The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Plans, programs moving forward
‘Local’ focus amid pandemic remains key, exec. director says
Neil Stein was just five months into his new role as executive director of the Lake County Visitors Bureau — rebranded as Remarkable Lake County, OH — when the novel coronavirus hit (locally) in March 2020.
Unknowable to Stein, and the world at the time, the pandemic’s affect would soon cause an economic shutdown and, thus, cancellations of millions of both business- and leisure-related events.
In no way minimizing other stark realities, the “new normal” would also entail millions of COVID19-related deaths, business closures, alternate education planning, state-mandated curfews and evershifting health and safety protocols.
Here in Northeast Ohio, Stein had recently left a job he loved, working 12 years for the Lake County Captains, the now-designated Class A-Advanced affiliate of the Cleveland Indians, based in Eastlake. He served as general manager his last four years with the organization.
New leader, new time
Though the pandemic changed everything related to travel and tourism, Stein said his first year running the bureau afforded him and his staff the opportunity to “reinvigorate” the membership program, offering new benefits while setting a record for membership volume and generated revenue.
Stein also brought together the members of the Grand River Branding Initiative, which was started in 2014, and was able to work with his counterpart in Ashtabula, Stephanie Siegel, to jump-start it.
“So far we’ve established a ‘brand’ and logo for the Grand River Valley wine region, printed and distributed over 10,000 Grand River Valley winery guides, at no cost to the wineries of the GRV, and began the first of numerous brand development projects planned for the area with the painting of the Grand River Valley logo on the Madison Water Tower,” Stein said.
“We also moved into our new offices last January, located in the former Lake County Board of Elections offices at the corner of the Downtown Painesville Square.
“Another project we’re proud of is the Noah’s Assistance Grant Program we introduced when Noah’s Event Center in Mentor abruptly closed,” he said. “Folks who had events planned there lost thousands of dollars in deposits and were left without a place to host their events. We were able to provide grants to over a dozen folks to help offset their financial losses with the goal of booking their event elsewhere in Lake County.
Stein also made it a point to “buy local” as much as possible and shifted many of bureau’s online and national vendors to local.
“This has not only saved us money, but we’re also supporting small businesses at the same time,” he said. “Along these lines, we’ve also taken quite a bit of contract work ‘in house,’ which has (also) saved us a significant amount of money, which we’ve been able to turn around and put back into marketing the area.
“We made a fairly significant shift in our marketing efforts in 2020, and despite the pandemic, and lack of travel, we saw exponential growth in our website and social media traffic, as well as the number of requests we received for visitors guides from outside the area.”
Challenges and adjustments
As Remarkable Lake County is funded mostly through bed tax receipts, the organization has seen “a significant reduction in its revenue, year-overyear.”
Additionally, Stein added, a large part of the bureau’s focus is supporting large events in the area which bring in travelers from outside the area.
“And nearly every event planned for
2020 was canceled due to COVID,” he said. “When those events were canceled, we had to quickly adapt our marketing plan for the year. While we were already planning a robust campaign to promote the wineries of the Grand River Valley, we added an outdoors campaign to promote all the great outdoor activities available in the county, as that was one thing people were comfortable doing despite the pandemic.
“These two marketing campaigns performed extremely well and the one silver lining we heard time and time again was that most wineries in the Grand River Valley had recordbreaking months during the summer and saw tons and tons of visitors from outside the area.”
Money matters
Without knowing what travel will look like into 2021, bureau staff had to budget conservatively.
“Our budget is definitely reduced compared to what we had budgeted for 2020, but now, with the vaccine here, travel will kick-start again,” Stein said, adding one of his goals is to create a comprehensive marketing campaign to help the Lake County “attractions” and hotels most “hurt” by the pandemic.
“Many of these places were closed completely in 2020, including the Lake County Captains, Rabbit Run Theater and the (James A.) Garfield National Historic Site, to name a few, and others operated on a bare-bones level, for example, (Lake Metroparks) Farmpark and the Holden Arboretum. We want to encourage folks to patronize those businesses as much as possible in 2021, as they are keys to tourism here in the county.”
Stein said the bureau’s most notable plan for 2021 is a revamping of its Arts and Culture Grant Program, which will divide into three separate grant programs:
• The traditional Arts and Culture Grants Program, which will support larger events that are responsible for a significant number of overnight stays in the area.
• A Community Events Grant Program for smaller events which may have a large number of attendees, but don’t carry the same number of overnight guests as a traditional event.
• A Capital Improvement Grant Program will be introduced to support key stakeholders in the travel and tourism industry in the county who are looking to improve their existing facility or infrastructure.
While not yet officially launched, as tweaks are being made to several guidelines, the complete Arts and Culture Grants Program aims to support some of the key attractions and stakeholders in the area, which Stein added the bureau hasn’t been able to directly do in the past.
Forward to the future
With the vaccine being distributed and funding from multiple levels of government continuing to aid a myriad of entities, Stein knows the travel, tourism and hospitality industries remain struggling.
“While our focus is mostly on attracting outsiders to visit the county and spend the night here, we also understand the importance of locals supporting these attractions to keep them strong and viable,” he said.
“We’d like to encourage local folks to consider patronizing these local attractions by purchasing season passes or gift cards. Instead of attending one game or show or event this year, consider attending three or four, if you can afford to do so.”