Tourism Campaign Working | Video

Retha Colclasure | 1/10/2013

The North Dakota Tourism division says their efforts to bring people to the state are working.
Every other year, the division looks at what kind of impact the advertising dollars are having and they found that 2012 was the best year yet.

The fliers, brochures and pamphlets are bright, colorful and effective.

"Across the state, businesses are seen really benefitting from the `Legendary` efforts and we`re establishing North Dakota as a premier travel destination," said Tourism Division Director Sara Otte Coleman.

The Tourism Division spent $1.9 million in 2012 on advertising, and reaped $231.6 million in visitor spending. Now that money is coming from people who have something they want to see in the state, rather than visitors saying they came just because it was convenient.

"In the past, we`d see people come because it`s close by or it was worry-free, or they`d have some of those less specific attributes. Now we`re seeing they`re focusing more on some of the product-based offerings that they`re seeing in our advertising. Things like museums and events and cultural centers are popping up as reasons why they`re coming to the state," Otte Coleman said.

One more reason people are coming is oil. None of the marketing this study looked at was directed towards oil workers. But that is an area the tourism division will look at in the future.

"This year we took staff out into crew camps in highly visited areas in oil country and we surveyed them. We talked to them about do you come? Do you bring your families? What do you do in your time off?" Otte Coleman said.

What they found is there is no easy way to market the state`s tourism opportunities to them. But they plan to continue getting tourism materials to oil workers, and reaching out to them as best they can.

The Tourism Division will continue the "Arrive a Guest. Leave a Legend" campaign this year. They plan on spending around another two million dollars on advertising again. Once again, the most popular tourist destination in the state was Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

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