Visit Estes Park’s (formerly the Local Marketing District) president and several of the Local Marketing District (LMD) board members attended the annual state tourism organization’s Tourism Day at the capitol on Monday, Jan. 23. Activities started at the Old Supreme Court Chambers in the state capitol.
Al White, director, Colorado Tourism Organization (CTO), and Andre Gutierrez, chairman, CTO board, delivered the opening remarks.
Also welcoming visitors were Sen. Jean White, CTO board member; Rep. Randy Baumgardner; Rep. Millie Hamner, CTO board member; Christine Scanlan, director of legislative affairs for the governor ; Rep. Mark Ferradino, minority leader; Rep. Cheri Gerou, joint budget committee; and Sen. Gail Schwartz, CTO board member.
Visit Estes Park is the new name for LMD operations and organization, and the office has a new address, phone number and email.
The Destination Marketing Organization of the Local Marketing District has adopted the name “Visit Estes Park” for all its operations. The name is friendlier, adheres to emerging industry standards for tourism organizations and eliminates confusion created by the acronyms LMD and DMO. We’re really happy to have finally settled on a working name that describes what we do: market Estes Park’s tourism industry. The full name for operations is Visit Estes Park — The Destination Marketing Organization. VisitEstesPark also is our website — URL: VisitEstesPark.com.
Along with adopting a new name for operations, Visit Estes Park moved from the Visitor Center to offices at 1200 Graves Ave. on Jan. 13. As the work of Visit Estes Park continues to grow, we needed more space than the Visitor Center could provide. We’ll be having an open house in the near future. Watch for details about that.
Moving means we also have a new phone number: (970) 586-0500.
Moving to new offices, separate from the Town of Estes Park means Visit Estes Park staff have new email addresses, as well. To email one of us, use the initial of our first name and the last name. For example, you can reach Peggy Campbell at ; Suzy Blackhurst at ; Kirby Nelson at ; Peter Marsh at ; and Mike Oline at .
A concentrated effort to promote Estes Park for the next few winter months is ongoing, with Pay Per Click and Facebook advertising, our Facebook page (Facebook.com/EstesPark) and our re-energized Twitter account (Twitter.com/VisitEstesPark). Public relation efforts include pitching snowshoeing and romantic stays, including the Valentine’s Vow Renewal ceremony at the Stanley Hotel on Feb. 12 at 2 p.m. The event, revived from past years’ vow renewals by Visit Estes Park and the Stanley Hotel, was a huge success last year and is promoted throughout the Front Range area. To augment our photo assets, a photo and videography shoot, complete with models, has been scheduled for early February.
Winter Festival
Thanks to all the volunteers, chili cooks, vendors, spirits’ providers and the tireless organization of Elizabeth Fogarty, this year’s Winter Festival beat the record number of attendees who came to the event last year. About 4,700 people attended the 2011 version of the festival, overcrowding the tent that had been set up in Bond Park. To alleviate that overcrowding, the event was moved to the Fairgrounds at Stanley Park and it met all expectations for attendance and fun for those who attended. By the end of Sunday’s events at the fairgrounds, 6,981 people had attended. Counts for daily events: the Ceilidh on Friday night: 200; Saturday: 4,364; Sunday: 2,307. Online ticket sales: 110.
Especially for the event, Visit Estes Park launched a Winter Festival campaign that included both the advertising and PR programs. The advertising program included Pay Per Click, a special website landing page, radio commercials and Facebook advertising. Turner PR helped promote the festival and Winter Trails Day, which saw about 900 participants. Among the press coverage received were stories in 5280, Westword, KUNC radio, CBS Denver, Denver Post, Longmont Times Call, and Colorado Tourism’s weekly newsletter.
Visit Estes Park represents area at Bridal Show
Janice Mason, group sales and services coordinator, attended the Bridal Festival fair at The Ranch in Loveland on Jan. 8. Couples toured the event, featuring everything from wedding apparel to catering companies available in Northern Colorado.
Karen Lynch, assistant general manager for the Stanley Hotel, accompanied Mason, helping with the constant stream of brides and grooms interested in Estes Park for their destination wedding. The Bridal Festival’s organization tracked attendance and provided Mason with 321 leads for potential wedding bookings at area venues.
PR needs spring and summer packages
Turner PR is pitching our spring and summer specials and packages and we need your information. What are you planning to offer? We’ll need to know the name of your package (the more creative it is, the more likely it will get picked up by the press), dates the offer is active and what the offer is. Just send the information to Suzy Blackhurst at or call her at (970) 586-0500.
Record number at Visitor Center and Rocky Mountain National Park
It truly was a banner visitation year. Door counters at the Visitor Center showed 401,692 people came through the doors at the building. And, Rocky Mountain National Park had its third busiest year in history: 3,335,862 visitors.