Communities around the country will be holding events in honor of National Tourism Week, May 5-11.

As a part of the festivities, the communities of Ames, Boone and Story City will be joining together for a bus tour featuring some of the tourists attractions unique to the area on Wednesday, which is National Tourism Day.

Some of the points of interest that will be spotlighted on the tour include Country Relics near Stanhope and the Story City Carousel, said Rich Harter, executive director of the Ames Convention and Visitors Bureau.

A major part of the day will consist of the tour of Ames hosted by local historian Farwell Brown. He will lead the group on a tour of the Farmhouse museum on the Iowa State campus, the Octagon Center, 427 Douglas Ave., and other historical parts of Ames.

Other than the one-day tour, Harter said, the chamber is not planning anything special for the week because it is trying to deal with improving tourism service on a daily basis instead of once a year.

“What we do is an ongoing process. This is just one significant effort. We try to do this type of thing all of the time,” Harter said.

In an effort to improve the quality of the visitor’s experience in the area, the tour contacted people who worked in popular areas in the community and asked them to provide tourist information.

After the tour, the employees will have learned enough about the communities to direct a visitor to wherever his or her interests may lie, Harter said.

As a part of this effort, the organizers will be putting together a resource book about some of the interesting and historical facts of Ames. The information that is gathered will then be shared through word of mouth and distributing the literature via hotels, convenience stores and other places.

“We need to understand what is here and what people want to do to satisfy them,” Harter said. “We want to be able to provide better services to visitors and to the community. Hopefully this will enable us to keep people here a little longer.”