Each season, the New Hampshire Division of Travel and Tourism Development (DTTD) announces results from its advertising campaigns. Their return on investment (ROI) results for summer 2023 showed that visitors spent $228 for every $1 that the state invested in marketing. However, proposed state budget cuts could significantly alter the equation in New Hampshire’s tourism economy. DTTD may see a 30% budget cut, which means it could fall on the shoulders of private organizations to keep the state’s $7 billion tourism economy strong. (Learn more about this issue on our Advocacy webpage.)
The Greater Concord Chamber of Commerce has been promoting the Capital Region as a tourism destination for decades, but these efforts will be expanded in 2025. New this year, the Chamber plans to launch a Visitor Guide booklet to highlight attractions, restaurants, shops, and hotels in the Capital Region. The book expands on a prior publication—the fold-out Map & Guide—and will feature multiple maps that will help visitors quickly and easily navigate local areas including the overall city, downtown area, Concord Heights, and Greater Concord region. Colorful photos will be scattered throughout the pages to spotlight key destinations, making the book fun to browse and inspiring for potential travelers.
The Visitor Guide will be designed for longevity; it will be an annual publication that complements the evolving technology that travelers are already using to discover and navigate our region—Google Maps, Yelp, and DoorDash, among others. For example, the restaurants section will be cleanly organized by type of dining (Bakeries and Coffee Shops, Drinks, Quick Bites, Casual Dining, and Fine Dining) so that travelers can easily connect with the type of establishment they are seeking. The area maps will help visitors gain a quick orientation of their surroundings, but not be cluttered by irrelevant sites or networks of side roads that are a fundamental element of to-scale maps. And of course, the entire Visitor Guide publication will be available online, with quick links to each local business listed.
The Chamber has seen a clear appetite for this type of marketing piece. Copies of the 2024 Guidebook to Greater Concord magazine flew off the shelves when it was redesigned; the publication was streamlined to remove “phone book” information that can now be found via a quick Google search, and new elements were added—QR codes, full-page photos, plus blog-style articles about booking a weekend getaway in the region and picking local sites to visit in each New England season. Only a few magazines remain of the 7,000 copies printed in May 2024. These were distributed at area businesses, and in state Visitor Centers in Hooksett and the Manchester-Boston Regional Airport.
Unlike the state’s tourism marketing efforts, which are funded through a percentage of Meals & Rooms Tax revenue, the Chamber’s publications are made possible by local businesses who are motivated to keep the local economy strong. Your membership supports these marketing efforts, and provides a longstanding impact on our region’s economy. (Learn about Merrimack County’s impressive tourism economy, featured in our September newsletter.)
All local Chamber members in the travel, retail, food, or lodging industry will be listed in the Visitor Guide and Guidebook to Greater Concord magazine. However, any business can attract new customers and increase their exposure by purchasing advertising space in the publications. It will be hard to beat the advertising impact a local restaurant gains when a hungry visitor flips to the “Restaurants” page of the new Visitor Guide and spots a glossy ad showcasing mouthwatering photos of their dishes. Limited advertising opportunities are available in each of these publications, ensuring that the booklets stay true to their goal—serving as a streamlined, easy-to-use resource for travelers to the Capital Region. (Reserve your ad spaces now.) We’re excited to showcase Concord’s unique attractions, alongside dining and shopping, options in these two colorful publications.
Data for this article was sourced from New Hampshire Department of Business and Economic Affairs (nheconomy.com).