Partners
Finger Lakes Visitors Connection works with
a variety of partners to achieve our mission of creating visitorship
and economic vitality for Ontario County. We know that visitors
do not recognize county barriers and that it makes sense to
team up when you share market interests. Tourism marketing
is often explained as an inverted
pyramid, where the top layer works to achieve the broad
recognition and then the focus gets more specific as information
is funneled down the tourism marketing pyramid. You'll notice
if you go to our marketing
expenditures page that regional programming is the largest
part of our marketing budget.
Click on any item in this list to learn more about our partnership with that group.
We encourage you to click here and see some of the photos that we've taken over the course of the past year which shows us working with these partners.
I Love NY.
We are designated by Ontario County as the official tourism promotion agency for Ontario County. This means that we are the direct line of information on tourism promotion to the statewide tourism agency: I Love New York. We interact with them on many program offerings that they have throughout the year, seizing opportunities that will help us to promote our area better. Additionally, we hold the responsibility to update the data in the I Love New York website, www.iloveny.com, for our county. This is why we ask our industry to keep us up to date with events, details of your operations, and changes in your product offerings for visitors. We, in turn, update their site and use the information for the other sites that we manage. We also work with I Love New York in hosting familiarization tours for groups, media, and international visitors to our area.
Chambers of Commerce. We contract with the Canandaigua Chamber and the Geneva Chamber of Commerce for visitor information center services. We also have representation at their tourism committee meetings or business roundtable meetings.
For any of our community chambers, we ask for their assistance in familiarization and media tours and business contacts from their particular community. We rely on each other to ensure that our database information is accurate and up-to-date.
Here is list of the other area chambers and organizations that we interact with on a regular basis:
Finger Lakes Tourism Alliance is the 14 county regional marketing agency. This organization has a long history in tourism marketing. It offers cooperative programs that the counties can "buy in to" in cooperation with some private sector businesses. FLTA, as they are referred to, hosts and maintains an important regional tourism website, www.visitfingerlakes.org, coordinates programs for more effective advertising, trade show representation, public relations initiatives and niche markets. Ontario County Visitors Connection spends about $30,000 annual to participate in the marketing programs of FLTA. Specifics programs which we rely on this cooperative arrangement are: group tours, international, AAA, and hunting and fishing. We also participate in trade shows with both FLTA and a state wide tourism association, the New York State Travel and Vacation Association.
Central Finger Lakes is a six county cooperative marketing group including: Wayne County, Cayuga County, Seneca County, Tompkins County and Yates County. This group has worked together for over eight years in developing marketing projects and programs that are specific to their shared niche markets. Three programs have been particularly successful: the PR program, the Hiking and Biking Brochure development, and the Canal Guide production. Each county participates based on its interest in these markets, sharing information for joint promotion. We also share a website, which acts as a portal to our various county sites. The group has also hosted several media guests over the year – including representatives from Endless Vacations, Fodor's Magazine, and CAA guests.
County Cooperative Programs on a county basis. Sometimes there are specific niches that aren't shared by all fourteen counties or those within the Central Finger Lakes group. When this happens, we form subsets to achieve more specific marketing goals or to reach more targeted markets. As an example, Cayuga County, Seneca County, Wayne and Ontario County all share the Mormon heritage. We developed together a fact sheet which guides people to those sites in our "area". Finger Lakes Visitors Connection also has a very positive relationship with the Rochester Visitors Association, cooperating on fam tours that include "the city" and the "Finger Lakes" flavor.
Routes 5 and 20 partnership. This group is another loose formation of county tourism agencies extending along Routes 5 and 20 from Skaneateles in the east to Darien in the west. The group is relatively new, and was formed to capitalize on the driving tours trend and the interest in nostalgia and history. The group commits to a relatively low budget level each year to maintain a website, www.routes5and20.com, and to focus on a special project for each year.
Statewide Associations
- New York State Travel and Vacation Association.
Trade shows, advertising and tourism advocacy are the strengths of this association. They offer over 20 different trade show opportunities for us to be involved with. This is a great way to team up to save costs in promotions and still get the word out.
- TPA Council of New York State
The Tourism Promotion Agency Council of New York State is a cooperative membership organization that offers joint marketing opportunities of statewide appeal. Specifically, they are the host and manager of www.hotnewyorkdeals.com, a consumer website with special e-mail notices when new travel and tourism deals are available across the state. The TPA Council is also the agency which supplies us with data on payroll, jobs, and other economic data related to our industry.
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