'I'll see ya'll later': Reporter heading to NYC

Tourism

'Y'all."

Y'all ... y'all ... y'all ... y'all." They just kept coming.

It was five years ago this week and I was listening to Gov. Mark Sanford address Charleston's tourism leaders for the first time. To a "swamp Yankee" from Connecticut who had only been to South Carolina for two days of job interviews, the folksy colloquialism seemed a strange choice for such a formal setting.

I've been thinking about that day a lot recently because I don't even notice a "y'all" anymore, and because I won't be hearing them for a while.

I'm trading palmetto bugs for regular old cockroaches — heading to New York City to study business for a year at Columbia University.

The move has brought me back to July 2003 and all that has happened on the tourism beat since. When I arrived, Katrina was just a nice name for a baby. Al Parish was a free man, pontificating on the Charleston economy. Booze was measured in mini-bottles. You could still drive a rickety roller coaster of a bridge between Mount Pleasant and the peninsula. A dollar bought almost one euro. And you could still buy a gallon of gas for less than $1.50.

Johnson & Wales had yet to bolt to Charlotte. And its replacement, a campus of the Arts Institute, was years off. Likewise, Trident Technical College's massive culinary center was still in the simmering stage.

Kiawah's crown lodging jewel — the Sanctuary hotel — was more than a year away from opening, and the island resort had yet to win rights to the 2012 PGA Championship. Wild Dunes Resort had not started the $75 million condo development that now graces its property. The Woodlands Resort & Inn had not yet grabbed its fifth star from the white-glove staff at Mobil Travel Guide. And the average room at a Charleston County hotel cost about $105, roughly one-third less than it does now.

At the airport, Independence Air had yet to launch with its $69 fares ... and then go bankrupt. AirTran was still duking it out with Delta in Atlanta and balking at efforts to lure it to the Lowcountry. And the Charleston terminal did not yet have its three-story parking deck or the massive factory at the end of the runway cranking out pieces of Boeing Co. 's new 787 jet.

As for attractions, crews had yet to refurbish Charles Towne Landing and build an interpretive center. Patriots Point had yet to build its Congressional Medal of Honor Museum. The city still had a lock on the old Queen Street building that would become the Old Slave Mart Museum. The IMAX theatre was still showing films down by the South Carolina Aquarium. And the International Center for Birds of Prey was still circling, looking for a nesting place.

The Charleston Food+Wine Festival and the Charleston International Antiques Show weren't even on the calendar.

Thankfully, there was not much of a hurricane to recall.

Most notably, when I came here many of my family and friends said things like: "Charleston, now that's North Carolina right?" I seldom hear anything similar when I talk to folks from "off" these days.

It has been an exciting privilege to chronicle Charleston's growing prominence among U.S. destinations.

And when it came to dealing with a pesky reporter short on Southern charm, folks in the tourism industry here gave new meaning to the term "hospitality."

For that I am thankful

I'll see y'all later.