Charleston and Panama City — two cities that have entirely different cultures, attractions and offer very different experiences to those who visit. But something they do share is a reliance on tourism.

So what lessons can Charleston's $13 billion industry teach younger and smaller towns? And what can the Holy City learn in return?

The impact of tourism is something Charleston will be taking a closer look at in the year ahead. But it's something Daniel Guttentag, a professor and director of the College of Charleston's Office of Tourism Analysis, examined as he spent last school year teaching tourism at ISAE University in Panama City. While there, he researched Indigenous tourism throughout the country as part of a Fulbright scholarship.

The Fulbright Program offers professionals of all backgrounds and fields the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research abroad. It's funded primarily by an annual appropriation made by the U.S. Congress to the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. However, the Trump administration stopped State Department funding for scholarships like the Fulbright with little insight as to what the future holds for the programs, The New York Times reported.

Guttentag sat down with The Post and Courier and shared some of what he learned from his time overseas.

Lessons from Panama

Many of the areas around Panama City are rural Indigenous communities looking to attract visitors who want an immersive small-town experience with accessible outdoor activities like hiking or camping, he said. To support discussion, Guttentag shared from his decades-long experience in Charleston how to grow tourism in a way that respects the culture that made it special in the first place.

Panama at best is known for its artificial canal, its international shipping port and its capital and largest city, Panama City. But the country's also renowned as a growing eco-tourism hotspot that attracts more than 2 million international visitors per year, according to the country's tourism website.

Unlike Charleston, which attracts more domestic visitors, Panama's tourism thrives on vacationers traveling internationally, Guttentag said.

"It was fun to adapt and apply lectures I've given in Charleston to tourism within Panama, with the added challenge of lecturing in Spanish," he said. "There are communities there that see tourism as a ticket to develop their community though the money tourism brings in."

As a guest lecturer he worked closely with students and leaders of ISAE University's budding tourism program, centered on how to capitalize on and manage tourism.

His research project in Panama involved an extensive dive into how Panamanian Indigenous tourism enterprises can harness technology — such as websites, social media, reservation software — to strengthen the country's industry. He also identified potential barriers hindering hospitality growth and helped even the smallest artisans learn how to better market their handmade goods.

"When you have a community in a pristine, mostly untouched mountain area, tourism is an opportunity for them to earn money from their natural environment without damaging it in the way that mining, logging or other industries would," Guttentag said. "While there are a lot of benefits to eco-tourism, there's also dangers, too."

Tourism, for better or worse

Overtourism is one of the biggest concerns, and it is an issue hospitality-driven cities and countries across the world worry about.

Anti-tourism protests in Spain made headlines last year after Barcelona residents held public demonstrations to urge political leaders to take "tourism degrowth" measures like higher tourism taxes, limits on cruise ships and restrictions on short-term housing rentals, CNBC reported.

The question of how many visitors is too many is often discussed among hospitality leaders here in Charleston. The region's visitors bureau, Explore Charleston, reported that in the last several years while visitors surpassed 7.9 million annually, the region packed a far greater economic punch using the quality-over-quantity approach to tourism.

"For a destination to be truly great, the community must first be a wonderful place to live," said Helen Hill, president and CEO of Explore Charleston. "While many appealing places to reside may not be ideal vacation spots, the reverse is seldom true. Explore Charleston is committed to promoting and protecting our community, including its sense of place and livability."

Hill said maintaining Charleston's sense of livability is vital to the region's long-term success and the significant economic impact the hospitality industry has.

In Charleston, Guttentag said leaders often talk about managing the levels of tourism because of the industry's impact on crowds, traffic and other metrics of livability.

"Tourism makes a measurable, tangible difference in the livelihood of communities, especially where small businesses are the backbone of the industry," he said.

The city is looking to Bloomberg Associates for new ways to balance tourism and livability concerns. A forum is being held at The Charleston Museum on May 20 to discuss the state of tourism and Charleston's unique challenges.

The effort is part of a partnership with the city, Explore Charleston, Historic Charleston Foundation and Bloomberg Associates. The firm will conduct data-driven research and generate recommendations by the fall, so officials can update the strategic plan for responsible tourism management policies.

“Charleston was the first city in the nation to adopt a tourism management plan back in 1978, and we remain committed to leading the way. Partnering with Bloomberg Associates is an extraordinary opportunity to shape a tourism strategy that not only supports our economy, but also reflects the values of our residents and protects the character of our historic city,” Mayor William Cogswell said in a press release announcing the initiative.

Guttentag, meanwhile, said he returned with a unique perspective when he settled back into his work at the College of Charleston, especially around the power of marketing and the role it plays in growing and managing tourism.

He added how in those rural communities outside of Panama City, a few families can make a huge economic impact versus the several thousand needed to make a dent in Charleston. It wasn't just upgrading websites and technology that successfully attracted visitors to those rural communities, it was how the marketing created a sense of place by featuring what makes that community unique — from the work of artesian residents to experiences like hikes or cultural festivities.

Guttentag's work abroad was quite different from his role in Charleston, which is heavily focused on collecting and interpreting data to provide an overview. In Panama, his role was to use the data to provide solutions to problems the economy was facing.

"The biggest thing I've learned in Charleston that I emphasized in my lectures overseas was the importance of collaboration and how the rising tide lifts all boats," he said.

Reach Megan Fernandes at mfernandes@postandcourier.com.

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Charleston’s popularity has put South Carolina on the map for years, holding the title for best place to visit time and time again.

As short-term rental numbers are rising and hospitality businesses are popping up left and right, what do the growing rates of visitation truly mean for the city and state?

Charleston is generating almost half of the total tourism economic impact in South Carolina, bringing in $14.03 billion in 2024, which is a 7.1% increase from the previous year, according to a study by College of Charleston’s office of tourism.

Let’s talk numbers

In 2024, almost a quarter of Charleston’s economy was attributed to the 7.89 million tourists who came into the region, the study found. Compared to 2023, those numbers are at an all-time high.

Charleston’s tourism industry hit a record for nearly five million hotel room nights sold, maintaining a 70.6% average hotel occupancy rate.

With increased stays came increased rates. According to the study, average hotel rates in Charleston over the past three years have been about $63 higher than 2020 and $30 more than 2019.

Charleston’s market attracted visitors from some of the top metropolitan areas on the East Coast such as Atlanta, New York City and Charlotte, N.C. with other top visiting states including Florida, Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Tennessee and Texas, according to the study.

The Lowcountry profited roughly $1,105 per person visiting the Lowcountry, according to the study.

Hotels weren’t the only vacation lodging to see an increase in the Charleston region as short-term rental popularity saw growth as well. The 9,244 active short-term rentals in the region played a role in visitation rates.

According to AirDNA, the STR revenue increased 11% from May 2023 to May 2024, pulling in about $89,900. Combined, lodging in hotels and STRs contributed $1.55 billion to Charleston overall tourism impact, according to the study.

Charleston from a state perspective

Similar to the history New Orleans represents for France, Charleston is that to the United Kingdom, Duane Parrish, director of Discover SC, said. Much of the culture and architecture mimics that of European cities, hence its unique appeal.

Compared to Columbia and Greenville, Charleston is set up for visitors to be able to reach most tourist attractions within walking distance on the peninsula. Parrish said the walkability for tourists also contributes to decreased traffic on the peninsula.

“What I like to say about population growth is no one moves before being a visitor first,” Parrish said. “So if you have population growth, that generally is preceded by high visitation.”

As 34 people move to Charleston per day, traffic becomes a direct impact of population growth.

“The rush hours for traffic in the morning or afternoon, typically that’s not the visitors,” Parrish said. “Visitors at seven or eight in the morning are having a cup of coffee, that’s mostly local people which traffic infrastructure isn’t able to keep up with… but it’s easier to blame the visitor than it is your neighbor”

Residential benefits of tourism heights

With the tourism industry’s growth, residents of Charleston do stand to profit from each visitor.

Parrish said Charleston sees higher numbers of spending per visitor compared to other areas in the state. With higher spending, the city doesn’t have to rely on as many visitors to see that economic impact.

“You see people that are traveling into our area that are spending more, and that is a positive thing because that continues to impact the tax base,” Dan Blumenstock, director of hotels at Lowcountry Hotels and board chairman for Explore Charleston, said. “The City of Charleston last year said they weren’t going to have to raise property taxes because the hospitality tax was continuing to thrive.”

In addition to increased sales tax contributions, more visitations create more hospitality employment for residents in the region. According to the study, the 2024 tourism industry opened about 1,200 job opportunities.

“The busier we are as hotels and restaurants, the better off it is for the people who are working in our industry as well,” Blumenstock said. “It also impacts career growth because as we are busier that lends itself to being able to sustain someone that maybe got into this industry right out of college and then you see that person growing into some very well and high-paying positions.”

Blumenstock said has also seen Charleston become a hub for “experiential travel,” opening space for industries unique to Charleston such as Crabbing with Tia and Lowcountry Oyster Co. He said one of the businesses he sees grow more recently is breweries and distilleries that create a different atmosphere for visitors and residents alike.

“I’d like to say our industry is the industry of good news,” Blumenstock said. “We’re one that wants to provide unity and bring people together for a great time.”

CHARLESTON — The city's premier art museum has announced a new president and CEO.

H. Alexander Rich has been named as Angela Mack's successor at the Gibbes Museum of Art once she retires in October after a distinguished 44-year tenure.

An eight-month-long process began last fall to fill the position, shared Gibbes Museum of Art Board Chair Spencer Lynch. There were more than 20 listening sessions before even defining criteria for the role, and more than 80 potential candidates were interviewed.

Rich, a native of New York City who worked as a high school apprentice tour guide and intern at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, most recently served as executive director and chief curator of the Ashley Gibson Barnett Museum of Art at Florida Southern College. At the college, he was also chair of the Department of Art History and Museum Studies and associate professor of art history.

Rich also worked at the Whitney Museum of American Art and Brooklyn Museum. He earned his Ph.D. in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University and his Bachelor of Arts from Dartmouth.

“His career is marked by a commitment to advancing the fields of museums and art history through his innovative leadership, scholarly contributions and community engagement," said Lynch. "He is recognized for building valuable relationships with donors and expanding institutional reach globally with major cultural organizations. His experience as a museum director, chief curator, tenured professor, endowed chair and public lecturer demonstrates a strong commitment to fostering cultural and educational growth in the community,”

In addition to all this, Rich is a lifelong art lover, beginning with his childhood cartoonist dreams of being a Disney animator.

"I have loved art and museums for as along as I can remember," Rich told The Post and Courier. "My first memory in life is going to see the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That's my, like, core memory, and The Met, to this day, remains my favorite place on Earth."

As a teenager, Rich's mom had already declared that one day he would be a museum director.

"Most kids wanted to be an astronaut," said Rich. "I didn't want to be an astronaut. I didn't know art history was a thing at that point, it was just I saw the world through art."

At age 16, he became a high school apprentice at The Met. During his first term at Dartmouth, he took ancient Egyptian art even though he was an English major.

"I wrote on Edward Hopper's paintings in comparison with J.D. Salinger's 'Franny and Zooey' and Robert Frost poems," he said of one of his papers. "For me, that interdisciplinary aspect made a lot of sense."

That first summer as a rising sophomore, Rich became the youngest intern at The Whitney, the program typically reserved for rising juniors and seniors.

"I was taught early on by my parents: Don't write yourself out of things, you never know might happen," he said.

Then he studied abroad in Florence his junior year before advancing to the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University to get his Ph.D. During grad school, he worked at the Whitney and then at the Brooklyn Museum before again stepping into the classroom — this time at age 25 and behind the podium.

At Florida Southern University, he rose in the ranks, eventually serving as a full-time professor, then chair of the department, as well as the curator and director of galleries at the college's Ashley Gibson Barnett Museum of Art, a Smithsonian affiliate. There, he grew the collection by 33 percent, tripled the exhibition space and fundraised $18 million in a three-year period. Throughout, he leaned into and continued to develop the educational component of it.

The expansion was similar to one the Gibbes is about to take on in Charleston as it acquires the building next door, absorbing about 8,000 square feet of new space. The $3 million purchase finalized in January was split by the city of Charleston (a co-owner of the Gibbes) and the Carolina Art Association. The historic structure at 141 Meeting St., built in 1878 and designed by renowned local architect E.B. White, is between the museum and the neighboring American Gardens urban park that hospitality investor Ben Navarro is developing to the north.

The excitement surrounding this endeavor is what inspired Rich to apply to the Charleston job.

"I hope I'm a visionary leader," he shared. "As we move into and more deeply into the 21st century and as we think about the new conditions for museums and new responsibilities of museums to tell more holistic stories and to think about how to engage audiences in new ways … I love that as a project."

Rich, his husband, his almost-2-year-old son and his dog are currently planning house hunting trips to Charleston. Rich said he's looking forward to garnering feedback during his first few months in the job, meeting the people of this city and learning more about what stories need to be told here.

A lot of change is ahead, but Rich is ready to paint a new chapter.

CHARLESTON COUNTY, S.C. (WCSC) - The ups and downs when it comes to the Trump Administration’s tariffs have left Americans with whiplash, wondering what’s going to happen next.

And not just the consumer, but businesses are also holding their breath, waiting to see where the tariffs are going to land and how they could be impacted.

Charleston is a port city. In fact, it’s the deepest harbor on the East Coast, allowing for the largest fully loaded container ships in the world to call on the port, no matter the tide. But with tariffs on imported goods, it has many wondering if we could be seeing the effects in our own backyard.

The trucking industry plays a vital role in the state’s economy.

Rick Todd, President and CEO of the South Carolina Trucking Association, says we’re in a two-plus year worst ever freight and rate trough.

“Rates really are tied to freight volumes,” Todd says. “If you’ve got plenty of freight, then our pricing power is pretty good. If there’s a limited amount of freight, then truckers are really scrambling trying to find something to haul, and so they’re willing to take less to do it, and that means less profit. And you do not want a low profit or a marginal trucking industry.”

Todd says the silver lining — at least right now — is that the East Coast is less impacted by these tariffs than the West Coast.

“We’re not really dealing with it,” Todd says. “We’re watching, and it is creating intense uncertainty. There’s nothing we can do about it other than just go about our normal business, which, if you’re intermodal, you deal in trade, import, export movements, warehousing, that kind of thing, then you’ve been slow for a couple of weeks. And as the freight that did come in or rushed out in advance of the tariffs, once it flushes its way through railroads and through the truck system, then there’s not that much coming behind it. And so that’s when people start to get worried, and we’re in that middle zone right now.

But it’s the uncertainty that has people worried.

“If Liberation Day, April 2, was enforced as initially threatened or discussed, we would be in a recession, a full-blown recession, some say even maybe in a stagflation period by summertime,” Todd says. “Obviously, that’s worst-case scenario. Best-case scenario is that these agreements get worked out quickly. We suffered that little period there where the supply chain kind of froze temporarily, and then it picked back up, and it was just maybe a few-week glitch. But I’m not going to predict anything.”

And that’s why we talked with the expert — Research Economist Joey Von Nessen from the University of South Carolina. He explains the pros and cons of tariffs, which are essentially a tax on you.

“The costs typically appear first in terms of the higher prices that are passed along to consumers,” Von Nessen says. “But we can see benefits, but those typically arrive later, and perhaps several years later, because the benefits derive from additional investments in the U.S. in different regions throughout the country. And local regions can really benefit when new manufacturing investments generate jobs and income for their local residents and spur economic activity. But that takes a long period of time because companies have to make those investment decisions, and they have to actually build a facility. And so that is a years-long process in many cases.”

One thing he, and other economists, are keeping an eye on is a possible recession.

“The main factor to look for is inflation,” Von Nessen says. “That’s the single variable, if you were going to pick one that we need to be tracking to give us some insight into how much the economy may slow in the second half of the year. On average, we’ve seen prices rise about 25% since 2019, and wages have gone up by about 20%. So consumers are still trying to claw back that lost purchasing power and if tariffs lead to increased prices this summer, then that’s going to make it more challenging for consumers to get that purchasing power back, which increases the likelihood that they will pull back on spending and slow the economy and potentially move us towards a recession. Now, we don’t know that that’s going to happen, but that is the risk.”

Overall, Von Nessen says he gives South Carolina’s economy a B+ right now.

“Through the end of the first quarter, we still see a stable, thriving economy in the state and to a lesser extent at the national level as well,” Von Nessen says. “Consumer spending overall has held up well. In South Carolina, we continue to have historically low unemployment and very strong wage growth. So, across most metrics, South Carolina’s economy continues to perform well. And the question is, will that continue as we move into the summer months? And the key variable there is inflation. If inflation begins to tick back up between now and the summer, then that suggests that we may see a pullback in economic activity. If it doesn’t, then we are actually well-positioned as we move into the second half of the year.”

Von Nessen says for the consumer, it’s good to be cautious. But we are still in that wait-and-see period.

Copyright 2025 WCSC. All rights reserved.

MUSC e.a.t.s. is an emergency food pantry program started at MUSC through the innovation of Dr. Stephanie Kwon and Dr. Annie Andrews. The physicians were awarded a Women & Children's Excellence Grant to open the first food pantry at Shawn Jenkins Children's Hospital Emergency Department in October 2021. Since that time the program has expanded with the opening of a pantry at the R. Keith Summey Medical Pavilion in July 2022, followed by several smaller clinics on Charleston's campus. The pantries provide emergency food assistance to patients and their families who screen positive for food insecurity during their visit and indicate they would like to take home a shelf-stable bag of food.

MUSC partners with the Lowcountry Food Bank's Food for Health program to stock the pantries with shelf-stable, nutritious food. Our MUSC volunteers help pack the bags and stock the shelves on a monthly basis. On ground the pantries are coordinated and run through the Office of Health Promotion.

A generous donation to our program from Humana Healthy Horizons of South Carolina allowed our program to expand to additional MUSC pediatric clinics in late 2023.

If you have any questions about the program or would like to make a donation, please email Laura Nance at nancel@musc.edu.