Come hike with us, New York, NY
At Endless Trail Bikeworx in Dobbs Ferry, owner Jason Cairo is offering a day-tour package with Metro-North Railroad to city dwellers who prefer dirt paths and physical exercise in their weekend travels. His customers represent a new breed of traveler that the mainstream tourism industry has largely overlooked with its coach bus tours and luxury hotel packages.
Cairo”™s offering includes a round-trip train ticket from Manhattan to the Metro-North station in Dobbs Ferry, a five-minute walk from his Main Street bike shop. From there, cyclists head north on the Old Croton Aqueduct path, toting a lunch coupon for a restaurant in Irvington.
“It”™s our second year” doing the promotion, said Cairo, who opened the bike shop in 2009. “It”™s been a great success. Last year we had over 200 people visit Dobbs Ferry” via promotional partner Metro-North. “We got a lot of young people coming up out of Manhattan.”
Cairo said his ride-and-bike business was helped “tremendously” by the promotional work of marketer Bruce Bolger and the 1-year-old Rivertowns Tourism Board, a citizens advisory group that Bolger heads as executive director. (The group”™s website is rivertownsny.org.) A Hastings-on-Hudson resident, Bolger also is president of Selling Communications Inc. in Tarrytown, and hopes some day to profit in other communities from the destination-tourism model for hikers and bikers that the Rivertowns Tourism Board is trying to develop in the historically and scenically rich Hudson River area that extends from Hastings-on-Hudson to Sleepy Hollow.
The board, made up of residents, businesspeople and village trustees in Dobbs Ferry, Irvington and Hastings, expects those walking and bicycling visitors to boost the villages”™ downtown business districts and help lift them from the economic doldrums, without the vehicular traffic and parking congestion that tourism often brings.
“The big challenge is marketing,” Bolger said recently at The Cupcake Kitchen and Luncheonette, a 3-year-old business on Irvington”™s Main Street that has served train-riding New Yorkers exploring on foot the nearby Old Croton Aqueduct trail. “Getting people to work together is not easy. In this economy, everybody”™s marketing money and resources are limited.”
Bolger last June did a radio campaign on WFUV, the public radio station affiliated with Fordham University, to promote the board”™s inaugural “Discover the Rivertowns” event. It was a significant step in his and the board”™s effort to “develop a regional marketing campaign designed to get New Yorkers to come up here,” he said.
His “short escapes” concept for the Rivertowns has its origins in a series of offbeat domestic and international tourist guides that Bolger and a business partner did two decades ago for Fodor”™s, the travel publisher. “This type of tourism is a form of economic development for unique towns,” he said. On his home turf along the Hudson, “Our mission is to prove that this can be done.” For his marketing business, the payoff will come when more destination communities in the metropolitan region and beyond buy into it.
“The WFUV experiment worked,” said Bolger. The June event drew visitors from four of New York”™s boroughs, Long Island, Connecticut, Westchester and Rockland countries and eastern Pennsylvania.
Bolger said the tourism group”™s three municipal charter members contribute $1,000 annually – $500 for each of two marketing campaigns ”“ with those public funds matched by private sponsors. Among the sponsors are Eileen Fisher, the Irvington-based women”™s clothing company, Marriott Springhill Suites in Tarrytown, a local bank and a real estate company and several of the restaurants that Bolger called “the big strength” of the river communities.
“The local businesses have been remarkably supportive, given the recession and the difficulty of measuring early returns on investment” in the destination marketing initiative, Bolger said.
But the board must add the villages of Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown as continuing members “to fund a really serious New York City radio campaign,” he said. Small monetary contributions to a common pool are needed. “None of us can afford to be on New York radio with so little money.”
Bolger said the Rivertowns Tourism Board wants to work cooperatively with other key players in the region”™s tourism industry, including the Westchester County Office of Tourism and Historic Hudson River Towns, an 18-year-old nonprofit organization that represents 14 Westchester municipalities.
Jerry Faiella, executive director of Historic Hudson River Towns, said he and Bolger will meet soon. “There”™s no reason we can”™t collaborate and build off each other”™s strengths,” he said.
Bolger said his overture of cooperation and financial support on behalf of the Rivertowns Tourism Board to Historic Hudson Valley, the nonprofit custodian of the historic homes visited by tourists on the aqueduct trail, was rejected. “It”™s classic closed-mindedness to destination marketing,” he said.
Constance Kehoe, a Rivertowns Tourism Board member and village trustee in Irvington, said her village did not have a municipal business improvement committee before 2009. “There was a sense that there wasn”™t a need to bring people here,” she said.
But the recession changed that small-town thinking. “Irvington”™s Main Street is not attractive to anybody” looking to open a small business, she said. As the village builds a critical mass of stores for browsing and shopping, more business owners will be drawn to Main Street, she said.    Â
For those already there, “It”™s tough to get business on Main Street,” said Jennifer O”™Connell, Cupcake Kitchen”™s owner. “You really have to work.”
“I wish we had a little more retail on Main Street, because it”™s not a walking town like Tarrytown,” she said.
“The challenge is getting people to work together,” said Bolger. “That”™s destination marketing.”
The village boards of Irvington and Hastings have not yet adopted an intermunicipal agreement, recently approved by Dobbs Ferry trustees, to cooperatively promote tourism in their villages through the Rivertowns Tourism Board.
In local government, said Kehoe, “It”™s harder to get things finished than to get people to work together. It”™s just such a slow, tedious process.”