Sao Paulo - On a Brazilian TV channel playing in a hotel lounge, an American was stammering away. That's when Savannah's chief tourism guru sidled over to his Atlanta counterpart, a broad grin giving away his intention.
"I heard that guy is from Atlanta," Joe Marinelli, president of Visit Savannah, told William Pate, head of Atlanta's Convention and Visitor's Bureau.
"Aren't you guys having an outbreak of yellow fever?" Pate shot back, elbowing him in the side.
The constant ribbing between the two rivals has been a humorous undercurrent of the state's weeklong trade mission to Brazil. The delegation, led by Gov. Nathan Deal, hopes to bring back new business for the state. But it's also aimed at enticing more Brazilian tourists to make the trek to Georgia.
About 80,000 Brazilians visit Georgia every year, making it the third-largest source of tourists for the state. Tourism officials, who also include Frank Poe of the Georgia World Congress Center, have fanned out to meetings in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro to entice tour guides and travel agents to bring more groups to Georgia.
Brazilians are more lucrative than the average visitor, too.
"Not only do they come, but they stay longer and spend more than the average tourist," said Deal.
The Savannah and Atlanta tourism factions weren't always as cozy. Marinelli said that when he arrived in Savannah in 2007, the two cities were as likely to compete over business as to work together.
"There's a collaboration there that I think hasn't existed in the past," said Marinelli. "When we go to industry shows and we're having so much fun, people see that - and they want to be a part of it."
There's more partnership in the works. Pate said the two cities are working with airport officials in Atlanta to develop more travel packages to entice visitors to the capital to head to the coast. After all, he said, some of the 50 million or so visitors projected to land in Atlanta this year will end up heading to the coast.
The two also vow to continue to give each other a hard time.
The other day, a stone-faced Pate told Marinelli of a phony computer snafu. All of the visitors to Savannah's web portal had accidentally been redirected to Atlanta's site.
Without missing a beat, Marinelli fired back.
"We've had too much business anyways."
About the Author
