By Ed Klim
Families across North America are changing their holiday and vacation plans, enabling them to stay closer to home and closer to family.
Snowmobiling provides a growing number of families with the opportunity to vacation close to home, as a family. I participate in many tourism and travel seminars and have seen reports documenting how families are staying closer to home, traveling and flying far less than in previous years and have a tendency to vacation and recreate close to or within their home state or province.
The shift is profound and it can be realized when looking at the number of airline flights that have been cancelled, the empty cruise ships and the very quiet Orlando airport.
Meanwhile, resorts that cater to snowmobilers, downhill skiers and other winter enthusiasts are reporting robust bookings with snow cover aplenty.
The snowmobile manufacturers have initiated a communications effort between the snowmobile community and CVBs, Travel and Tourism Bureaus, and Chambers of Commerce across North America.
Each month this winter every Chamber and Visitor and Convention Organization will receive a special E-mail newsletter from the ISMA office, highlighting the positive aspects of snowmobiling to include the positive economic impact snowmobiling has on the region.
We are also sending to all of these organizations up to date family snowmobiling photos that can be used in their promotion pieces, trail maps and more.
To help support that effort, we are sending positive news release stories and articles to over 4,000 daily and weekly newspapers throughout North America and are developing working relationships with editors and sports writers across the Snow Belt.
We believe this extensive outreach to the general media creates positive working relationships for the entire snowmobile community. We are already receiving numerous inquiries on the positive economic impact of snowmobiling as well as the positive family social fabric that snowmobiling brings to the community.
Finally, the manufacturers have collectively initiated an extensive internet advertising campaign which has targeted non-snowmobilers and snowmobilers alike. If you have a computer, you should soon be seeing pop-up ads depicting fun family snowmobiling encouraging you and your neighbors to go snowmobiling.
When you start to see the pop-up ads on your computer, let us know. Ride safe and enjoy the winter. Consider taking a non-snowmobiling friend snowmobiling during our special Take a Friend Snowmobiling Week – February 14, 22, 2009.
For more information on the Take a Friend Snowmobiling Week, please visit the Go Snowmobiling web site at www.gosnowmobiling.org web site.
