The Lander County Convention and Tourism Authority recently received approximately $30,000 in grant money for marketing and advertising for events in the county. Tourism Director Paula Tomera hopes the grant funding will expand tourism within the county.
Lt. Gov. Mark Hutchison announced Monday, Dec. 4, that the Nevada Commission on Tourism (NCOT) approved $660,600 in grants for rural tourism organizations to promote their destinations. The grants will be distributed by the Nevada Division of Tourism (Travel Nevada) through its long-standing Rural Marketing Grants program. Lander County Convention and Tourism Authority was recommended for the 2018 marketing grant for $4,956.
“Part of this marketing grant is to advertise the events that we do. This one in particular is covering our World Human Powered Speed Challenge, which has been running now for eighteen years,” explained Tomera, “We use that to run a variety of ads in other states on television and radio stations to promote our event. We hope it will bring in more participants and spectators to visit the county.”
On top of the of the Rural Marketing Grant, Tomera mentioned Lander County Convention and Tourism Authority also received a $6,000 grant for website development, another grant for a feasibility study and a grant for $1,500 for advertising a Madden Media insert.In total, Lander County Convention and Tourism Authority has acquired close to $30,000 in grant funding for advertising and marketing.
“Our website is one of the best ways to capture visitors that could potentially come into the county. With the website development grant we are going to add a widget to our site that will provide an iMap and a Go Guide. The iMap will allow visitors to search for hotels or events to participate in if they are staying in town,” Tomera said.
“The Madden Media grant we got is for our spring insert in Nevada Magazine. We can do an advertisement for each of the communities or do just a county-wide advertisement in that insert.”
Tomera mentioned that Travel Nevada is specific about how they give out grants to the counties. Typically their grants do not provide funding for food at events, but they will give grants to advertise the events. The NCOT grant recipients must submit a 50-50 match in funds or volunteer hours with the approval of the grant funding.
“We also offer help to any nonprofits in rural Nevada in applying for grants in our area,” stated Tomera. “We can help them find, apply and write for grant approval.”
Grant advertising is usually done 100 miles outside of the county because they want to attract visitors into the towns and add to economic growth by staying overnight. With events like the World Human Powered Speed Challenge and the Chukar tournament, Lander County is attracting a worldwide audience with their advertising.
*Disclaimer: Paula Tomera is Travis Masterson’s mother-in-law.
