WWTourofHomes.com now online so tour-goers can plan their visit

A new website that was developed locally to help promote the Washington Wilkes Spring Tour of Homes is now online at www.wwtourofhomes.com. Tourists can now access information about the tour instantly anywhere in the world and plan their visits to Washington with up-to-date details about the featured homes and attractions.

A printable order form is included for mail-in ticket orders and online ordering is planned for sometime in the future but not currently available.

Patterned after the Tour of Homes’ print brochure and The NewsReporter’s annual tour supplement, the website is still too new to enjoy the services of top search engines on the internet. However, an increasing number of links at other more well-known sites are driving more and more traffic to wwtourofhomes.com each day. For example, there is a photo link at the top of The News-Reporter’s website, there are at least two links at washingtonwilkes.org, and other links are already active while still more are planned at the state level.

In addition to the information about the tour and its attractions, the website offers lists of accommodations, dining establishments, shops and antique dealers, and real estate agencies. There are also opportunities offered there for those businesses to enhance their listings with links and promotional information of their own.

A portion of all revenue generated by listings and advertisements will be given directly to the Tour of Homes Committee to use at its discretion. Remaining revenue will be used to defray the costs associated with hosting fees, marketing, and site maintenance and development.

There was no cost to the Tour of Homes for the site’s creation, development, or position on the internet and there never will be, according to publisher Sparky Newsome, who is the site’s designer. He was approached early in the year by Kiwanis Club members Mark Waters and Bill Steed who were exploring the possibilities of a tour website.

“This is something I have wanted to do for a long time, and this gave me an excuse to do it,” Newsome said. “Hopefully, it will add a lot to the promotion of the tour and maybe even provide some revenue over and above ticket sales.”