Pulaski County is hoping to attract tourists from the Fort Wayne area.
A TV station there will soon be giving away Pulaski County prize packages, thanks to the Pulaski County Community Development Commission and some local businesses. “So you enter the drawing and the trivia during the week and you get a chance to win, and there are four package giveaways that will bring people here,” CDC Executive Director Nathan Origer told the county commissioners Monday. “It’ll send them two nights at a bed a breakfast, gift certificate to a local restaurant, and a few other things. The cost to us has been pretty minimal because everyone participating has either donated it or given us a really good discount, knowing if they get them once, maybe then can get them to come back.”
Origer has previously presented tourism as a way to attract new residents to Pulaski County and slow the county’s population decline. Earlier this year, the county commissioners decided not to continue running television commercials in the Chicago market, opting to advertise exclusively online.
Another way to reach potential tourists is through social media, and Origer told the commissioners this week that summer interns will be helping the CDC with that, as well as some other projects. “One of them is a Communications major and one of them has kind of an ag background,” he explained. “So we’re hoping the one with the ag background, especially, can help us to do a better job of figuring out some outreach with the agricultural community. As I’ve mentioned before, from the economic development side, it’s really hard to work with ag just because there aren’t a lot of state programs or local incentives.”
That means the CDC doesn’t currently have a reason to talk with farmers on a regular basis, but Origer wants to see if there’s a way in which everyone could benefit from increased communication.
