Recently the AAA Great Vacation Expo offered a great opportunity for the Marion CVB to show off the community’s destination assets. The show offered the opportunity to debut our new pull-up display banner that highlights all the great family-fun activities one can do in Marion, Ohio. The very top of the banner boasts a picture of a waterfall dump proposed for the new Lincoln Park Family Aquatic Center. It goes on to include pictures of disc golf, putt putt golf, roller skating, bowling, and the new trail walking/biking option.
This banner joined our current “attractions” pull-up banner that depicts photos of the historic elements and attractions of our community. We have used this banner for a number of events and display it in our Welcome Center on a regular basis. Since a picture says a thousand words, we also took our flat screen TV which to show a slide show of dozens of photos of area events, attractions and historical elements of the Marion community. It was interesting to see people stop and stare at the screen to see what the next image might be.
Since it was a two and half day event, I invited area attractions to help man the booth and tout their entity. Who better to relay details about their entity, than those involved in it from day to day. We appreciate their enthusiasm and help in promoting Marion, Ohio. As a group we were able to hand out hundreds of our new 2012 Marion County Visitor Guides to people who stopped by to sign up for our “Marion, Ohio – You’ll Feel Right At Home” prize.
At the show we were able to reel show visitors in by touting a couple of Popcorn Festival Kernel Seats as part of the “Marion, Ohio – You’ll Feel Right At Home” prize. The tickets were pared with an overnight stay and a number of other great items donated for the prize basket. A quick glance at the entry forms show visitors from Columbus, Johnstown, Blacklick, London, Valley City, Findlay, Unionville Center, Marysville, Bellefontaine… Each walked away with a bag of information that included the Palace Theatre shows, the Historical Society events, the Lincoln Park Family Aquatic Center, the Visitor Guide and more.
In an effort to boost the CVB facebook numbers, we also gave visitors an extra incentive to look us up. We offered an additional entry into the prize drawing just for “liking” us on facebook.
The new Visitor Guide is chocked full of destination information – attractions, food, fun, lodging, events of interest and more. There always seems to be new things to add every year, which excites us. The guide also includes advertising highlighting our marketing partners who understand the benefits of promoting Marion as a destination for economic return.
We knew there would be costume characters at the show and asked if we could include those from Marion. Mr. Pop P. Corn (Marion Popcorn Festival) and Strike (bluefusion Family Fun) joined us and were fortunate to walk the show floor on Kids Day and greet kids and their families, as well as tout being found from Marion, Ohio!
We do our part to promote the community and wish to remind Marion residents they are also an intricate part of getting the word out about all the great things we have here in Marion making us a great destination for fun. With that, it’s appropriate to relay a quote I heard at the show, “It’s not the miles but the smiles that make a vacation!”
About Marion Convention and Visitors Bureau
