During a press conference Monday afternoon at the SUNY Fredonia Technology Incubator, the Chautauqua County Visitors Bureau announced its new brand, logo, and Web site redesign focused around Chautauqua County The World's Learning Center.

 

Don Anderson, Chautauqua County Visitors Bureau Board President, explained that from 2006 through 2009 the visitors bureau contracted with Destination Development Inc., a well-known tourism and marketing firm, to assist in the development of a unique and distinctive marketing brand to help grow Chautauqua County as a tourism destination.

 

A brand of Chautauqua County New York the World's Learning Center was suggested and in 2009 the CCVB adopted the World's Learning Center as its brand for marketing the county.

 

"Our vision, Chautauqua County emerges as the world's learning center, the premier destination for leisure learning opportunities in the eastern United States and eventually the world," said Ben Webb, CCVB branding committee chairmen.

 

The visitors bureau has been working with area tourism businesses to gather and publicize learning experiences and more than 40 vacation learning offerings are now listed in the "What to Learn" section of tourchautauqua.com. Webb said the next step will be working with educational partners in the tourism industry to foster additional learning experiences to attract visitors.

 

"Beyond our current efforts, we will also be working to develop programming in the spring of 2011 as well as working to be the catalyst to help develop and promote participatory leisure learning experiences throughout Chautauqua County," Webb said.

 

Moving forward several partners will help to saturate the message: Chautauqua County The World's Learning Center.

 

"We are going to work collaboratively to promote Chautauqua County, New York as the World's Learning Center and bring in all of these vital assets in one focused, collective effort to introduce who we are amongst an even larger audience," County Executive Greg Edwards said. "This will bring in some of our largest partners, their energy and their brand together with Chautauqua County, to bring it together and make it more valuable."

 

Examples of learning opportunities Edwards listed included learning how to kayak, to fly fish, to golf, to skiing; tours from Amish communities to wineries; as well as cultural learning at the educational facilities in the county.

 

"This effort will join all of these efforts in a collective focus under one brand," Edwards said.

 

Four key representatives also spoke during the announcement, including: Thomas Becker, president, Chautauqua Institution; Dr. Dennis Hefner, president, SUNY Fredonia; Dr. Gregory DeCinque, president, Jamestown Community College; and Robert Swenson, president, Peek'n Peak Resort.

 

"Next fall we are going to have 5,700 students on campus. Approximately 400 will be from Chautauqua County, all of the others are coming from the outside," president Hefner said. "That of course means there are a number of visitors that will be coming to campus automatically to see the students and when this weekend comes about you're going to notice the roads are clogged, the restaurants are booked, that every single room in the county is full, as we go into our graduation."

 

When he heard about this new initiative, Hefner said he immediately thought about how the campus has a continuing education program which offers degree credits.

 

"... During the summer we offer numerous youth camps (science, history, sports, music, etc.); and we are fortunate to have the Rockefeller Arts Center and the Rosch Recital Hall," he said. "We already bring in nearly 100,000 visitors into this county that come for different events during the academic year."

 

Robert Swenson explained that this past year the Peek'n Peak Resort decided to spend 65 percent of its advertising budget just on trying to remind people that learning to ski is a good family business, a good family activity and that it's a lot of fun.

 

"We have a very good program in teaching people how to ski and how to play golf," he said. "Our latest ski program we had over 2,000 people come that had never put on a pair of ski's in their life. The best thing about that is 85 percent of them were not from the Chautauqua County."

 

CCVB Board President Don Anderson concluded, "The Chautauqua County Visitors Bureau is excited to collaborate with our local tourism, government, and business partners to bring awareness toe very vacation-oriented learning opportunity available. By working together with the World's Learning Center as a primary focus, we can all do our part to develop Chautauqua County as a true learning destination."

 

For more information about the initiatives and to view the redesigned Web page please visit www.tourchautauqua.com.