Massive advertising makes Kilgore tourism successful

Wednesday, March 30, 2022

As per the recent report from Visit Kilgore Tourism Manager Ryan Polk, Kilgore is constantly attracting visitors, sightseers, shoppers and more. At a recent meeting, Polk addressed city council and mentioned how the city successfully drew visitors over the past year. Tourism has been massively impacted nationwide by the virus attack since 2020, but Polk said the tourism numbers of 2021, in some cases, returned to pre-pandemic levels.

“2021 was a very fast, strange year,” Polk said. “The mood right now is that things are looking a little bit similar to 2019, to a certain degree. People are more confident to travel, and we saw that in Kilgore. We had an increase in (hotel) occupancy of 17.9 percent over 2020, so we’re moving on up and this year it continues to go up higher.”

He also emphasized that throughout 2021 Visit Kilgore had pursued both digital and print marketing advertising campaigns. They also continued a trend of focusing print travel guides to the interests of potential visitors.

“At the end of 2021, we were up to 4,874 Facebook followers. We tailored our print guides to whoever is coming in, whether it was a baseball tournament, the Texas Shakespeare Festival, Texas Radio Hall of Fame or Reel East Texas Film Festival. Instagram followers were up as well, to 2,209. Thanks to City of Kilgore, we were able to give 682 welcome bags to different events, tournaments, family reunions, all of the above.”

Visit Kilgore’s 2021 advertising efforts paid off by drawing huge number of people to the city and spreading the word about Kilgore in print and in social media, according to Polk.

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