Response, Resilience and Recovery: A Look at Mercer County CVB’s 2020 Annual Report

Last updated: August 30, 2021

Last year was difficult in a number of ways, and the impact of the global pandemic was felt in all industries. Travel and tourism, of which the Mercer County CVB is a part, faced a number of challenges — focus needed to be shifted since travel wasn’t being recommended, costs needed to be cut and existing tourism dollars had to be sustained due to a decrease in funding. Through our partnerships with other tourism entities and local businesses, Mercer County CVB was able to respond to the situation we all faced, show resilience and plan for a future recovery. Here are some highlights from our 2020 annual report:  

Response

The most important piece of our response efforts was to provide support to our partners. We did this in a few different ways, including:

• Purchased 100 gallons of hand sanitizer for tourism partners to help slow the spread of COVID-19
• Invested in additional outdoor recreation marketing
  • Because of this, Camp Creek State Park saw an increase in winter camping and a successful year overall, and the Hatfield-McCoy Trails rebounded immediately after closures were lifted. 
• Created a COVID-19 resource page with information about travel, links to health resources and community-related content
• Launched two shop local marketing campaigns 

Resilience 

Through our social media, email newsletter and website, we were able to stay connected with individuals interested in Mercer County and keep our area on the top of people’s minds when planning future travel. We also created content specifically for residents that encouraged them to social distance, visit the outdoors responsibly and shop local to support the community. 

A photo and video shoot with Digital Relativity — highlighting ATVs and Lake Shawnee, respectively — took place during the year as well to give us new content to use in our marketing and advertising efforts

Social media highlights:

Facebook

• 15,012 total page likes — more than 900 new page likes in 2020
• 92,037 post engagements and 3.6 million post impressions

Instagram

• 2,497 followers 

Twitter 

• 879 followers 

Newsletter: 

• 1,941 total newsletter subscribers — up 21% since May 1, 2020

Website 

• The age demographic for our website visitors is spread rather evenly, with 55-64 and 45-54 year olds being the highest percentage groups. 
• The majority of our website visitors are based in WV, VA and PA; however, the highest increase was visitors from MD
• Some of the most popular pages on our website include Lake Shawnee, ATV and Shop Local
• Digital campaigns had hundreds of thousands of impressions, and our ATV campaign had 1.5 million.    

Recovery 

Looking towards the future, Mercer County CVB will launch a new website later this year which will feature new photos, content and a fresh look for visitors. We will continue to monitor travel trends throughout the year and plan accordingly with partners. 

For a look at our full annual report, click here.