How the Juniata River Valley Visitors Bureau is Driving Thousands of Dollars into Its Local Rural Businesses

The Goal: Drive Revenue into Local Businesses

The organization promotes a geographic area that consists of two counties, with fewer than 70,000 residents. While some destination marketing organizations are able to promote their existing attractions, there aren't any in their rural area. They needed to create a reason for people to come to the Juniata River Valley, which would in turn, help drive revenue into their local businesses. With a small staff consisting of three full-time employees and one part-timer, they needed to find an efficient and manageable way to accomplish this goal. 

Creating a Trail That Was Set Up to Encourage Spending in Local Businesses

While they don’t have attractions in their rural area, they do have several locally owned food and beverage establishments. They had heard of the success other destinations have had with brewery, winery, and distillery tasting trails, but they wanted something a little bit different to encompass more of their business community. Buffie Boyer is the Communications Director for Juniata River Valley Visitors Bureau, and she said, “We wanted a trail that could appeal to anyone of any age – something a family could do together, or be a great date night activity.”

A local winery shared the original idea of Flight School to promote wine flights, but the DMO decided to take it to another level. Wine and beer flights were great, but they also invited local businesses to create ice cream and coffee flights that could appeal to a wider range of users. This also served the purpose of being able to help even more local business owners. 

Setting Up Flight School for Success

They decided to create their Flight School pass as a gamified check-in challenge that required passholders to purchase a flight in order to check in and earn points. In order to control this, they use PIN codes as their check-in method. Each check-in uses a unique PIN provided by the business to confirm a purchase and award points. They also allow check-ins to repeat after three months, which creates more opportunities for passholders to purchase flights. As they check in and earn points, they can redeem those for cool prizes, some of which were purchased locally. That also helps more local businesses see the impact from this campaign. 

Boyer also shared that it’s important to make the program easy for the participating businesses. She supplies them with graphics they can use to promote the trail on social media, and also gives them flyers, table tents, and coasters to have onsite at their businesses. She said she’s noticed the businesses that have had the most check-ins are the ones that have been promoting the trail through the tools her team has provided. She incentivizes the businesses as well, and once they hit certain levels of check-ins, she provides prizes for the business and/or their employees. 

In addition, she is adamant about sending out monthly updates to the participating businesses and shares information regarding pass sign-ups and check-ins that she gets from Bandwango’s reporting data. She also shares geographic information on where passholders are coming from. That’s actually one thing Boyer has been pleasantly surprised by. She said, “I was pleased with the range of locations that people were coming from to do Flight School.”

Marketing the Pass

Juniata River Valley Visitors Bureau promotes the pass in a variety of ways that includes print, television, radio, digital, out-of-home, and social media advertising. They also send out press releases and have had visiting content creators participate in the trail. Their state DMO, Visit PA, also helped spread the word. In addition, they also participate in local events and have a booth onsite where they encourage people to sign up for the pass. Boyer also stresses the importance of using messaging to keep passholders engaged. 

In an effort to create a call to action earlier this year, they also designed a special initiative in conjunction with Flight School for Valentine’s Day. Passholders who purchased three flights in February were registered to win a couple’s weekend getaway in Juniata River Valley. Boyer shared,  “I was hoping more people from outside the area would participate to earn that entry, and they did. We had a winner from almost three hours away.” 

The Result: Local businesses have made thousands of dollars because of Flight School

Since passholders are required to purchase a flight, each check-in means money is being spent in the local businesses. With a variety of flight options, the values range from $10-$16. There have been 2,782 check-ins so far, which means Flight School has directly generated between $27,820-$44,512 in revenue for these local businesses. That number doesn’t include additional sales that happen when people visit each location. There are many upsell opportunities at the participating businesses, so Boyer feels the economic impact is even higher. 

It’s also important to note that every single one of the participating businesses has benefitted – even the ones in the most rural areas that typically don’t see as many visitors. The trail is accomplishing the goal of driving revenue into local businesses, but also serving as a way to spread visitation throughout the two counties. The businesses are happy, and Boyer said, “They’re pleased at how many new faces they’ve seen since we started Flight School.”  

Conclusion

Even though the Juniata River Valley is located in a rural area, Boyer believes their Flight School trail is an important part of driving economic impact to their local businesses. She said,  “It’s even more important for us to have this since we don’t have the attractions here. Because we don’t have that, we have to create reasons to come.” 

They’ve surpassed their goals in the first year and have just started year two of Flight School. In an effort to keep things fresh and exciting for passholders and help even more local businesses see the financial impact, they’ve added a new category of flights this year – chicken wings! Yep, you can now earn your Flight School wings while eating wings! With more stops on the trail this year, they expect to see even more flights sold, and more money being spent in their local businesses.