Visit Lebanon Valley tourism officials gave Lebanon County Commissioners a comprehensive update at a workshop session on Wednesday, Dec. 11, including the latest financial figures to demonstrate the industry’s impact locally.
“$296.4 million dollars was brought into Lebanon County due to visitor spending,” said VLV president Jen Kuzo, “and that is a stat from tourism economics from the state. That is from ’22 which, unfortunately, is the latest one.”
Kuzo noted that revenue was generated from lodging, food and beverage, retail, recreation and other sources.
Included in the report was an examination of some destinations out-of-county tourists are patronizing, the agency’s 2025 tourism theme and a preview of a 4-minute video heralding the America250 celebration in Lebanon County in 2026.
America250 will commemorate the nation’s 250th birthday in 2026 with celebrations occurring locally and throughout the nation on July 4 that year.
Kuzo told commissioners the agency purchased for one year beginning last July an artificial intelligence program called Placer AI to gather local tourism data.
A search engine says the technology “informs tourism by providing detailed foot traffic data and location intelligence, allowing tourism boards and businesses to understand visitor patterns, identify peak times, analyze demographics, and make informed decisions about marketing, event planning, and resource allocation based on real-time insights about where tourists are going and what they are doing in a specific area, all while maintaining user privacy through aggregated data collection.”
“We asked, ‘Where are our people coming from? Where are the visitors coming from to support the Lebanon Valley businesses and stay overnight?’” said Kuzo. “You can see overwhelmingly the Philadelphia region – Wilmington (Delaware), Camden – that is the focus of a lot of our advertising (is first). Lancaster and Harrisburg, surprisingly, are the second and third places.”
Kuzo noted the New York City metro area, including cities located across the Hudson River in New Jersey from the Big Apple, rank fourth in terms of the number of visitors to Lebanon County. Carlisle ranked fifth.
“There’s a lot of sports traffic coming down from the New Jersey area. So if you look at the top four, No. 1 and No. 4 are kind of our out-of-market targets,” said Kuzo. “We do a lot of in-market targets in Lancaster, Harrisburg, and that area. But I spend more on the out-of-markets so that we get people to stay overnight. Because I don’t think Lancaster and Harrisburg are our overnight guests.”
Kuzo said the agency previously has relied on nearby Harrisburg-Hershey market data to extrapolate Lebanon County tourism figures, adding that this was the first time Visit Lebanon Valley had Lebanon County-specific tourism data.
“Now we have a baseline, and this information is collected from cellphones and from credit cards, and for 18 years and older, only adults are being used, and that’s how they’re tracking the flow,” said Kuzo. “There’s so many details on this program that we can tell you where they went before the show at the expo. … Where they went afterwards, the road they took to get there, where they’re coming from, their education, their household income, their ethnicity. It’s crazy.”
The data can also be distilled by destination. Kuzo showed data for In the Net Sports Complex in Campbelltown, Klick Lewis Arena in Annville, and the Lebanon Valley Expo Center in Lebanon as some local examples of visitor traffic to those destinations.
“These are just three, I mean we can look at pretty much any venue that gets enough visits. So right here we’re looking at year-over-year visits from 2021 all the way up through the last 12 months,” said Kuzo.
Kuzo said Klick Lewis Arena and In The Net Sports complex had a majority of people traveling over 30 miles to come to their venues, while the expo center’s draw was more localized, adding the center had 72 percent of its guests coming from within 30 miles.
“So this data here looking at the home location is extremely valuable to us when we’re considering our marketing efforts,” said Kuzo. “Being a DMO (direct marketing organization), that’s really important to us getting those people from outside of Lebanon County to come into the county.”
LebTown asked Kuzo if the data could be used to help inform commissioners’ decisions concerning the hotel tax grant program, which is designed to put “head in beds.”
The program’s purpose is to utilize the funds that are collected via overnight stays to support local organizations to help them market their future events for overnight stays by out-of-town visitors. Earlier this year, commissioners strengthened the program guidelines after the fund began to run low.
“That could be one of the results of this, but that’s certainly up to your discretion,” Kuzo told commissioners. “We’ve made a lot of assumptions going forward, and now we have actual figures. So it’s always nice to have that data to back up what we believe.”
Kuzo added her agency could provide specific data concerning hotel tax-funded events.
“We, this office, could even give you the list of funded applications that have been granted and run them in the system and say, ‘Hey, did it show up? Did it have enough of an impact that day or that weekend to show up here?” she said.
Kuzo noted that the computer program assists targeted marketing.
“If I want to place a billboard somewhere, I want to look at traffic flow, where they’re coming, what roads they’re coming from. I can pinpoint where that billboard is and see the effectiveness of that over this location,” she added. “So for all of the reports, I mean, I can go on there right now and pull up whatever location I want and pull a report for it. So I try to make sure multiple times a week I’m pulling reports down and downloading their data so that even when we don’t have it (the program), we’re still going to have the data that I’ve downloaded.”
Kuzo said since the county has data from 2017 through 2024, the agency will allow the one-year contract to expire in July. Kuzo added she will probably utilize Placer AI again in the future.
“I definitely would do it again. I think it was a positive,” she said. “I don’t think the stats would change that much one year after the next. But maybe in three years, try it again and see where we’re going.”
Prior to announcing the 2025 tourism theme in Lebanon County, Kuzo said the agency added 27 different arts organizations to its website and promoted numerous events in 2024 as part of the Lebanon Valley’s Year of the Arts celebration this year.
In other tourism news, Kuzo said the 2025 theme will focus on families and be known as “The Year of Family Fun.”
“So next year, just a little snapshot into what we’re starting to plan, we want to really highlight family fun,” she said.
A subtheme for family fun will be known as “Pick Your Own Adventure.”
“‘Pick Your Own Adventure,’ will feature agritourism, farms, and places like The Patches Creamery. There’s a new Lebanon Lily book coming out very soon, probably in the next month, where Lily takes her friends and relatives to certain events throughout the Lebanon Valley. So we want to feature that for 2025,” said Kuzo.
She added the agency has added a Lebanon & Lily Sunflower Club on its Facebook page so parents will be able to have a spot where the agency “highlights certain events that are family-friendly” and so that the agency can shine a spotlight on a demographic that hasn’t been actively pursued in the past.
While there’s a focus on agriculture for a possible adventure a family may want to select, other family-friendly activities will also be highlighted in 2025.
Visit Lebanon Valley will begin to promote the nation’s birthday celebration in 2026 with the official release this week of a 4-minute video promoting Lebanon County’s America250 celebration.
The video, which highlights a number of county-based assets, can be viewed on Visit Lebanon Valley’s YouTube page and on its website once it goes live.
Staff gave commissioners an update on public relations, social media and website activity and a recap of events, including the agency’s Java Journey and Libations Trail.
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