Tourist season never ends on Hilton Head. Is this what we want?

My recent vacation in Alaska, first time in almost 10 years, was a great trip, but I saw the handwriting on the wall for Hilton Head Island as I viewed small and larger towns in Alaska and saw what tourism had done to those wonderful spots in such a short period of time. Only Haines, Alaska, seems to maintain the majority of its small-town flavor, but even that isolated town had been affected by the cruise ships that visit throughout the summer months.

As far as Juneau and Ketchikan were concerned, and even Anchorage, I saw an explosion of tourist-trap-type shops with vendors virtually lined up to waylay visitors as they came down the pier.

I started coming to Hilton Head on a part-time basis in 1992 as a property owner who used my villa only occasionally. Back then, there were quite a few restaurants that actually closed during the winter months because the full-time resident population was not sufficient to keep them open and very few tourists or even part-time owners were here. The island lost some, but it was a wonderful era on Hilton Head Island. Few traffic accidents, low crime rate, just an enjoyable place to be.

Now? Like Washington, D.C., where I spent almost 20 years as a docent at the Smithsonian, we can say that tourist season is Jan. 1 through Dec. 31. Generally speaking, tourist season never ends here.

Is that really what we want for our small town of about 40,000 residents? We need to rethink our priorities.