Monthly Update from the Pocahontas County Convention and Visitor’s Bureau

We recently caught up with a very busy Cara Rose, the Director of the Pocahontas County Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, who gives an update on what’s happening there.

“I am happy to announce that the Pocahontas County Hospitality Superstar for the month of June was awarded to Karen Wilfong, she works at Trent in Bartow “ said Cara. “She provided superb customer service to our secret shopper during the month of June. So congratulations to Karen Wilfong.

“The Pocahontas County is also partnering with the Robert C. Byrd Institute to provide a marketing session this summer. The session will be held on August 22^nd from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and it does include lunch.  We do ask that attendees pre-register. There will be an on-line registration. We’ll announce that in the newspaper and I’ll announce it again on the radio. The session is going to focus on marketing, and anybody is invited that is interested. It could be a business owner, it could be an individual.  We’re going to focus on two primary things, and that is how do we deal with GPS. GPS, as many of you know can be very can be very helpful and very accurate, however occasionally we do find that in more rural destinations, directions can be a little bit misleading. So we are going to use this marketing session to help our business partners learn a little bit more about how to ensure that customers and guest can find their business more efficiently through GPS.  We are also going to focus on on-line reservation platforms such as Air B&B, and how our business partners can utilize those types of on-line reservation systems to grow their business. The first session will be from 10 to 12 and that’s going to focus on the on-line reservation platforms; lunch from noon to 1; and from 1 to 2 the session will focus on GPS and utilizing that mapping system in your marketing network. If anybody has any questions regarding this marketing session, they are welcome to give me a call at (304)799-4636. Again it will be in the newspaper and I’ll send out emails to anybody on our mailing list. But anybody is invited, so anybody who is not on my normal email list can attend, they’ll just need to pre-register on-line.”

“We are hosting the Hudson Cream Biscuit Bake-off again- and I do like to bake biscuits, so I do coordinate this event, and Hudson Cream is our sponsor for the Bake-Off. It will be held during the autumn Harvest Festival on September 30^th –that’s the last Saturday of September. I wanted to inform listeners that we do have some changes in our biscuit categories this year. We are going to do it just a little bit differently then we have the past several years. This will be our fifth annual event . We are going to be categorizing entries for the traditional biscuit by: Master Category, which will include anyone who has won in the last 4 years – they will be required to go into that category. We’ll have a Premier baking category which will be for adults and that can be anyone who has not won previously. And we are going to add a Youth Category this year. The youth bakers age group will be ages 9 through 17. We are also going to do People’s Choice, and the People’s Choice will now be the sweet and savory categories. Anybody has questions about the new regulations and categories feel free to call the office or stop in our office and pick up the registration information, be happy to provide that. It is also going to be available on the Chamber of Commerce website.”