No doubt about it. Downtown Saratoga Springs has a vibrant and walkable downtown.
With hotels, shops, restaurants, galleries, parks, historic buildings and wide sidewalks, there are always people walking from one destination to another.
When these people are visitors to our area, they have two locations to get advice on where to stay, dine, shop, and explore.
The first is the visitor center owned by the City of Saratoga Springs which is managed year-round by the Saratoga Convention and Tourism Bureau.
The second is what I affectionately refer to as the Chamber’s “summer home.” It is the small green information booth outside of Congress Park.
We staff this booth from June through Labor Day, 7 days a week from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Our members can drop off brochures there that our staff will hand out for free.
We annually help more than 12,000 visitors who are looking for local ideas and suggestions.
This summer, we are fortunate to have five amazing ambassadors working with us at this booth.
They are: Cindy Wall, Tammy Magnano, Ann O’Brien, Barbara Bade, and Marti LaDue.
They are enthusiastic boosters for our members positively pointing out the vast array of great destinations we have in this area.
The two visitor centers collaborate and share promotional materials.
While being across the street from one another may not appear to be the most efficient, the reality is we find different people are drawn to or can more easily access one or the other visitor centers and rarely go to both.
What we can’t do with either visitor center, however, is move one of them.
That’s why we created the Visitor Van.
The Visitor Van is the Chamber’s new mobile information center.
When we park the Visitor Van on the side of a road or in a parking lot, we can open the side or back doors and put up brochure racks that transform this van into an information booth.
We purchased the Visitor Van used from Mangino Buick-GMC, in Ballston Spa. We worked with Allegory Studios, in Saratoga Springs, to design a wrap that draws people to look at and be drawn to the Visitor Van. The wrap was printed on the Visitor Van by Fast Signs of Saratoga, in Wilton.
We’re now taking the Visitor Van on the road to destinations where people are gathering.
The Visitor Van gives us the flexibility to extend our visitor services and to promote our members at locations across Saratoga County.
The Visitor Van has already stopped at locations in the Saratoga Spa State Park, Clifton Park, Ballston Spa, Charlton, Wilton, Stillwater, and Schuylerville.
As we do with the information booth, members can give us brochures or give-aways that we will use to promote them to those visitors we engage with in our travels with the Visitor Van.
The Visitor Van will not replace our information booth on Broadway but it will expand our ability to be a visible and vocal promoter of our members.
