ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, December 24, 1996 TAG: 9612240060
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON STAFF WRITER
The Roanoke Valley's next tourism director will come from Iowa's Amana Colonies region, the German village where the Amana refrigerator business started.
Dave Kjolhede has been named to succeed Martha Mackey as executive director of the Roanoke Valley Convention & Visitors Bureau. Mackey resigned June 17 after disagreements with some people in the hotel industry.
Kjolhede now works 21 miles southwest of Cedar Rapids at one of Iowa's leading tourist attractions. The quaint Amana Colonies settlement - seven villages with 1,700 inhabitants - grew from a religious group that came from Germany about 1842. Today, it includes shops, nine wineries and six museums. A nearby Amana plant makes refrigerators, freezers and microwave ovens.
Before arriving there in 1994, Kjolhede ran the tourism office of Grand Forks, N.D., for five years. He did marketing for the Iowa tourism office for 11 years before that. He is 47, single and a native Iowan who grew up on a dairy farm. His name, of Danish origin, is pronounced COLE-heed.
A panel of tourism, business and government officials selected Kjolhede on Friday, the bureau confirmed Monday. He will begin work in Roanoke on Feb. 3, heading the 12-year-old nonprofit organization that runs a visitor center downtown and courts business and pleasure travelers and conventions. The bureau paid Mackey about $60,000 per year; what Kjolhede will get was not disclosed.
In a phone interview Monday, Kjolhede said he knew the Roanoke area's reputation for tourism before he applied for the job, but didn't realize until his interviews how pretty the region is.
"What little I've been exposed to, the people and the city - the whole valley - I'm very impressed with it, and I'm eager to get involved and start working," he said.
Beth Poff, president of the bureau's board of directors, took him to the Blue Ridge Parkway, Mill Mountain Star and past the Roanoke and Salem civic centers. He stayed at Hotel Roanoke and visited Center in the Square.
"I liked him right away," Poff said. "He's real comfortable with people."
Rich Harter, who runs the Ames, Iowa, tourism office, said: "He's got just a great instinct for the industry. Very good team builder. Understands the issue of leadership and bringing people together."
Nancy Landis, head of the Iowa state tourism division, said, "He does an excellent job in working with people and for the tourism industry in Iowa."
Kjolhede will start with two tasks. The bureau's marketing program needs review and the organization needs a larger budget, Poff said.
The budget is $700,000, from which seven full-time and four part-time employees are paid. Most of the money comes from Roanoke and Roanoke County taxpayers, and from dues paid by 115 member businesses and organizations. But the total is an insignificant fraction of what tourists spend locally. People taking in attractions spent $312 million in 1995 in Roanoke, Salem, Roanoke County and Botetourt County, state estimates show.
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