Here’s what’s behind a new Lancaster tourism marketing campaign offering free flights for meeting planners | Local company

A new Discover Lancaster marketing campaign is a response to the fact that business tourism in Lancaster County remains down 21% from its pre-pandemic days.

Much of the strong return to local tourist activity has been driven by a wave of leisure travellers.

In an effort to improve business travel volume, Discover Lancaster partners with Southern Airways Express in a new collaboration that offers qualified meeting planners complimentary round-trip flights to Lancaster from Washington , DC and Pittsburgh. They want to attract new meetings, events and conventions to Lancaster. Tickets can range from $39 to $89 one way. The offer is available until April 30. Southern began its journey to Washington just under a year ago.

“This new initiative is focused on meetings and conventions, as it’s that particular component of groups that takes the longest to rebuild – after sports and buses – so we want to try to boost the meetings segment as much as possible this year,” said Edward Harris, president and CEO of Discover Lancaster.

As part of the joint effort, Harris said the tourism bureau was spending $20,000 between mid-March and the end of April with ad placements in the Pittsburgh Business Times, Washington Business Journal, Meetings Today magazine and geo-targeted digital ads with ClickUPON. So far no one has signed up, but Harris said it’s still early in the campaign. It is encouraged by the fact that potential participants click on links to the promotion.

“As a brand new initiative, the broader awareness created by this meetings market promotion is just as important as any specific digital goals,” Harris said. “Web traffic tells us that there is significant interest in considering Lancaster County as a meetings destination, and we are optimistic that we will have planners who will arrange to come to our area in the near future and be able to show them the variety of great venues and options we offer.”

Before the pandemic, group travel (including meetings and conventions) accounted for 37% of overnight stays in the region each year, or 592,551 overnight stays. Harris said group travel currently accounts for about 16% of all bookings, or 256,238 room nights. Group travel includes meetings, bus groups and sports tourism.

The marketing campaign aims to tap into a new meetings industry created by the pandemic, said Mark Cestari, chief commercial officer of Southern Airways Express. With more people working from home, companies are looking to bring their staff together for quarterly meetings, Cestari said.

Southern Airways Express, a commuter airline that operates 32 weekly flights from Lancaster Airport in Manheim Township, is also looking to rebuild its business travel. It’s experiencing a turnaround similar to that of the lodging industry, going from being mostly business travelers to being mostly leisure travelers, Cestari said.

Southern Airways Express, the airport’s only commercial carrier, began flying from Lancaster Airport to Dulles International Airport outside of Washington DC three times a day in June. It also added new weekly flights to Nantucket, Massachusetts.

The low level of group travel is being felt in weak weekday spending at businesses like restaurants and hotels, Harris said.

The increase in leisure travel over the past eight months has helped the tourism industry recover from the pandemic. Harris said the number of accommodations in the second half of 2021 matched, if not better, the performance during the same pre-pandemic 2019 period.

The makeup of travelers has changed since the pandemic, said Kevin Molloy, executive director of the Lancaster County Convention Center Authority.

“Leisure travel is on fire,” Molloy said. “We have a different cake than 2019.”

Molloy said convention and meeting travel is bouncing back with the convention center landing contracts in 2022 for 2022 events, which is rare.

As for attracting business groups, Molloy said the virtual tours the venues provided during the pandemic were great, but it’s even better to get planners to see the facilities available in the county as well as the types restaurants and activities available in the area.

“There’s no such thing as ‘hey, come see this,'” Molloy said.