Last
Thursday I attended the annual meeting of Alabama Mountain Lakes Tourist
Association. They are a large regional tourist association covering the 16
counties in North Alabama. Every year they have an educational annual meeting
with seminars, a member & board meeting and an awards luncheon.
If you make
your living in tourism they are a major marketing and promotion resource for
you. If you are not a member already we highly recommend joining. DeKalb
Tourism is a Destination Marketing Company (DMO). It is our job to promote
outside DeKalb County to bring visitors to our county, as tourists. We
advertise in Magazines, newspapers, Radio, TV, press releases and via digital
media, social media and our website, both traditional and mobile. Alabama Mountain Lakes promotes much the same
way with the difference being they promote all of North Alabama and we promote
DeKalb County. AMLA promotes to get tourists to come to North Alabama on
vacation and then get them to come to DeKalb County specifically.
This year we
had wonderful seminars by leading companies in our industry. They updated us on
the latest trends in advertising and targeting our audience. Things have
changed a lot over the last several years as marketing via electronic means now
rules and traditional advertising methods are not used as much. Digital Ads,
social media and websites, both tabletop and mobile are where the potential
visitor is getting their information these days. Mobile web searches now
account for 40% of searching on line and by 2015 it will surpass traditional
table top searches. DeKalb Tourism changes its marketing plans every year in
order to make sure we stay current and are able to get the most exposure
possible for the dollars we spend.
This year
DeKalb County did especially well at our Alabama Mountain Lakes awards banquet.
In August the nearly 500 member businesses of AMLA were asked to nominate top businesses
or individuals who make their living in tourism. This year we are honored to
have won three awards. DeSoto State Park, Ken Thomas and staff won Attraction
of the Year, Nanda Patel of the Fort Payne and Gadsden Holiday Inn Express won
the Good Neighbor award for Volunteerism during the 2007 tornado’s and for
other volunteer work she has contributed in DeKalb and Etowah Counties. In
addition I was awarded the Lasting Impression award which commemorates overall
career contributions. I want to congratulate all the award winners and
especially thank Alabama Mountain Lakes for their fabulous contribution to our
industry in North Alabama. North Alabama has doubled the number of dollars
spent by tourists in the last ten years. DeKalb County and several other
counties in North Alabama have more than doubled in ten years. Congratulations
to the 1,300 people in DeKalb County whom make their living in Tourism.
No comments:
Post a Comment