Local, regional tourism activities highlighted in Highland County Visitors Bureau's presentation to commissioners

Highland County commissioners Terry Britton, David Daniels and Brad Roades met with Highland County Visitors Bureau leaders to discuss recent and upcoming activities for the tourism group during the Tuesday, Oct. 24 county commission meeting.

Highland County Visitors Bureau Executive Director Jamie Wheeler and Visitors Bureau Board President Casey McIntosh shared a PowerPoint slideshow of the Bureau’s activities since their last update nearly a year ago.

As outlined by Wheeler in the presentation, the Visitors Bureau’s role is to “work with attractions, businesses and organizations to promote [their] events and activities; answer the question ‘What is there to do in Highland County?’; and counteract the argument ‘There is nothing to do in Highland County.’” That includes working “with fellow Visitors Bureaus in the region and across the state to expand promotional efforts.”

Wheeler said that “in the last 12 to 18 months,” the Visitors Bureau has also taken a more active role in assisting “the business community as they work to retain and attract a workforce,” in conjunction with the Highland County Chamber of Commerce, for which she also serves as director.

“We help them share Highland County’s amenities with prospective employees, just to assist with that whole quality of life portion of their job opportunities,” Wheeler said. “This kind of clicked even more with me recently. I was at the Ohio Travel Conference, and the Department of Development Director, Lydia Mihalik, was talking to all of us in the tourism industry on how we could help her and the Department of Development with economic development. She was discussing the workforce challenges we have. It’s no secret baby boomers are retiring, we’re quite frankly not having kids at the rate we used to, so there is a workforce shortage.

“How do we get those? We've got to get those workers to move here, and in her words, it all starts with a visit. If we can get people to visit here, they'll probably stay, or might think about moving.”

According to a chart shared by Wheeler — using data from Tourism Ohio — tourism supports 1 in every 13 jobs in Highland County, with industries including transportation, retail, lodging, recreation and food and beverage. As of their most recent report, for 2021, the total economic impact for Highland County was $52.3 million, up from $44.2 million in 2019 and $49.3 million in 2017. Direct visitor spending in 2021 was $29.4 million; total labor income impact was $15.8 million; and the total jobs impact was 1,051.

From a tax standpoint, Highland County had $7.1 million in total tax revenues for 2021; $3.5 million in state and local tax revenues; $1.4 million in local tax revenues; and the tax relief per household was $207.

For annual projects, Wheeler discussed their website and social media marketing, as they also advertise locally and through the “Ohio. The Heart of It All” co-op program. They used existing footage to make 30-second advertisements through the co-op program instead of a 60-second spot, Wheeler said, and she showed one of those commercials to commissioners.

Their website and social media pages are used to promote local businesses and their events. As discussed at a commission meeting last November, the bureau’s revamped, interactive website (visithighlandcounty.com), which includes listings of places to eat, shop and stay as well as attractions and activities, launched in August 2022.

“Our usage on the website is trending up,” Wheeler told commissioners Tuesday. “We’re seeing more visits, we're seeing people stay on their website longer, and I really think that has come as we ramped up our social media efforts in the last few months.”

McIntosh added the website has been their “big push” over the past couple years.

“I'm really pleased with the way the website has come out,” she said. “It's always going to be a work in progress. It's always going to be refining and rebuilding and continuing to add and continuing to change. It was a huge investment of time and finances for us this year, well worth the effort, and that's kind of laid the foundation for all of these really cool things that are coming for this year.

“Props to Jamie, she put a lot of time and effort into that this year, and I really can't emphasize that enough.”

Wheeler shared examples of impressions on several social media posts, with hundreds of engagements and thousands of impressions. She said she has also heard from business owners who reported “increased interest” in their business as a result of being featured on the Visitors Bureau page, as well as comments from individuals grateful to learn about particular businesses for the first times.

“That is a huge win,” Wheeler said.

Wheeler also showed data from the Visitors Bureau’s Facebook just from June 1-July 31, as they worked to promote “four major events” held in the county in July. They reached over 59,000 users and saw spikes in traffic during two of those events — the Festival of the Bells and Rumble in the Hills — as more people came into the county.

“This is a true example of what happens when businesses and organizations reach out and ask for our help,” she said. “I also personally can tell you our phone rang a lot the weeks of those events, of people seeking out more information not only about the events, but about what else is going on. It really was a success story.”

Wheeler added that local businesses and organizations are welcome to “submit listings or events for free” at any time.

For other social media influencers and bloggers, Wheeler said they have not yet had any visits in 2023, but they are “still very involved” with the influencers who have already visited in 2021 and 2022.

“The bloggers reach out occasionally,” she said. “Sometimes they get questions from their readers, and they shoot them to us and say ‘hey, they will help you figure out a trip to Highland County.’”

Another blogger offered recently to update her page to reflect changes to businesses since her most recent visit and reposted the blog, which Wheeler also shared on the Visitors Bureau page.

“That cost us zero dollars, so we really like that,” she said.

Another annual project is the Tri-County Battle of the Bands, in conjunction with the Clinton and Fayette County Visitors Bureaus. This year’s event was held in Washington Court House, with Highland County set to host the next concert.

“We had a great turnout — a really great turnout,” Wheeler said. “We get the opportunity to host it in 2024, and it’ll be Saturday, August 10 at Crossroads Park in the green space [in Hillsboro]. We're starting to make plans for that, so if anyone is interested in helping plan a concert, let me know.”

McIntosh added that the Visitors Bureau serves to “promote events,” not plan them, with the exception of the concert series.

“We are here to help you,” McIntosh said. “You give us what you’re planning, and we will help promote it.

“That's the part that I think gets lost in the message a lot, that we are trying to create things for Highland County. That's not what it is. We push out, we promote, we create the excitement and the social media push for stuff that's already happening here. That's what I want people to really start to understand and to grasp — you plan it, we’ll promote it.”

Also noted was that the Visitors Bureau of Highland County received a Citation of Excellence for Radio Advertisement during the Ohio Travel Association’s RUBY Awards ceremony earlier this month. Highland County was also a finalist in the following categories: Website, Promotional Video and Blog, according to Wheeler’s press release.

Earlier this year — in February — the Visitors Bureau of Highland County earned recognition in two categories within their budget tier during the Ohio Association of Convention & Visitor Bureaus’ STAR Awards Luncheon. The Bureau’s website earned first-place honors in the Website category, their video titled “Outdoors in Highland County” earned runner-up honors in the Commercial or Video category.

“There are over 230 entries for a lot of these for these categories, and Jamie works extremely hard,” McIntosh told commissioners. “It's because of Jamie that we have these accolades, that she submitted our things up against these budgets that are two, three, four, five times our budgets to get this work done.

“Jamie deserves a lot of credit on this, and she's not going to give it to herself, but I will give it to her. These awards were a big deal, and we as a board are extremely proud of the work Jamie did on this. We were thrilled with these recognitions.”

Looking ahead to future activities, Wheeler highlighted three things: the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks’ recent UNESCO World Heritage designation; the “America 250” celebration for the United States’ semiquincentennial anniversary; and a planned upcoming move for the Visitors Bureau and Chamber of Commerce offices.

Regarding the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks, Wheeler said she is following guidance from tourism leaders in the state and region, as she also attended the World Heritage inscription ceremony in Chillicothe earlier this month.

“We continue to work with the Ohio Travel Association, Ohio History Connection, our friends in Ross County, Licking County and Warren County, on how we can best promote this,” Wheeler said. “There's brochures and pamphlets and all sorts of things, messaging, in the works. We don't have all of that yet.

“We're going to continue to work with businesses on messaging of how we get those people into our businesses and attractions.”

Daniels asked if Wheeler had plans to collaborate with the business community on ways to promote area businesses located along U.S. 50 between the earthworks. He referred to a meeting in July with representatives from the Arc of Appalachia, who repeatedly emphasized the need to promote the region’s parks and nature preserves and local tourism in preparation for the UNESCO designation.

“We hear all the time, ‘you need to be ready, you need to be ready, you need to be ready,’” Daniels said. “Are you bringing people in to kind of talk about that and form a plan for Highland County?”

Wheeler responded that Ohio Travel Association executive director Melinda Huntley has said “a thousand times in the past couple months, this isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon.

“This whole world heritage thing is a marathon, and little by little, we're going to get it accomplished,” Wheeler said.

She said the Visitors Bureau’s “next step” is search engine optimization for their website to promote locations as being “a quick drive to” or from the earthworks.

“We will also spend some more time educating businesses on this influx of visitors,” Wheeler said.

McIntosh added that the new website was “the first step” for the Visitors Bureau to prepare for the Earthworks.

“The previous website was not going to get us there,” McIntosh said. “That was our investment this past year, building that comprehensive website, so that when we got to this point now, we can make the changes to the wording.”

McIntosh also pointed out that Wheeler and the Visitors Bureau have been involved in “a lot of behind-the-scenes preparation” planning for the Earthworks designation and was under strict guidelines.

“They asked ahead of the vote that not a lot of information be shared out and pushed, because they had official logos, they had official information, promotional stuff that would go once the vote was official,” McIntosh said. “We’ll start to work with their team as well and push out the way that they have laid out that they want the promotion to go.”

Wheeler said that the Visitors Bureau will continue to “tweak our messaging” as they receive further guidance, and they may eventually “have listening sessions for businesses or attractions” in the Highland County area with state tourism representatives.

“So I think it's a safe thing to say that you are working on Highland County’s response to all this and how we're going to address it, and how other people are going to get their information out and so on and so forth,” Daniels said. “You were told to stay out of the business until the designation, which happened a month ago, and now you've already reacted to that and start to formulate those plans.”

For the country’s 250th anniversary, Wheeler said that plans are already in the works for states, as well as counties and municipalities, to have a share in the celebration.

“At the recent travel conference, we had a little small work session on how does Ohio celebrate that and kind of kicked around some ideas of different trails,” Wheeler said. “I'm not talking walking trails or biking trails. I'm talking like history trails or doughnut trails, those kinds of things — things that get people out and about in Ohio. They also pose the question, how are your municipalities and counties going to celebrate America's birthday?”

As part of that, Wheeler said the America 250-Ohio Facebook page is seeking “feedback, like right now they're looking for great small towns.

“They're trying to put together some of these little trails and things to encourage people to come visit,” she said.

Finally, Wheeler said the Chamber and Visitors Bureau offices will relocate from their current home in the Scott House to “a new space on North High Street later this year or early next year.” The offices will be located in the Hillsboro Business Complex, currently under construction in the uptown district.

“We are excited about the better visibility,” Wheeler said. “The vestibule area will have wall-to-wall materials not only about Highland County, but the region.”

Commissioners thanked Wheeler and McIntosh for the updates.

“Thank you very much for all the information,” Britton said. “I know that you said it before, but I think Jamie's doing a great job.”

“We appreciate your efforts,” Daniels added.

Check back to highlandcountypress.com for more from Tuesday’s meeting.