With the summer season over and the fall season coming to a close, Mike Farmer, tourism/publicity director for the Town of Webb, recently discussed his tourism marketing strategy and how he believes Governor Cuomo’s $60 million New York State tourism campaign has contributed to the local economy.
Since the campaign’s announcement in May, Cuomo has showcased the Adirondacks in press releases, press conferences and television ads, initiated and participated in the Adirondack Challenge whitewater race, and started an international marketing campaign in the United Kingdom for I Love NY that includes the Adirondacks.
“His job is to shine a spotlight on the Adirondacks, which he has done both nationally and internationally,” Farmer said.
Cuomo has also laid out a strategy to target points of entry, working with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Port Authority to create kiosks and brand awareness of the Adirondacks in an effort to entice more of the 56 million visitors to New York City to come upstate.
“Governor Cuomo can go out and approach markets that I cannot even touch and once they are in NYS, I want them in the ADKS, which he’s already helping with,” he said.
In line with Cuomo’s campaign to target new markets, Farmer has implemented a new advertising campaign in Albany’s Capital District and Saratoga Springs.
“I want to talk to the people that are somewhat familiar with us—or want to be—and I want to grab their interest.”
In addition Farmer says he advertises heavily to the existing market.
“I want to treat them really well, I want to show them the new stuff that we have developed since they last came here and I want them to go home and tell everybody they know, ‘this is where we go.’”
Another objective coming out of the tourism campaign is to make tourism more regional in nature to diminish the competition among counties.
“This sounds a lot like our Adirondack Base Camp concept—the marketing of the corridor from Forestport to Blue Mountain, Indian and Long Lake with Old Forge as the base camp,” he said.
To promote this concept, locally-based Adirondack Mountain Productions has produced a series of short films highlighting the area in different seasons. These are posted on the oldforgeny.com website and run continuously at the Old Forge Visitor’s Center
The results of this marketing effort are sometimes difficult to determine, Farmer said, but he believes that the push from Governor Cuomo and the attention he brought to the Adirondacks this summer has had an impact.
As an example of the campaign’s success, Farmer compared this summer’s activity with last summer’s.
“Although the weather was much better for much longer in 2012, in general this summer was better than last year business-wise. We had a lot of new people through this year. We had a lot of international business,” he said.
As the winter season approaches, Farmer noted that an increased number of people who come up for the winter are also coming up in the summer.
“This market has given us a lot to work with. This is the first year our office sold preseason snowmobile permits all summer long, and we’ve sold 1,500 already,” he said.
Farmer is also marketing more diversity of activities for the winter season, building on the trend that more and more snowmobilers are also spending time skiing at McCauley Mountain Ski Area.
He also wants to continue marketing to those in the ski racing community who became familiar with McCauley the last few years when the local Polar Bear Ski Club hosted the annual Kandahar Ski Races.
Farmer said the superior snowmaking and grooming operations at the mountain are positively noticed by local and visiting racers as well as recreational skiers, and acknowledged McCauley staff member Dave Kress for his exemplary grooming skills.
“Dave is world class in the grooming process. You need that if you don’t have mountains of snow to work with. You need to make the most of what you’ve got—and he does,” Farmer said.
He added that he plans on capitalizing on the snowmaking and grooming operations in his winter campaign.