‘We have had tremendous momentum.’ How is Centre County tourism using hotel tax?

With more funding from the hotel tax, new leadership and a marketing push are coming to the Central Pennsylvania Convention and Visitors Bureau in another step toward achieving the organization’s goal of attracting visitors to Centre County.

Lesley Kistner, director of communications at the Chamber of Business and Industry of Centre County, is now public affairs director at CPCVB; Tim Boyde, a former county administrator in New York state, will become chief administrative officer; and Edward Stoddard, current marketing director at the Huntingdon County Visitors Bureau, will become communications director starting in June. CBICC will share Kistner’s services with CPCVB, where she’ll be full time, according to a press release.

“We have had tremendous momentum since the newly approved room tax went into effect April 1 and are building an experienced team that will allow us to share our story with more people as we aim to increase visitors traveling to Happy Valley,” said Fritz Smith, executive director of the CPCVB.

Centre County Commissioners voted to double the county’s hotel occupancy tax from 2.5% to 5% in February, and amended the ordinance so that the county takes 4% of the tax collected for administrative processing.

By his estimates, Smith said the hotel tax should generate about $2.1 million in additional funds for the bureau. About $1.75 million will go to the CPCVB’s marketing efforts after it administers 20% of the total funds to its nonprofit grant program. Since the bureau typically operates with a yearly $650,000 marketing budget, he said, the hotel tax funds bring the total marketing budget to about $2.3 million.

The new hires are part of a CPCVB plan to increase summer visitor arrivals, re-brand the region with different marketing and enhance the region’s local grant program to encourage entrepreneurial growth in the tourism industry, said Smith.

Kistner said she’s looking forward to “telling the story of how tourism impacts the economy (in Centre County) and raising a little more visibility about some of the initiatives the organization is involved in.”

Much of Kistner’s new role will be to communicate with local media, she said, to show how visitor spending impacts the county positively and in which areas tourism is most concentrated. She also aims to show Centre County residents just how the CPCVB is using its resources to attract visitors to the area.

Smith said the hotel tax increase “gives us the ability to do more marketing, and some more advertising, more social media, more video production — all of the tactics that you need to deploy in order to reach the potential traveler in a very competitive and crowded landscape.”

CPCVB also announced it is hiring marketing firm Allen & Gerritsen, headquartered in Boston and Philadelphia, to lead the rebranding efforts for both the organization and Centre County as a destination. Clients of A&G include Blue Cross Blue Shield, Comcast and First Citizens Bank.

A&G Principal Tim Reeves, who oversaw Pennsylvania’s tourism efforts under Gov. Tom Ridge, said in a press release he is “tremendously honored to have been chosen to lead a new era for Centre County and for the organization.”

CPCVB also plans to use local marketing companies to focus on agri-tourism in the county.

The marketing push with an emphasis on rebranding, said Smith, allows the CPCVB to use data and research to “figure out what’s a name, what’s a theme and what our message is that will resonate with people.”

Several themes that have emerged from research and focus groups CPCVB has conducted are continuing to market Centre County as a safe area, playing up the region’s “outdoor assets,” like hiking, fishing and mountain biking and emphasizing the region as a great place to hold large sporting events, he said.

But overall, the CPCVB just wants more people to visit Centre County. And with the extra funds, the organization hopes to use market research and data to target its marketing to key populations in four cities with high concentrations of Penn State graduates — Philadelphia, New York, Washington, D.C. and Pittsburgh. With more visitors, Smith said, hotels, restaurants, campgrounds, retail facilities, breweries, distilleries, wineries and agri-tourism businesses stand to benefit.

“If we’re effective in our marketing, it’s going to reach other segments,” he said. “It’s going to help the effort to attract more businesses here, more residents here, more retirees, more students.”

CPCVB is partnering with CBICC on bringing visitors to the region for agri-tourism, which Smith said could be anything from picking fruit at a farm to buying locally-made products or eating locally-sourced food at a farm-to-table restaurant.

As the CPCVB “crafts a vision” for agri-tourism in the region, said Kistner, she will foster and support partnerships with various stakeholders that relate to the organization’s rebranding efforts.

Agri-tourism also ties into Smith’s goals of attracting tourism to areas of Centre County outside State College and Penn State.

“As much as 80% of visits to Centre County are to State College, certainly State College is the driver (of tourism) but there’s a lot more and so we want to get those people who do come to visit ... and tell them there’s a lot more to do in the outlying areas,” he said.

This story was originally published May 29, 2019 at 7:57 PM.