Rural Nevada to get $760,000 in Travel Nevada grants for tourism promotion
CARSON CITY, Nevada — The Nevada Commission on Tourism (NCOT) on Thursday approved $760,000 in marketing grants to rural communities to market themselves as tourism destinations. Travel Nevada will distribute the 91 grants, which support a variety of marketing projects, from website improvements to attending consumer travel shows to advertising campaigns.
“Nevada’s rural communities manage some of our state’s most treasured natural and cultural sites,” Brenda Scolari, director of the Nevada Department of Tourism and Cultural Affairs, said. “We’re proud to partner with those communities to share these places with both out-of-state visitors and Nevadans.”
Grants were awarded to nonprofit groups for tourism marketing projects that will result in overnight stays, generating room tax revenue for the state.
Among the funded projects:
- A $25,490 award was granted to the town of Jackpot, near the Idaho border, to rebuild its website with a focus on ecotourism and outdoor recreation. Grant applicants stated that the website project is the foundation of a comprehensive marketing effort to promote Jackpot as an ecotourism and outdoor recreation destination.
- The Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe received a $5,000 grant to continue a West Coast print ad campaign promoting fishing and outdoor recreation. The Tribe manages Pyramid Lake, a popular sports fishing destination; grant applicants say they are targeting publications with a high readership of fishing/outdoor enthusiasts.
- An $11,844 grant was awarded to Las Vegas Territory, a regional organization promoting tourism in southern Nevada, to participate in consumer travel shows in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area and the San Francisco Bay Area. Those two markets are key for the destination, grant applicants stated.
- Nevada Silver Trails, a regional marketing group covering most of central Nevada, received a $15,080 grant for a print and online ad campaign that will run through fiscal year 2022 in Desert Companion Magazine. Attractions and landscapes in central Nevada communities will be showcased in this promotion, according to the grant application.
- A $20,000 award was given to Pony Express Territory, a regional marketing group promoting communities along the U.S. 50 corridor, for 13 digital billboards in the Sacramento, Calif., metro area. Billboard messages will rotate, according to the grant application, promoting each community along the U.S. 50 corridor — also known as “the Loneliest Road in America” — as well as the route as whole.
- The Carson City Culture & Tourism Authority got a $20,000 award to pay for video production supporting the organization’s new marketing campaign. Grant applicants stated that Carson City, over the past three years, has been building its tourism brand and creating an integrated marketing campaign for the city; this video project will further those efforts. Materials resulting from the video production are expected to be used for the next two to three years to drive overnight visitation.
For a complete list of grant recipients, click here.
Funding for Travel Nevada’s Rural Marketing Grants program comes from Travel Nevada’s operational budget, not the state’s general fund. Travel Nevada receives three-eighths of 1% of room tax revenue as its operations budget. A portion of those funds is used to offer the Rural Marketing Grants program. Grant recipients must provide a 50-50 match in funds of volunteer hours unless a waiver is approved. The grants are distributed in the form of reimbursements to the recipients after the projects are completed and labor and funding details are documented. For more on the Rural Marketing Grants program, click here.
The Nevada Division of Tourism is a division of the Nevada Department of Tourism and Cultural Affairs. More commonly known as Travel Nevada, the Nevada Division of Tourism is responsible for promoting and marketing Nevada as a travel destination to domestic and international travelers. Operating within a performance-based budget structure, Travel Nevada is funded solely by a percentage of lodging tax paid by overnight guests throughout the state. For more, visit TravelNevada.biz.
