemented.
Just a couple of years later, short term rentals became a huge, unregulated problem, and we served on a task force to study the issue which resulted in one of the strictest ordinances in the country, with the city investing heavily in technology and staff to regulate and enforce these rules.
Next came our concern about the over proliferation of hotels downtown, and thanks to HCF bringing attention to the issue, the mayor convened a Hotel Task Force that we served on to analyze date and review the zoning rules in order to come up with significant changes to how and where hotels could be developed on the peninsula.
Post-Covid, we began to witness and hear about disruptive behavior coming from the pent-up waves of visitors that roared back to town after the pandemic. This resulted in a collaboration between HCF, the city, and Explore Charleston to discuss proactive ways that we could address these concerns. We commissioned a report from the Riley Center for Livable Communities to better understand resident attitudes towards tourism, and—not surprisingly—we discovered that the closer you live to the epicenter of tourist activity in the historic district, the more concerned you are about the negative impacts of tourism.
So, ten years after the release of the most recent Tourism Management Plan, we are poised to analyze the impacts of this industry holistically through the lens of the residents. We are excited to announce our upcoming Future of Responsible Tourism Forum on May the 20th, 6pm, at the Charleston Museum. The event is free and open to the public. HCF President & CEO Winslow Hastie will be joined by Mayor Cogswell and an impressive team from Bloomberg Associates to host a conversation that will launch a Future of Livability and Responsible Tourism initiative. This initiative is led by the city and an array of expert partners from Bloomberg.
We are extremely thankful that Explore Charleston also supports this endeavor. Bloomberg Associates, the consulting arm of Bloomberg Philanthropies, works at no cost with city leaders around the world to help solve complex urban challenges. George Fertitta, the CEO of Bloomberg Associates, along with his colleague Gordon Innes, will personally lead this tourism initiative in Charleston. They will visit Charleston next month to conduct stakeholder interviews, coordinate with advocacy groups and neighborhood associations, and participate in our forum.
As the first city in the country to develop a comprehensive tourism management plan, Charleston is reflecting on its historic successes while considering fresh, innovative strategies from the perspective of its residents in the face of increased visitation. Bloomberg will review local data and conduct research on effective case studies from around the country and the world to help direct their findings. A draft of their assessment will be released in the Fall of 2025 with the goal of folding these recommendations into a new tourism management plan that the city will undertake with the community.