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Tour Helps Business

I am writing to clarify information about The Constitutional Walking Tour of Philadelphia as reported in "Museums in State Seek Game Plan to Lure Visitors" (March 28).

As a Top 25 tourist attraction, as ranked by the Philadelphia Business Journal, The Constitutional is Philadelphia's best sightseeing experience, providing a tour of many sites in the Independence National Historical Park area including the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall and the Betsy Ross House. It was reported that Gary Esolen, "a consultant to Pennsylvania's tourism office," had "heard complaints that the walking tour is siphoning away potential visitors and revenue to Philadelphia's historic sites."

The Constitutional does just the opposite with respect to "siphoning away" visitors from sites. Statistics show that the average visitor to Independence Park visits just the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. To address this shortcoming and showcase Philadelphia's historical assets, The Constitutional was founded to increase the understanding of Philadelphia's historically significant sites and increase the number of sites visited per visitor.

The Constitutional provides visitors with an overview of Independence Park that enables them to decide which sites to visit in more depth. The Constitutional has generated well over 1 million historic site visits in Historic Philadelphia. For the record, we believe that Mr. Esolen's characterizations are completely off base. I would invite him and others to see why the Chicago Tribune stated, "No visit to Philadelphia is complete without taking a Constitutional Guided Walking Tour, a 75-minute, mile and a quarter stroll that puts 15 historic sites ... in perspective."

JONATHAN H. BARI
President
The Constitutional Walking Tour of Philadelphia