By ROBERT JUMPER
Tutiyi (Snowbird) and Clyde, N.C.
Wayfinding. The word is self-explanatory. It is about finding your way to people, places, and things. In the tourism industry, it is communicating the path to your attraction, amenity, or accommodation. In the past, that was typically done with signage on or near the location of your desired destination.
The importance of wayfinding signage becomes painfully clear when you are in an unfamiliar restaurant, and you desperately need to find a restroom. In that instance, you want a clearly marked path to the facilities, because there may be no time to waste. You want to get to your destination as quickly and with as few obstacles as possible. A wrong turn could spell disaster.
Humor aside, wayfinding signage is an essential part of government’s responsibility to the community and critical to the success of small and large businesses that depend on their clients coming to their establishments to buy products and services. The government should ensure that essential service facilities are easily found by those seeking them. For example, community members and visitors alike should not have to wonder where urgent care or the hospital is in their community. Service buildings like courthouses, housing offices, legal assistance, social services, food services, and official records should be marked with signage from every direction of travel to the facilities. The community would benefit from having wayfinding signage for even seemingly well-known places like the Council House.
Surely, technology has lessened the significance of wayfinding signage. Global Positioning Satellite technology has come a long way in the past 20 years, allowing most people and vehicles to navigate to destinations regardless of any lack of directional signage. Still, not everyone uses GPS and many like the ease, convenience, and reassurance of signage on the ground letting us know we are indeed on the right track to our destination. Believe it or not, GPS can and does get it wrong from time to time. More than once, I’ve ended up in a field, miles from where I was supposed to be because I followed the GPS directions to the exclusion of common sense.
Over the course of a couple of decades working on the Qualla Boundary, I have been stopped several times by people wanting to know how to get to attractions in Cherokee. Many of those inquiries have been about directions to the casino.
Back in the day (late 1990s to early 2000s), the governmental tourism office worked with local businesses to create directional signs in Cherokee. Some of you who have been around awhile remember the dark brown signs with gray arrowheads on them. The signs featured attractions, craft shops, and restaurants who paid rent for space for the name of their business on a sign with an arrowhead pointing in the direction of their business. These signs were very popular in the Cherokee business community because they were a point of contact with potential customers that would literally point the client to the business.
I assume that there hasn’t been a study on how much lost business is due to people not easily finding the place that they are looking for, but it would be worth looking into. I was always surprised and reminded of how significant wayfinding signage is when those visitors would stop and ask me where our casino is located. The casino, which some refer to as the cash cow or golden goose, is a life-changing element of tribal life. It’s survival and our livelihood as tribal members is dependent on people finding and gaming in that facility. As critical to the economy of our tribe as the casino is, it makes one wonder why we don’t have LED dollar or poker chip symbols embedded into the roadways in all directions leading to the parking lot of our gaming facility.
The casino is a unique business. It isn’t like you can miss ours and stumble on another down the road (yet). But it is risky business when you make your prospective bread winners search for you. Now if you are a craft shop or restaurant, the signage game becomes even more critical. If I drive and miss a craft shop that I am looking for, I don’t sweat it, there will be another one just up the road. The same is true for finding eats. When people are hungry, they will look for and stop wherever they can find food if they don’t have a clear path marked to a particular kind of chow. But if I am hungry and I have a craving for Mexican food, for example, signage might be the difference between me getting a great Enchilada Supremas or settling for something quick and unfulfilling at the first greasy spoon that I encounter on the road.
One of the most important facilities in the tourism industry is the welcome center (still called the visitors’ center in some municipalities). This is typically the first stop for a visitor when they reach their desired basecamp for vacation. In a typical visitor center, you will find examples of the arts and culture of a destination, literature about the various amenities and attractions, and in some, like our own Cherokee Welcome Center, the visitor will find welcome center specialists who have been trained and are knowledgeable in answering visitor questions about attraction locations, cultural and historical questions, and available amenities. Those center specialists are typically the first impression any visitor gets of our town and community. They represent us to the visiting world.
Now, from a tourism standpoint, doesn’t it make sense to at least have a good signage trail that will lead visitors to a welcome center? But we don’t have prominent signage for that or other facilities, for the most part. Even one of our most important cultural attractions, the Museum of the Cherokee People, has taken down its roadside signage (due to a conflict with the government).
Like the Welcome Center specialists, wayfinding signage is a first impression of our community. The poor condition or lack of it reflects the importance we place on our care for the visiting public. If the first thing a visitor sees is shabby dilapidated signs and buildings, that communicates a message to those entering our lands. If they must fight their smartphones to get directions instead of having prominent, attractive wayfinding signage to guide them, they will make judgements on whether they stay and fight or plan their next trip for another destination that might care a little more about their time and safety.
Wayfinding signage is routinely discussed in the halls of our government. I can recall being on committees planning directional signage for our community as far back as 2002 (that is when I joined the tribal workforce). I have brought the importance of directional signage to your attention in more than a few commentaries. I have advocated for it in tribal government. If I could, I would make the signs and post them myself, but I am pretty sure that would violate the sign ordinance. So, it is up to you. Contact your representative in Dinilawigi, your Ugvwiyuhi and Taline Ugvwiyu. Let them know that you know how important wayfinding signage is to the wellbeing of our community. Who knows? They may just see it as a sign that they need to get this done.
