March 2006
Promoting Lake County
Local events, attractions are mutual magnets to draw tourists
by Laura Freeman

Above: Debra and Tom Fitzgerald are proprietors of Fitzgerald’s bed and breakfast in Painesville. The couple can predict a full house by looking at a calendar of events for the county. Photo by Marc Golub

Tom and Debra Fitzgerald are owners of Fitzgerald’s Irish Bed and Breakfast, a 16-room French Tudor in Painesville. Built in 1937, the restored home has four guest rooms with private baths, two of which have Jacuzzis.

But it’s not just the award-winning B&B that is drawing visitors from all over. Working together, a host of local attractions bring visitors to Lake County in increasing numbers.

Some of Fitzgerald’s guests have ties to Lake Erie College in Painesville. Others are drawn to the area for special events. The Ice Wine Festival, for instance, held each March at local wineries, is a huge draw; one of the two weekends was already booked in early February.

Besides the wineries and events surrounding them, Debra Fitzgerald lists among the biggest draws the Lake Erie beaches and Holden Arboretum.

“People are looking for a niche, sometimes a romantic getaway, and they’re looking for something different,” she said. “I’m fairly certain we’re going to have to add another Jacuzzi room. It just amazes me. We’ve never been so booked in advance.”

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Marketing Lake County

Tourists spent almost $490 million in Lake County in 2004. That was $50 million more than the year before, according to an Economic Impact of Travel & Tourism study conducted by Longwoods International.

Bob Ulas , executive director of the Lake County Visitors Bureau, commissioned the study.

“Tourism is a business that is often taken for granted because it’s a business without walls,” Ulas said. “Tourism provides taxes, jobs and revenue, without having to build infrastructure. Tourists come in for a couple of days, spend their money, and leave. Hopefully they’ll return."

Ulas’s goal is to get those tourists to come to Lake County.

“We’re evolving into a more formidable, viable destination,” Ulas said. “I-90 plays a huge role in our success, plus most of the hotels have renovated and our attractions are doing more special events and marketing.”

Motor coach tours come for a specific event or to visit a certain attraction. Sometimes they end up staying overnight, not incidentally enhancing the Visitors Bureau’s operating budget.

“That’s the mantra of a visitors bureau – ‘heads in beds,’” Ulas said.

Housed in offices at Classic Park, the Eastlake home of the Lake County Captains, the Visitors Bureau is supported entirely by a hotel bed tax and modest membership dues.

Tourism marketing is expensive. The Visitors Bureau places ads in USA Today to reach business travelers in hotel rooms across the country. Ulas also pursues the meeting and event market with ads in Ohio Meeting Planners Association publications.

Business travelers can fill the hotels during the week and in nonpeak seasons, Ulas said.

Ulas said competition has increased considerably with the advent of the Lodge & Conference Center at Geneva State Park and a new hotel in Beachwood with a large conference center. To the west, the Kalahari Resort in Sandusky just announced it is building a $12 million convention center.

Fortunately, there is plenty in Lake County to promote.

Some of the biggest tourist draws are Mentor Headlands State Beach and Mentor Lagoons. “They draw an inordinate amount of visitors,” Ulas said. “So do the winery district, Captains games, Vintage Ohio and the PerchFest. We have a potpourri of many unique locations and events.”

Mary Glauser , spokesperson for Holden Arboretum in Kirtland, can attest to the power of cross-promotion as well as the attraction of one dynamite exhibit. She is amazed by what happened over the space of one summer when last year’s big event, the Big Bugs exhibit, was held.

“The strong network of organizations in Lake County helps get people out here from other areas,” she said. While working the Holden booth at Vintage Ohio last year she heard people say they were staying for the Big Bug exhibit the next day.

In turn, when she promoted Holden’s Holiday Idea House she would mention other local holiday events such as Country Lights down the street at Lake Metroparks Farmpark.

“People in Lake County are going to visit us because they know who we are, but to really grab people from outside of Lake County we have to give them a reason to visit the region. We can’t stand alone; we need to cross-market our programs and support each other,” Glauser said. “Everyone in this community understands that and everyone works very well together. It’s a very collaborative environment.”

Attendance at Holden Arboretum last year grew by 17 percent over 2004. Visitors came not only from Lake County, but from 48 out of 50 states.

Membership increased as well. “We had 1,000 new members join during the summer of 2005, an increase of 7.5 percent over 2004,” Glauser said.

The Big Bugs exhibit was made possible by a $7,000 Arts & Culture Grant from the visitors bureau.

“Big Bugs really gave us the springboard to get our name out there and now it’s just maintaining the enthusiasm,” Glauser said. “It served as a focal point for us to really get people here. They enjoyed Big Bugs, but saw what Holden has to offer 365 days a year and want to keep coming back.”

Holden schedules tours for travel writers through the state tourism department.

“That helped us garner some coverage in Canada, Philadelphia and on some national Web sites last year,” Glauser said.

Attendance has increased at other Holden events such as the family-friendly Halloween festival, Goblins in the Garden. Last year attendance was at 500; this year the organization stopped counting at 1,200. They estimate about 3,000 people attended that day’s event.

A spiritual journey

Historical and religious sites also play a role in attracting visitors to Lake County. Last year, 122,000 visitors came to see Historic Kirtland, a restored Latter-day Saint village. Director Elder Pat Brian said most of the visitors were Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saint members, and most were not from Ohio.

“It’s regarded almost as a spiritual pilgrimage,” Brian said.

He said most visitors stay a maximum of about 24 hours in the area, continuing on to other church history sites across the U.S.

Bounty from the lake

Jim Shirley is chairman of the PerchFest committee. The festival, held each September in Fairport Harbor, attracts about 55,000 visitors.

“We do extensive advertising,” Shirley said. “AAA features it in its monthly magazine, we advertise in national publications and on broadcast radio, cable and TV. It’s all geared to attracting visitors and tourists into Lake County.”

This year PerchFest is featured on the back of Lake County Captains pocket schedules, another bit of cross-promotion that reaches outside county lines.

“Those are distributed extensively,” Shirley said. “They get into the hands of so many people. We market our event at all the other shows around, such as the Boat Show, the Home & Garden Show and Vintage Ohio. And when you get a local guy like (Newschannel 5 meteorologist) Mark Johnson plugging you, you can’t go wrong.”

Lake County Captains general manager Kevin Brodzinski said there is an increase in non-Lake County residents attending Captains games since the ballpark opened in 2003.

Last year, the percentage of game attendees from counties other than Lake, Geauga, Ashtabula and Cuyahoga rose to about 10 percent.

“That’s key for tourism, because this number has risen consistently from 2003,” Brodzinski said.

“They eat here while they are here for a game,” he said. “And we get people from places such as Michigan who might come down for a weekend. In that case they are staying in hotels and spending even more money here.”

A walk down the aisle

There are 16 weddings on the books in Lake Metroparks for 2006.

“We started marketing the parks as a wedding site about three years ago,” said Linda Nemeth, sales and corporate services coordinator for Lake Metroparks. “It’s something a little off the norm. Maybe they want to have the bride arrive by horse-drawn wagon or they’re just looking for a beautiful setting.”

And all those wedding guests in town for a couple days or overnight will spend money. Rehearsal dinners, hotel rooms, breakfast or lunch next day, staying to visit family and touring the area after the bride and groom fly off on their honeymoon – the list goes on.

Nemeth also works with visitors bureaus in the region and the Ohio Traveler Association, which runs the 1-800-BUCKEYE line. Nemeth organizes familiarization tours for the telephone operators. They feel more at ease talking about Lake County because theyvisited it.

She also works with other Lake County entities to package different tours together for a day-long or longer experience, encouraging visitors to stay overnight. Bringing in bus tours familiarizes people with the area, spawning return trips with children and grandchildren.

One of the park districts’ premier events is Vintage Ohio, taking place in late summer at Lake Metroparks Farmpark. The American Bus Association has named Vintage Ohio a 2006 Top 100 Event.

“We get 35,000 people from 27 states, filling up every hotel room in the county for Vintage Ohio,” visitors bureau director Ulas said.

Fitzgerald’s, the B&B in Painesville, has had reservations for Vintage Ohio 2006 since last July.

To attract visitors from all over, the Fitzgeralds spend most of their marketing dollars online.

“The past year we hired someone to update our Web site and that has really paid off,” she said. “We’ve had some of the most interesting people – it’s been amazing . . . We’ve had people from Australia, England, Brussels, California, Oregon, Washington, New Mexico, and all along the East Coast.”

Laura Freeman is assistant editor of the Lake County Business Journal. Lfreeman@lakebusinessjournal.com.