tourism advisory council meeting monday, january 22 · longwoods’ survey methodology 26...

Tourism Advisory Council Meeting Monday, January 22nd, 2018

633 Third Ave 37th Floor Boardroom

New York, NY 11:00am – 12:30pm

Webcast address: https://livestream.com/vvt2/TAC012218

AGENDA

I. Approval of Minutes Cristyne Nicholas

II. Chair’s Report Cristyne Nicholas a. Meeting overview b. 2018 State of the State

III. Executive Director Report Ross Levi

a. Travel report b. Winter marketing

IV. Market New York Round 7 Kelly Baquerizo

V. Guest Speaker: Longwoods International Michael Erdman & Bob Miron

VI. New Business Next meeting:

Monday, March 12th, 2018 1pm – 2:30pm Empire Plaza Albany, NY

https://livestream.com/vvt2/TAC012218

January 22, 2018

A Division of Empire State Development

1

Tourism Advisory Council Meeting

2

CHAIR’S REPORT

2018 STATE OF THE STATE

3

4

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S REPORT

5

CENTRAL NEW YORK WELCOME CENTER AT DESTINY USA

CENTRAL NEW YORK WELCOME CENTER AT DESTINY USA

6

CENTRAL NEW YORK WELCOME CENTER ARTIFACT EXHIBIT

7

CENTRAL NEW YORK WELCOME CENTER VIDEO WALL

8

CENTRAL NEW YORK WELCOME CENTER DIGITAL KIOSKS AND VIDEO WALL

9

CENTRAL NEW YORK WELCOME CENTER TASTE NY STORE

10

CENTRAL NEW YORK WELCOME CENTER ATTRACTIONS MAP & WALL OF FAME

11

WINTER COMMERCIAL

12

NEW YORK TIMES TRAVEL SHOW

13 New York Times Travel Show – aisle branding

MARKET NEW YORK – ROUND 7 AWARDEES

14

15

TOURISM DATA METHODOLOGY:

HOW & WHY WE COUNT

VISITORS & SPENDING

FEATURED SPEAKERS

16

Robert Miron

Commerce Policy Analyst / Research Manager

I LOVE NEW YORK

Michael Erdman

Senior Vice President of Research

Longwoods International

NYS VISITATION

17

183.4 189.5 196.8 204.3

212.8 219.0 225.0

13.1 13.4

12.7 14.4

14.6 14.8

14.0

100

120

140

160

180

200

220

240

2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

Vis

ita

tio

n in

Millio

ns

Visitation to NYS

2010 – 2016

Domestic International

NYS DIRECT VISITOR SPENDING

18

35 38 40 41 44 44 46

16 16

17 18 19 19

19

$0

$10

$20

$30

$40

$50

$60

$70

2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

Sp

en

din

g in

Billio

ns

Visitor Spending in NYS

2010 – 2016

Domestic International

HOTEL ROOMS SOLD

19

0%

1%

2%

3%

4%

5%

6%

7%

8%

9%

10%

Pe

rce

nt

Inc

rea

se

Rooms Sold Change

NYC, NYS, U.S.

2016 vs. 2015

NYC NYS U.S.

WHY COUNT AND PROFILE VISITORS?

20

Performance Measurement

Visitor volume numbers easy metric to understand

Comparable to other destinations

Assist in allocation of limited marketing resources

Program Justification

Defensible numbers

Competitive industry

Measure economic impact of tourism

MICHAEL ERDMAN, LONGWOODS INTERNATIONAL

21

Senior Vice President of Research

Joined Longwoods in 1986

Extensive experience with

Public policy research

Travel behavior/attitudes measurement

Helped design syndicated Travel USA program

Oversees all Longwoods research

ABOUT LONGWOODS INTERNATIONAL

22

Toronto-based marketing research company

Established 1978 by Dr. Bill Siegel

Tourism is a primary line of business

Clients across United States and Canada

ABOUT LONGWOODS INTERNATIONAL

23

http://www.arizonaguide.com/home.asp

http://www.virginia.org/home.asp

INDUSTRY STANDARD BASIS OF MEASUREMENT

24

World Trade Organization (WTO)

Standardized definitions for the tourism industry

Person trip: a trip by one person in any mode of

transportation (i.e. three people on one trip or three separate

people on different trips both equate to three person-trips

Day trip: 50 mile one-way not part of normal commute

Overnight trip: any overnight stay regardless of type of

lodging; does not need to be hotel or type of paid lodging

Tourism Satellite Accounts

MODERN VISITOR SURVEY TECHNIQUES

25

On-site or street intercepts

Good for single destination/attraction

Smith Travel Research / Accommodations Surveys

Captures higher end segment of paid lodging

Tax based modeling

Measures visitor spending impacts

Small ad hoc surveys (single iteration)

Nationwide online surveys (ongoing)

LONGWOODS’ SURVEY METHODOLOGY

26

Nationwide Sampling

Visitors to New York state come from all states

Large, random, representative samples of U.S. population

Respondent pool can be adjusted to accurately reflect overall

demographic profile of U.S. population

Large Online Consumer Panels

Backed by large companies (P&G, General Foods, J.D. Power, etc.)

Preferred approach for gathering consumer behavior data since 1990s

Estimates line up with data from external sources (STR, hotel lodging

surveys, national border counts)


27

Trip Purpose Identification

Versus generic business / leisure classification

More than just activities on trip

Allows for more targeted marketing

Dealing with Day trips

The issue of underestimation


28

Online Travel Survey

Only ask respondents for most recent 3 months of travel activity

Survey tailored to destination indicating cities & regions specific to client

Maps and other images also tailored for client

Self-Completion via Internet

Speak directly to traveler

Detailed questions

Can show images and video to jog memory

Less interviewer bias


29

Final Estimates through Rigorous Validation Process

Inbound data weighted to census characteristics

Estimate total trips (population x number of trips taken)

Estimate adults and children by party size

Validated against external data (hotel performance, tax receipts in

lodging sectors, visitor counts from other sources)

30

IT’S ALL HERE, ITS ONLY HERE.

TAC minutes 11/13/17 1

Tourism Advisory Council Meeting Minutes

“Draft – Subject to Board Approval” Date: Monday, November 13, 2017 Location: 633 Third Ave, New York, NY Attendance:

TAC Members Cristyne Nicholas, Thomas Mulroy, Ali Sirota, Elinor Tatum, Gail Grimmett, Phone: Peter Carofano, Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel, Alexandra Stanton, Alana Petrocelli, Spike Herzig, Thurman Thomas

ESD / NYS Staff Ross Levi, Executive Director of Tourism; Markly Wilson, International Marketing Director; Lizete Monteiro, VP of Events and Experiential Marketing; Lisa Soto, Director of Tourism Marketing, Licensing, & PR; Kelly Garofalo, Project Manager Tourism Marketing & Partnerships; Anna Pakman, VP of Digital Strategy Marketing

TAC Guests Warren Hart, Director of Greene County Economic Development, Tourism & Planning; Ralph Tragale, Port Authority of NY and NJ; Tom Martinelli, Amtrak by Rail; Ashley Graf, JetBlue; Lisa Reifer, JetBlue; Richard Stone, Trajectory Sports & Media Group LLC; Sarah McGinnis, Maurice D. Hinchey Catskills Interpretive Center; Kayleen Scali, Emerson Resort Spa; Tamara Murray, Emerson Resort Spa; Randy Bourscheidt, NY Public Library Phone: Linda Ayres, Finn Partners; Mark Dorr, NYSHTA; Josiah Brown, New York Welcomes You; Jennifer Walden Weprin, Queens Borough; Kristin Hanifan; Discover Long Island

Meeting called to order: 11:03am I. Approval of minutes – Cristyne Nicholas

Motion to approve by Ali Sirota

Minutes approved with a second by Elinor Tatum

II. Chairman’s Report – Cristyne Nicholas A. Meeting Overview

Welcome, everyone, to the last meeting of the year! Fall has quickly approached since our last meeting, which means we will be hearing from Ross on I LOVE NEW YORK’s fall promotion.

We are also joined today by Markly, who has been very busy the last few months. He will be briefing us on several exciting international marketing efforts.

Following Markly’s report, Lizete will review the summer pod tour, now that it is complete. Additionally, she will be telling us about the opening of two new Welcome Centers.

We will close today’s meeting with a “Catskill’s Spotlight”. As many of you know, in 2016, the governor announced an initiative to increase visitation to the Catskills region. Given we are now more than a year into the program, Ross would like to look back and highlight everything the I LOVE NEW YORK team has done to promote the Catskills.

Last, but certainly not least, we will hear from our special guest, Warren Hart, the Regional TPA for the Catskills. Warren will be giving us a first-hand look at what the regional offices are doing to promote the Catskills region, which we are very excited to hear.

B. 2018 Meeting Dates

For 2018, we have meeting dates proposed. We have cross referenced these as best as we can with holidays. So they're in your packet and we'll be sending an e-mail out to remind everybody, but we hope that you can make the meetings. And as a reminder for TAC members, your obligation is to make all but two meetings. If you know of any major conflicts, please email Kelly, Ross, or myself. Are there any questions?

C. January 2018 Meeting

As I mentioned in our last meeting, we would like to dedicate an upcoming meeting towards discussing how the I LOVE NEW YORK team gathers and reports on overall visitor numbers and other tourism numbers and


data. As of now, we have slated this for the upcoming January meeting. This is an ideal time to discuss the topic given that it is the beginning of the year and the team will be looking back on the 2017 numbers.

This has been a constant question, or a theme, and we just want to make sure that we meet with all of our third-party vendors to evaluate a report that answers questions about how visitation numbers are counted, and how they compare to, let's say, NYC & Company or other states. So, we just want to get all of that together and give you enough notice so that perhaps your friends, members, colleagues could also join us at that.

D. Winter Media Night

Winter Media Night was on October 24th at the Tavern on the Green in Central Park. The event was hosted in partnership with the Ski Areas of New York (SANY) and the Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA).

In total, 10 ski mountains, six regional partners, and 77 media attended the event. Due to the large number of partners attending, a traditional marketplace format was decided upon in order to capitalize on facetime with the attending media.

Winter elements such as an authentic Olympic bobsled and Olympic medals were included in this event in order to present a strong photo opportunity for our journalists.

The event was certainly a success, and provided a powerful opportunity to share New York State’s latest seasonal developments and position I LOVE NEW YORK as the perfect place to take your winter vacation.

For those interested, there is still time to go up to the ORDA facilities in Lake Placid to see some Olympic qualifying events like figure skating and the luge. These competitions will determine the Olympic team, not only for the U.S., but for Canada and some other countries as well.

That is all for me – are there any questions?

III. Executive Director Report—Ross Levi A. Fall Promotion

Believe it or not, we're still in fall, but the biggest part of our fall promotions have already happened. When it comes to tourism, fall is an extremely important season for I LOVE NEW YORK and for New York State—second only to summer. Despite the fact that New York State has one of the longest foliage seasons, fall promotion provides a bit of a challenge as the travel window is rather compressed.

From September to around early November there is peak foliage on any given weekend in New York. Accordingly, we invest a lot into making sure that people know what a great tourism opportunity awaits them here in New York State. That said, I wanted to spend some time talking about a couple of major initiatives we do to promote fall travel in New York State.

One, of course, are television commercials, which are always a core of what we do. We ran two different commercials this fall.

o One specifically focused on the Catskills—part of the commitment that you heard Cristyne allude to—and you're going to hear more directly from myself and Warren about later on. The fall season is very important in the Catskills; it is one of the great places to take advantage of the beautiful fall colors and participate in fall activities.

o The second commercial focused on the idea of special fall events. Again, the idea was to let folks know that any weekend there is something amazing and memory-making to do with your family in New York State. There was also a different strategy involved for this commercial: namely that, unlike summer, travelers tend to take weekend vacations versus week long vacations. Events are a good way to focus on that weekend getaway and still get some overnight hotel stays.

In both commercials, we included a call to action to visit our website at the end.

We're going to take a look at both of those commercials now.

Video presentations

Both commercials ran for six weeks in our drive market. Additionally, they were played during programs with very high viewership. For example, they were played during the Yankee play-off games.

B. Fall Foliage Report

In addition to our commercials, we put out a Fall Foliage report that is featured on our website and social media. We’ve done the Fall Foliage report for many years, but it has recently gained increased notoriety.

The report is compiled from volunteer field observers, or leaf peepers, who tell us what the trees in their area


actually look like. Some of them have been doing it for years. The volunteer leaf peepers are coordinated by Eric Scheffel on our staff, and he does an amazing job.

Based on the volunteer leaf peeper reports, we put together a foliage report with color expectations for the upcoming weekend. This lets people know in real time where are the best places to go to see the leaves. The report is released every Wednesday afternoon so that people can plan for the upcoming weekend.

As far as we know, we're one of the few people that do a foliage report on a statewide basis—unlike ski reports, which many people do. As a result, we get a lot of attention for it.

Through the years it has generated increased newspaper, television and radio interest. We have some examples here of that coverage. I was particularly impressed with the one on the left of the screen; that’s the front page of the Schenectady Daily Gazette. You'll see the whole left column has our map with our logo. When people say you can't buy that kind of advertising, in this case, that's literal. You can't buy advertising on the front page of a newspaper. It was also featured in Metro NYC, which is the free daily paper that I 'm sure most of you see when you go down to the subway.

In addition to our PR coverage, the fall foliage report is one of the most consistently trafficked pages year-round on our website.

Concerning social media engagement, you can see that the weekly foliage report gets hundreds of likes and shares on our Facebook page.

Overall, this is a great campaign that has real effect of generating tourism in New York State for relatively low out-of-pocket cost.

CHAIR NICHOLAS: This may be a question for Finn Partners, but could we do a profile story on individual leaf peepers, these volunteers, on how passionate they are about the whole process? I love that we’re bringing in volunteers from all over the State, and to me, that’s a nice human-interest story.

MS. AYERS: We have done a few before.

CHAIR NICHOLAS: Great. Any other questions for Ross? All right, thank you very much Ross. Markly, going from local to international. Where have you been lately?

IV. International Marketing Report—Markly Wilson A. WTM London

Ross and I just returned from London for the World Travel Mart or WTM. This year was a really successful WTM—not only because of the quantity and quality of the meetings we had but, also, because for the first time we were not telling attendees that Upstate New York exists. We were meeting with folks to help them promote product from New York State, which they already knew about and had on the shelf. This is quite a remarkable change.

We met with tour operators, of course, as well as media. Through these meetings, we found there is great interest in family travel, outdoor travel and LGBT travel in New York State. As such, efforts are going to be much more focused on those subjects from the UK in the near future.

We also met with those who we haven't met with for quite a long time—such as American Airlines and Aer Lingus—because we've been doing so much promotion around the Norwegian Air service at Stewart over the past few months.

One example of the success we had at WTM is through Hayes and Jarvis—the Mercedes Benz of tour operators. They are a 65-year-old company that delivers travel experiences to over 800,000 people every year. Hayes and Jarvis announced and presented us with a two-page spread in their manual about Upstate New York. It's quite remarkable and that's something that we are all very, very proud of.

MR. LEVI: And I'll actually amplify that. Our local partners, who you see pictured on the screen, were a part of a 12-person delegation from across New York State representing regions and attractions. Many of them mentioned to Markly and I how they see this as sort of a tipping point year; the discussions they are having with tour operators are entirely different, as Markly was saying. Instead of having to spend 15 minutes at the beginning of the meeting explaining that there is a New York in addition to New York City, we can immediately discuss how to sell the State. That's a tribute to Markly's work, the work of I LOVE NEW YORK and equally important, the work of all our partners.

B. Trade Missions and FAM Trips

The service by Norwegian Air into Stewart Airport is really a game changer and we’ve done a lot with our TPAs, attractions, and accommodations to pave the way for the service. In mid-September, we organized a


sales mission to Scotland and Ireland in conjunction with Norwegian Airlines.

For the Scotland sales mission, we entered into a marketing partnership with Bar Head Travel, the largest travel agency in Scotland with 77 offices. The objective of our visit was to train the Bar Head Travel staff, as well as the travel agents who sell their product, on how to sell New York State.

We entered into a similar marketing partnership with Tour America for the Ireland sales mission. Not only did we train them on how to sell their New York State product, but we also created relationships with those who are keen to sell our State.

So, it was a very meaningful tour, both for I LOVE NEW YORK and those from Scotland and Ireland.

FAM Tours, as you know, are the main way we get those who sell New York State product to understand and speak with authority about what we have. We have never had as many FAM tours to Upstate New York as we had over the past three months. In total we have had the following FAM trips:

o Scotland and Ireland sales missions o Press from Scotland, Ireland, and England o Individual travel agencies o Both media and tour operators from Australia, Germany, and China.

CHAIR NICHOLAS: Markly, just a quick question. When you're meeting with these tour operators, what are they finding new about New York that they're gravitating towards? What are you pushing?

MR. WILSON: I think in a nutshell, it's the contrast between the New York that they know and the New York that they don't know. The one word that capitalizes on the difference is green. The fact that we have so much water and so many trees; the nature aspect of New York State is quite shocking to many. Apart from that, there are the special interest subjects—be it music, festivals, sports. The main point that they find really interesting and are capitalizing on is that New York State is a great complement to visiting New York City. We like to compare and contrast the skyscrapers of New York City to the trees and the water of New York State.

MR. LEVI: I think there were also the themes around what you can only do in New York State, things you cannot see anywhere else in the world—that's talking about the Strong Museum of Play, the International Center of Comedy, the Corning Museum of Glass, our state parks, etc. There also is a lot of interest in Stonewall 50 and World Pride. Most people seem to know that's coming in 2019 and that the world is going to be looking to come to New York.

MR. MARTINELLI: For the inbound Norwegian Service to Stewart Airport, do you have a sense of the percentage of people that are getting on a bus and going to the Port Authority versus those who are staying in the region or even going to Upstate New York?

MR. WILSON: I would say at least 80 percent are going straight to the City.

MR. MARTINELLI: Okay.

MR. WILSON: But more and more are definitely exploring the region. It took a little time to create the product for those who come to Stewart and are interested in the Hudson Valley area, but we expect over the next several months that it is going to spike quite a bit.

MR. LEVI: And I will say the vast majority of the conversations we had at WTM brought up Stewart.

MR. WILSON: Yeah, the big thing is we now have product in the area; all that we've been doing—the FAM tours, the tour to Scotland and Ireland—all of that is to help them promote the product.

CHAIR NICHOLAS: We've talked a lot about Stewart and when we have our meeting in Albany, which is -- when is our meeting in Albany?

MR. LEVI: Spring.

CHAIR NICHOLAS: I don't know if this is possible—we have to be up in Albany by 1:00—maybe there's a way that we could meet at Stewart at 10:00 and do a quick run through and see what the amenities are at Stewart. I haven’t been there yet, so I’m curious. What's the plan for JetBlue at Stewart, if there is a plan? I don't mean to put you on the spot. I'm just curious. Or, Gail, I don't know if you can speak about your old role at Delta, but how are the airlines accepting Stewart?

MS. GRIMMETT: Well, I'm not with the airline anymore, but I will say, Delta tried for years. They put an enormous amount of money in local deal marketing and worked with Ralph to pull the zip codes, and get the population there. I don't think it was that Stewart wasn't attractive; I think it was because leisure routes tend to do much better than business routes because you don't have enough traffic to go daily. If you could sell the route beyond just an airport and promote what else is around to do, it could have potential. But, you know, other than flying to and from Delta's hub, they've stopped flying anywhere else except to connect through the


hub because from point to point there wasn't enough traffic to really support the service.

MR. TRAGALE: The challenge has always been getting an airline to take the risk because they have their operations downstate and they don't have a need to serve upstate, or further upstate. Just like you're getting more interest from travelers who want to visit New York State, we're getting more interest from airlines who want to service Stewart now.

MS. GRIMMETT: I think to Ralph's point the incremental service stipulates incremental service. A rising tide lifts all boats. So, if you get one successful carrier in, there could be opportunities for another.

MR. LEVI: And I will say, we did meet with Norwegian while we were at WTM and they certainly are interested in maximizing this opportunity both at Stewart and, perhaps, elsewhere.

CHAIR NICHOLAS: All right. So before we wrap up international, any other questions for Markly?

III. Experiential Marketing and Events—Lizete Monteiro A. POD Tour Review

We just wrapped our summer Pod tour. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the I LOVE NEW YORK Pod, it's our mobile unit that we tour for the course of the summer. We mainly visit major events in New York State. This year, we crossed state lines, as well as country lines, which was new and exciting.

This year, we went to about 25 events in total including events in Montreal, Toronto, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. We found that our out-of-country and out-of-state stops were really very successful events for us. We had a lot of engagement, very high interest and collected lots of e-mails from those markets.

This year, we had several new activations and improvements in the Pod: o A virtual reality element, which we called New York State in Full View. We were able to place a visitor

at one of four destinations and show them virtual reality footage, provided by our friends at the Parks Department, so it felt like they were actually there. For example, a visitor can choose to see Watkins Glens State Park and feel like he or she is actually there using this virtual reality technology.

o We improved the digital applications for the travel profile detector. Visitors can now take the travel personality quiz and, afterwards, be served a list of recommended attractions based on their interests to be emailed to themselves.

o We have a map application that allows visitors to browse areas based on their own interests and find attractions that they may want to travel to. They can then save those attractions to their own profile and email them to themselves.

o All of the apps are able to be updated remotely and live on multiple device software. o Finally, for the first time, we added a digital events calendar where visitors can look up an event in the

Hudson Valley and add it to their own calendar right from the event listing itself.

We measure the Pod’s success through a few KPIs: o Number of e-mails collected, which is very important as we don’t give out any swag in exchange for

an email; there is no transaction taking place. Most of the e-mails that we collect are people who want to receive more information from us. So these are very valuable to us. We add them to our database and then they receive our monthly newsletter.

o In this next year we're going to come up with a content and development plan to reconnect with those consumers along the way so that they're hearing from us a little bit more based on the information that we're gathering from them onsite. We know the interest they've plugged into the application so we will be better able to track what they'd like to see and do.

o We survey all of the consumers who give us e-mails. We had an 11 percent response rate, which is good for industry standards. Of those responses, 97 percent said they were likely to consider traveling to or within New York State, 97 percent were likely to recommend a New York State getaway to friends, and 77 percent of visitors left with new ideas about things to see and do in New York State.

You can see that those numbers are very, very strong, so we're pretty happy with those results. B. Welcome Centers

About a year ago, Governor Cuomo announced that we would be opening 11 Welcome Centers across New York State. We've been very busy and hard at work. To date, we've opened Long Island, Javits Center, Mohawk Valley and Southern Tier. I'm going to walk you through some of the photos of the two most recent openings.


At the Southern Tier Welcome Center there is a nine-foot video screen at the entrance, which is the first thing you see when you enter. It plays a loop of video footage of all the major attractions in the Southern Tier.

Below that is a selfie wall where we encourage visitors to be the “I” in I LOVE NEW YORK and share the photo on social media. There are also various kiosks which contain the Travel Buddy Quiz and itinerary builder I mentioned earlier, but specifically focused on things to do in the Southern Tier.

There is also a floor map of the attractions in the Southern Tier embedded into the terrazzo floor with bronze cast letters. This is a permanent installation and is quite beautiful.

Hanging from the ceiling, you can see a glass sculpture that the Corning Museum of Glass made for us.

In each of the Welcome Centers, we have an artifact exhibit to help tell the history of the region. So for the Southern Tier, the artifact wall contains wine from the Finger Lakes and a carousel horse from Broome County—the carousel capital of the world.

Each of the Welcome Centers also features a Taste New York market or, in some cases, a vending machine. The Southern Tier Taste New York market is full service so you have fresh produce and fresh sandwiches and salads. Everything available is a local product coming from the region.

MALE VOICE: Excuse me. How many Taste New York stores are there, do you know?

MS. MONTEIRO: Currently there is one in Todd Hill, one in the Javits Center, one in Grand Central and then we're putting them in all of the Welcome Centers.

At the outside entrance for the Southern Tier Welcome Center, we added a race car branded with I LOVE NEW YORK since Watkins Glen is a major attraction in the region. We also added a life size I LOVE NEW YORK sculpture with a really fun photo op and beautiful background; it’s a natural sort of postcard moment.

MR. LEVI: We're told people are literally getting married there.

MS. MONTEIRO: All of what I'm showing here -- all of these elements are repeated in each of the Welcome Centers; they all follow a model where we're including the same features, but the information is focused on the region that you’re in. For example, each Welcome Center has an artifact wall and a floor map, but the inclusions are specific to the region.

The Mohawk Valley Welcome Center was opened earlier this Spring.

Similar to the Southern Tier Welcome Center, we installed a large sign dedicated to the Erie Canal that is the first thing you see when you enter the Mohawk Valley Welcome Center.

There is also a selfie wall, floor map, kiosks, and a video screen with video footage of attractions in the area.

Unlike the full-service Southern Tier Taste New York store, the Mohawk Valley Taste New York Store will be full vending due to Federal Highway System regulations. Everything is still fresh, however.

For the Mohawk Valley Welcome Center, we took advantage of the exterior surrounding and created a history trail where you can actually learn about the history of the region and the history of the Erie Canal.

The Central New York Welcome Center is scheduled to open next week at Destiny USA, which is a big deal. Following that, we'll open the Finger Lakes Welcome Center in May the Western New York, North Country, Hudson Valley, Catskills and Capital Region Welcome Centers by the fall of next year.

MS. HANIFIN: I just wanted to say thank you to Lizete for the great Long Island Welcome Center and let everyone know that we're actually awarding the very first inaugural Tourism Trailways Award on Long Island to our Welcome Center, on behalf of Governor Cuomo. We're very excited to honor the Welcome Center and all of the great benefits it's brought to our region.

CHAIR NICHOLAS: That’s great. Thank you for sharing that.

III. Catskills Spotlight—Ross Levi

In summer 2016, Governor Cuomo announced an initiative to help promote visitation to the Catskills region and boost the economy. The initiative included several programs meant to highlight all the world-class attractions and activities readily available in the Catskills. These included:

o The Catskills Challenge o I LOVE NEW YORK TV and OOH ads o A digital campaign targeted towards our secondary, millennial market o Grants and funding to improve the tourism infrastructure in the region

So, I wanted to go over some of those initiatives before we hear from the local tourism rep from the Catskills that can tell you specifically how they have impacted the region.


A. Catskills Challenge

As a part of this campaign, the Governor announced the first ever Catskills Challenge, an outdoor event that took place in Summer 2016.

The event started with a press conference at the Bethel Woods Center for the Performing Arts. Longtime Catskill resident, Robert De Niro joined the Governor and did some borscht belt comedy, harkening back to the historic days of the Catskills.

Afterwards, more than 200 participants, including local officials and tourism industry leaders, took part in a variety of outdoor events including: fly fishing, hiking, road biking, golf, mountain biking, bocce ball and motorcycle riding. The events took place at some of the Catskills’ leading attractions like Landers River Trips, Villa Roma, Mongaup Pond Campground, the and the Catskills Fly Fishing Center.

In addition to the Catskill Challenge, the Governor hosted the Ride the Catskills event in the fall where he led a motorcycle ride through the region.

B. Advertising

We kicked off the campaign in Summer of 2016 with the first commercial dedicated specifically to the Catskills. This commercial aired in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Western Massachusetts, Eastern and Central portions of both Pennsylvania and Ohio. So I think we're going to show that.

That commercial featured the Hunter Mountain Zipline Tour; the Birthplace of American Fly Fishing in Roscoe; the World’s Largest Kaleidoscope in Mt. Tremper; Bethel Woods Center for the Arts; and Rocking Horse Ranch in Highland.

Video presentation

We spoke at great length with our local partners about how best to use the marketing dollar, and there was agreement that the best way to affect the region was to spread out the number of commercials over a couple of years. So that has been our approach, which is why we aired one commercial in the Summer of 2016 and one this fall.

Besides television, we also made sure that there was an out-of-home aspect to this campaign—particularly with the MTA to target the millions of New Yorkers and travelers who ride the MTA subways, buses, and commuter railroads every day.

The out-of-home campaign took place in Summer 2016 and included two bus wraps, 570 subway car ads,150 subway entrance panels, and ads in nearly 230 commuter trains in and out of New York.

The ads featured the Catskills’ Bethel Woods Center for the Arts in Bethel; Lake Wawaka in Middletown; Zoom Flume in East Durham; OPUS 40 in Saugerties; Roscoe NY Beer Co in Roscoe; and Hanford Mills Museum in East Meredith.

C. Digital Campaign and Partnerships

Our digital team partnered with Beautiful Destinations, the #1 travel account on Instagram with 9.7M followers, in the Fall of 2016 and Winter of 2016/17 to create a multi-platform campaign focused on Catskills tourism

The campaign included short form videos, Facebook Live from Hunter Mountain zip line, and 360 videos.

Content produced from this partnership, some of which you can see on the screen, ended up being the top performing content of 2016 with a halo effect of increased organic engagements.

ILNY won a Shorty Award for this work, which Anna tells me are the social media equivalent of the Oscars.

This past fall, the digital team partnered with TimeOut to create seven inspiring articles on visiting the Catskills. For example, where to find the best eating and drinking in the Catskills, 10 outdoor activities for adventurers, secret gems, romantic getaway, etc. All of the articles are hosted on TimeOut’s Catskill hub, which can be viewed online.

We partnered with Thrillist in 2016 to create editorial content geared towards millennials living in NYC. The content created performed very well with an average amount of time spent on the 2016 articles being 43 percent higher than Thrillist’s expected benchmark. Because of this success, we decided to work with Thrillist again this past fall. We worked with them to update and refresh the articles from the previous year. Additionally, we produced two short form videos:

o A “Friends” video that features things a group of friends can do over a weekend in the Catskills. o A “Couples” video that shows more of a romantic getaway to the Catskills.

You can see them online, but we thought we'd show you just one. This is the Friends video.

Video presentation


Now, we wanted to have a partner in the Catskills talk about what they're doing on the ground. As with most of our work at I LOVE NEW YORK, our success only really works because we have so many amazing partners across the State. We're very pleased to introduce Warren Hart, the TPA for the Catskills region to talk about their efforts.

IV. Guest Speaker—Warren Hart

Thank you, Ross. I want to thank you for having me. My name is Warren Hart. I'm with CATS and I'm happy to be here today. Thanks for the wonderful spotlight on the Catskills. I represent the entire Catskills, but it is made up of four counties:

o Ulster County, represented by Rick Remsnyder o Delaware County, represented by Ray Pucci o Sullivan County, represented by Herb Clark and Roberta Lockwood o Greene County, which I represent

Today, I'm going to talk a little bit about our metrics. Some are just top line metrics, but we have a handout with all of the information, which is available digitally. I was also asked to cover top highlights in the region and really answer three main questions

o What are new or updated attractions or lodging in the region? o What are some of our recent marketing efforts? o Are there any updates on Catskills CFA projects?

Anybody that follows travel industry news and looks at what the media is writing can attest that the Catskills are hot; they’re all over the place. There is a resurgence of interest; it's kind of a newly discovered destination by a new generation of travelers.

I've been with Greene County for 16 years and I've seen the progression and change with I LOVE NEW YORK and the reinvestment in keeping up with the technology. It's easy to work with a partner that makes it easy for us.

A. Recent Marketing Efforts

So, we’ll start with the Catskills website. Three years ago the region hired a new agency to create a new website focused on different brand personas—everything right down to the look and feel and font and who we're targeting. This has made a big difference, a much better footprint.

We put up a lot of content on the website and it has a lot of organic search engagement; the website will pop up on top of a Google search. Once visitors are on the site, the idea is that we give them enough content to entice them to want to learn more.

We have a regional map, so any time you want to look at lodging or any of those topics on the home page, there's a regional map that you can click on and it'll take you to one of the four counties’ websites.

From there, you can drill down more deeply into what's going on in each one of the campaigns that we run.

Two of our other recent initiatives are the Ride the Catskills Campaign and I LOVE NEW YORK’s Beautiful Destination Campaign. For both of these, we saw overall website traffic increase by 22 percent year over year.

Our organic website traffic remains high; about a third of all of our traffic to the site comes organically. Across the board, most users now use mobile devices to find us.

Our greatest growth in user engagement is on Facebook and Instagram. That's why all the videos that end up on Instagram and Facebook work so well for us.

Our geographic region is New York City, Northern New Jersey, Long Island, Fairfield County, Connecticut, Westchester and Northeast Philadelphia.

Our demographic is men and women ages 25 to 65, which is broken out into three audience segments: o Outdoor adventurers o Leisure travelers looking for food, beverage, culture & arts o Family travelers looking for family resorts

The top referral sources to our site are Facebook, Instagram, I LOVE NEW YORK website, and DEC website.

Most users coming to our website are 25-34 and primarily interested in the camping & hiking pages.

Most traffic comes from NYC, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut, California and Florida.

The top organic landing pages are camping, hiking, events, waterfalls, lodging & scenic drives.

So, we know that people are coming to the Catskills because they are seeking recreation; they want


adventure and experiential travel. They also want food, alcohol and fun things to do. Historically, that is what the Catskills were known for. We’re just repurposing and repackaging it into a modern travel experience.

We're always trying to look to the future and decipher what we have to do to keep engagement strong in the Catskills. The Catskills have a good market share, largely because of our proximity, but there is still room for growth in other regions for visitor travel. All of our metrics in 2016 were up for the individual counties in the Catskills—our sales tax was up and our occupancy tax was strong. So, we're still on that upward curve of travel across the State.

As for updating our branding, we created a brand persona for the Catskills, which has worked really well for us. I'm going to pass this around to you. You can see that the imagery and words we're using focus on the Catskills’ top assets: local eating, excursions, immersing yourself in activities, camping as families, the splendor of the mountains, etc. Do you want to pass those around?

You can see on the screen some of the display creative we’ve done. We do our own display, as well as partnering with Thrillist , TimeOut, and Beautiful Destinations. We leverage what they create and put those through our channels. We also develop our own display creative, one of which was a very successful campaign called Ride the Catskills—which was some of the top performing display creative.

We also do influencer marketing for the Catskills region. For example, we worked with Babes Ride Out, a duo of female motorcycle enthusiasts. We partnered with them to post content when the Governor did the motorcycle ride around the Catskills to leverage that event with their followers. You can also see on the screen some of the user generated content for Compass and Twine—another one of our influencers.

Now, I want to talk about one of our special campaigns, Ride the Catskills, which I mentioned earlier. We wanted to do something that would cover several of our demographic targets as well as really represents the region and is something that all four counties can embrace. We all have similar assets, but we all have slightly different vibes. We decided that the campaign should center on a recreational activity—such as motorcycling, mountain biking, hiking, canoeing, kayaking, basically anything that is mobile.

We decided to call the campaign “Ride the Catskills” and make it an adventure story. We applied for a CFA award from Market New York, and did a full-blown campaign with advertising, video, web, and influencers. We’re going to continue with this campaign because it is such a central activity that brings people to the Catskills, and once you have a reason to visit the Catskills, then you focus on the food and lodging.

B. New Attractions or Lodging

So you have a document in your package. I suggest maybe you follow along. I'm going to pick out a couple of the highlights each of the counties put together for you today to demonstrate a lot of the real bricks and mortar infrastructure work that we do to make sure we have the places and the attractions that make the Catskills a great place to visit. I'm going to hit on some of the highlights here on each of the counties.

Delaware County: o The Roxbury, a contemporary Catskill lodging, is in the process of renovation. o Bovina Valley Farms is opening the Bovina Creamery. o The Bramley Mountain Trail is a new addition to Delaware County's hiking trails

Greene County: o Hunter Mountain just announced a $9 million investment from Peaks Resorts to add some new runs

called Hunter Mountain North, which will increase Hunter Mountain's skiable terrain by 20 percent and overall capacity by 10 percent. They expect 40,000 new ski visits over the next three years.

o Windham Mountain invested an additional $2 million into snowmaking equipment & green technology o A brand new tiny home resort is being developed, which is really popular o The Nordic House, which has just been purchased, is being renovated. It's going to open this season

and it's like a small version of Scribner's Lodge. If you've been to Scribner's it's very focused on the Brooklyn and New York City market.

Sullivan County: o Resorts World Catskills, the casino, has over a billion-dollar investment and they're going to be

opening soon. It has new wellness centers and new golf courses coming online. o Woodstock's 50th anniversary is coming up.

Ulster County: o A surge of hotels like the Hampton Inn, Residence Inn, Holiday Inn Express and boutique hotels are

popping up in the Kingston area


o The Emerson Resort and Spa just completed a multi-million dollar renovation.

All of us—all the counties—have recently done rebrandings and developed new websites to make sure our content strategy is aligning with those personas and those travel groups that we're going after.

There are a bunch of stats in your handout about each of the counties’ Facebook presence & impressions and website stats.

Our traveler spending in the region grew by 5.3% in 2016. We're heavily invested as the four counties in tourism. Most of our economic base, especially in the more rural counties like Delaware and Greene, is from tourism.

I want to make sure there is some time left for questions.

FEMALE VOICE: Who is your agency?

MR. HART: Our agency is Ad Workshop in Lake Placid. They're the agency for the region, as well as Greene County's agency.

FEMALE VOICE: Great. And do the county websites also use Ad Workshop?

MR. HART: No, each county makes their own decision. Greene uses them. We've had success with them and we put out an RFP maybe every three years or so to look for an agency. They aligned with what the CATS region wanted to represent and had good experience.

CHAIR NICHOLAS: Can you fill us in on the rail explorers—how is that going? Will it be open by 2018?

MR. HART: I don't know. It's probably an Ulster County asset. I'll be happy to follow up with them.

CHAIR NICHOLAS: Okay.

MS. MURRAY: Actually, we just met with rail explorers this past week and things are right on schedule for them to be able to open up— I think it was May 2018. There were a few hiccups, but the rails are in good condition. They are actually going to be refurbishing their rail bikes to add an electronic motor to it so that they can go five miles down with the bikes and come back with the help of the motor. So in effect, they're just completely bypassing the area of the rails that needed to be rebuilt—which would have taken much longer. So they are into full blown marketing efforts and everything is looking really good and strong for that to happen and be really successful.

CHAIR NICHOLAS: How long does the experience last from the time you get on and start to when you end?

MS. MURRAY: It's going to start from the Railway Museum, which is located in Phoenicia. So it starts and ends in Phoenicia. Because this particular run will have the electronic motor, it's going to be a little bit of a faster trip; I think two hours. When you get to the point where they flip and turn the bike around, they're building a gorgeous picnic area, which will be a great place for people to kind of catch their breath before it restarts again.

CHAIR NICHOLAS: Then in our video we showed a dining car -- a dining railroad. Is that a year-round attraction?

MR. HART: I don't believe so.

CHAIR NICHOLAS: Okay. Any other questions for Warren and company?

MS. MURRAY: I would just like to add one thing. I think that another side effect of the Governor's support and the work of I LOVE NEW YORK, and the work of CATS, is that several business entities have had such a motivational boost. The festivals, events and people are now looking to partner and are crossing certain lines. They're realizing the importance of promoting the Catskills as a region—something that even a few short years ago would not have happened without all of this support. So we're really, really thankful for that. There's an excitement that's happening that didn't exist before.

MS. TATUM: This is a question that's slightly off topic but has to do with Route 17. Route 17 at one point was going to be Route 86. There were signs on it for a while that said Future 86 and those signs have since disappeared. Does anyone have any idea what the plans are for the future of that?

MR. TRAGALE: I can ask DOT.

MS. TATUM: Okay. They actually took away some hotels that were on the side of 17 because the entrance and egress to them was right off of Route 17. Because it was going to be an interstate, they weren't going to be allowed to have those kinds of entrances. So a lot of changes were made, but then it seemed like things stopped.

MR. LEVI: We'll find out.

MR. MARTINELLI: A question about the casino. What impact do you think that will have region wide because that's just off of Route 17?


MR. HART: Sure. So Sullivan County has hosted many meetings with the surrounding counties so that we can represent the region and capture that new form of travel. Whether it's your first visit or you’re coming back again, we do expect that there will be a positive impact and a lift in the surrounding counties. You know, proximity is everything. It's a large region. So, if they come and they learn something and they want to come back, we're hoping that we'll get repeat business out of that.

CHAIR NICHOLAS: Okay. All right. Well, Warren, thank you very much for your time.

MR. HART: It's been a pleasure.

CHAIR NICHOLAS: It's really been informative. I think our heads are spinning with all the activity and all the development that. I remember CATS 10 years ago and what you've been able to do to pull everybody together is fantastic. I don't know if other regions are really working as closely together as the four counties because I know they are so competitive, but this is really a fantastic example of collaboration and it hasn't gone unnoticed.

MR. HART: Thank you for the recognition. We work really hard as a region to represent the region and the state as a whole.

V. New Business

CHAIR NICHOLAS:Very good. So any new business?

MR. MARTINELLI: I just wanted to ask about the status or the plans to promote the Governor's Empire State Trail in '17-'18.

MR. LEVI: I actually want to have that be a focus of a future meeting. It's a little early because it's not done in 2018. There are important phases of it that will be complete. So, this spring they'll be signage on existing tracks. Additional construction is going on throughout the summer. The whole thing is completely done, literally from New York City to Canada and from Albany to Buffalo in 2020, which is a pretty ambitious plan. So we've talked about it at prior meetings and I think it will be exciting to have our colleagues from Parks come in and actually talk about the overall plans. I think right now it's a lot more focused on capital, i.e. getting it done more than marketing it.

CHAIR NICHOLAS: Maybe by March when we're in Albany we can have an update on that. You know, we can bring the Parks people in to speak. That would be terrific. And whenever we have a topic that you're not sure of the status, it's always helpful to plug it into a TAC meeting. Because I know that there was a question about the Catskills. I think we were being briefed by LEGOLAND and then someone said, well, what else is happening in the region. So Tamara, thank you for then getting the word out to Warren because you guys were at that meeting and then that's what brought you here. And this is really so advantageous to TAC to be briefed like this firsthand so that we get a better understanding.

MS. TATUM: With the questions regarding Resorts World opening next year, I think the future of Route 17 should be something we should deal with on that.

CHAIR NICHOLAS: Sure.

MS. GAROFALO: I just received an email from Dan Fuller saying that Bristol Mountain opened for the season last Saturday. They were the first in New York to open for the 2018 season.

MR. LEVI: He also mentioned it’s their earliest opening since November 9th of 1991.

CHAIR NICHOLAS: Wow. That's a good sign, a very good sign.

CHAIR NICHOLAS: All right. So I need a motion to adjourn?

MS. TATUM: So moved.

CHAIR NICHOLAS: Okay. Second?

MR. MULROY: Second.

CHAIR NICHOLAS: Okay. Thank you very much. We'll see you on Monday, January 22nd

. Thank you for coming.

Meeting adjourned: 12:42pm Next meeting:

Monday, January 22nd

, 2018 11am - 12:30pm 633 Third Avenue, NYC

NYS Tourism Advisory Council 2018 Meeting Dates

Monday, January 22, 2018 11:00am – 12:30pm

633 Third Avenue, NYC

Monday, March 12, 2018 1:00pm – 2:30pm

Empire Plaza

Albany, NY

Monday, May 21, 2018 11:00am – 12:30pm


Monday, September 17, 2018 11:00am – 12:30pm


Wednesday, November 28, 2018 11:00am – 12:30pm


Please RSVP by the Friday before the meeting to: [email protected] or 212-803-3689

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