After a yr of document tourism, the town of Covington was chosen to be the duvet of the small cities part of the 2025 Georgia State Journey Information.
Every year, the governor receives the primary copy of the State Journey Information. On Jan. 13, Laura Sullivan, the town of Covington’s tourism coordinator, was invited to the Capitol to signify Covington in a particular unveiling presentation of the information.
“It is such an honor that they selected us [Covington] to be one in all their covers as a result of they might choose any of the small cities within the state and so they selected Covington due to all the cool issues that we’ve occurring,” Sullivan mentioned.
Discover Georgia is the tourism division of the Georgia Division of Financial Improvement. It oversees tourism all through the state and releases an official state journey information yearly.
The information highlights 4 areas in Georgia—one metropolis, one small city, one mountain vacation spot and one seashore vacation spot. Every year’s chosen areas are on the within cowl web page of their respective sections.
Sullivan bought to see all the duvet artwork on show because the governor’s workplace acknowledged tourism efforts throughout the state. She additionally bought to take pictures with the paintings and Governor Brian Kemp.
“Once we took our image collectively, he [Kemp] mentioned ‘If I can solely inform you about what number of instances I’ve walked across the sq.’ and that simply felt so cool to listen to—the governor of the state understanding personally our metropolis,” Sullivan mentioned. “That is simply unimaginable.”
The 2025 information includes a image of Covington’s iconic clock tower because the small city attraction alongside Columbus, Toccoa Falls and Sapelo Island.
“When individuals open the information to discover a charming small city to go to, our nice metropolis would be the first image they’ll see!” mentioned Allen Martin, downtown coordinator for the town of Covington, on Fb.
Within the coming week, free copies of the information will likely be out there for pickup in Covington’s Customer Middle, and they’re going to quickly be distributed to each customer middle within the state of Georgia.
In 2024, Uncover Covington, the town’s tourism spearhead, recorded 132,422 friends passing by way of Covington’s Customer Middle. It is a 12 % enhance from 2023. Guests got here from all 50 U.S. states in addition to from 76 worldwide nations.
The town estimates that 75 % of tourism is due to its movie scene. Primarily, individuals are drawn in by the favored tv sequence “The Dukes of Hazzard,” “Within the Warmth of the Evening” and “The Vampire Diaries.”
“The Uncover Covington board works actually onerous to convey individuals from all around the world to come back to Covington, and I feel that simply up to now couple of years we have seen quite a lot of movie tourism,” Sullivan mentioned. “They have an inclination to make use of a number of addresses which are very shut collectively that individuals can see quite a bit whereas they’re right here, and I simply suppose that the movie trade and movie tourism is what actually retains people coming again.”
The town’s leisure hub could have drawn individuals in, however Covington’s tourism group has put within the hours to make sure that guests need to keep. As a Covington native herself, Sullivan is aware of the town is well worth the go to.
“I’m so proud to have the ability to stay in my hometown and work in my hometown and be part of the journey to get such a recognition from the state tourism workplace,” Sullivan mentioned. “I am simply so pleased with the work that we do and to see it on this actually huge stage it is sort of surreal.”
