In the mid-1980s, when Robert Billington was prowling church basements and council chambers, talking to groups and governments about how tourism could help energize the regional economy of the Blackstone Valley, there were always a few people in the back who joked about his sanity.

But last week, he was in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, at the annual convention of the World Travel and Tourism Council, a trade group of 100 of the world’s biggest tourism companies. He wasn’t there to be mocked but to receive, on behalf of the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council, the international organization’s Destination Award for 2008.

The Blackstone Valley council won the award for helping craft an economic redevelopment strategy for an old, decaying mill region that had been hobbled by the departure of major businesses and a polluted environment.

The marketing philosophy, Billington said, was: Don’t try to make the region something it wasn’t, but find what was there naturally and enhance it. That meant looking at old mill buildings not as decaying structures but artifacts of a different historical era, things to be restored and celebrated, not torn down.

Instead of lamenting the polluted condition of the river, he said the idea was to get conservation and businesses groups together to organize cleanup efforts to improve the river and enhance its attractiveness as a scenic and recreational resource.

“If you can make it a good place to visit,” Billington said, “it can be a good place to start a business. And a good place to live.”

WTTC award judge Costas Christ said the Blackstone council won not just because of what it had done, but because of the obstacles it overcame. He said anyone who looked at the Blackstone Valley in the late 1970s, with its abandoned textile mills and polluted river, wouldn’t think that tourism would even be possible

“Through a destination stewardship approach to tourism development, including the preservation of the area’s natural, cultural and historical heritage, the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council has succeeded in uniting a community and awakening it to its new economic potential,” the international group said in its announcement of the award.

The WTTC is made up of 100 chief executive officers and or chairs of such international tourism companies as Marriott hotels, British Airways, the Disney Co.’s parks and resorts and American Express. The group’s Destination Award goes to a town or region that has used tourism to combine social, cultural, environmental and economic factors into development through a “multi-stakeholder process.” The Blackstone council was competing with the Rinjani Trek Ecotourism Programme, of Indonesia, and the Canadian town of Bouctouche, in New Brunswick.

Jeff Clarke, the president and chief executive officer of Travelport, and international travel services company that owns nearly one-half of Orbitz, said the Destination Award was intended to honor effective tourism marketing and environmental awareness.

“With growing climate concerns, delivering sustainable travel has emerged as an important responsibility for our industry,” Clarke said. “As travelers’ awareness of their impact on the environment increases, we face a formidable challenge in providing environmentally conscious services and at the same time, promoting the importance of tourism to economic development, cultural understanding and peace among nations.”

“This is a big deal,” said Jan H. Reitsma, executive director of the federally financed Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor Commission.

Billington said though the award was given to the Blackstone Valley council, the work it honored had been done by numerous private and public groups, such as the corridor commission, the region’s municipal governments, businesses, historical and environmental preservation groups.

“We don’t take this bow alone,” Billington said. “We take it on behalf of all the entities we represent.”

Michael Cassidy, Pawtucket’s planning director, said Billington’s council may not be alone now, but back in the mid-1980s, when Billington first started his campaign, it was.

“When he told people he was going to take people on rides on the Blackstone River, he was lucky they didn’t put him in a straitjacket,” Cassidy said.

But over the years, the region’s businesses and governments bought into the tourism council’s ideas, he said. The creation of the corridor commission, which now includes 24 municipalities in two states, and its access to federal funds that could be channeled into planning and development projects in the Blackstone Valley were important, Cassidy said, but it was Billington’s council where the ideas were coming from.

“The tourism council was at the forefront of all that stuff,” he said.

jhill@projo.com