The creativity of Hamilton County Tourism was recently recognized at the Indiana Tourism Association conference when the group was honored with two awards: “Best Leisure Travel Marketing Campaign” and “Best Specialty Item.”
These awards were based on promotional efforts in 2019 for the marketing team’s spring and fall leisure campaigns in Chicago and the sales team’s Rest Easy campaign across the Midwest to draw meetings and groups to Hamilton County. The leisure marketing campaign generated $122 million in visitor spending in Hamilton County.
“This is our second year to take home an award, and I am so proud of my team and our partners,” said Ashley Ledford, director of marketing for Hamilton County Tourism.
Hamilton County Tourism’s marketing team is made up of seven people and works with Three-Sixty Group of Indianapolis. Last year, they solely targeted Chicago with a multi-layered campaign on leisure travel in TV, radio and print ads. This resulted in $353 of visitor spending in Hamilton County for every $1 spent on advertising.
The sales team also targeted clients across the Midwest to bring their meetings and groups to Hamilton County through the Rest Easy campaign. Organizers were made aware through mailings and small gifts that they can “rest easy” if they bring their event to Hamilton County because Hamilton County Tourism’s sales and visitor experience teams will assist to make any event successful.
“We have an array of unique event spaces here locally and we want prospective clients to know that,” said Laura Kelner, director of sales. “We also want them to understand that our sales team can help with support.”
Two hundred tourism leaders from around the state went to the Indiana Tourism Conference for networking and educational sessions in Elizabeth, Ind. Awards were presented to honor tourism organizations for their creativity, innovation and maximization of dollars invested.