CHARLESTON, W.Va. — West Virginia’s tourism commissioner says she’s learning from recent research that likely will impact how tourism dollars are spent in the future.
Amy Shuler Goodwin received results of a return-on-investment study from Longwoods International, what she described as the first new information in 11 years. She said it shows half of visitors to the state are coming to visit family and friends.
“I’m leaving 50 percent of my market on the table if I’m not marketing to people in the 55 counties,” Goodwin said.
A bulk of tourism’s budget over the years has focused on getting people from other states to visit the ski resorts and other larger attractions. Goodwin said funding is tight but it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to focus on those visitors already connected to the state.
Goodwin said she’s also learned from the research that tourism needs to focus more of its efforts on drawing visitors during the fall months.
“The meat and potatoes of our budget has always been spent in between April and September. We’re going to rework our marketing and our dollars because of some of the research that we now know,” she said.
Goodwin, the former communications director for Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, was appointed by Tomblin to be Deputy Secretary of Commerce and the Commissioner of Tourism on May 1.