Pocahontas County Tourism Summit Connecting People, Places and Possibilities

The theme of the 2026 Pocahontas County Tourism Summit, held at the Opera House on May 7^th, can best be summed up as “Connecting People, Places and Possibilities”

During introductions by Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) Executive Director, Chelsea Faulknier and CVB Board President Bob Sheets featured snippets of the video advertising which is used nationwide to promote Pocahontas County as a tourism destination. This video, which is played at the Pittsburgh National Airport, as well on social media sites, include views of the tourism opportunities in the 140-acre Gaudineer Scenic Area; the Monday lick Trails, the Scenic highway and the Mon Forest, these were all tied together under the theme discover the rest we have to offer.

They offered some visitor profiles such as our tourists are comprised of half male and half female; with 75% being aged from 25 to 64 years old with average incomes over $50,000 per year; with 66% returning annually as tourists here. They said most come here from Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, Kentucky. South Carolina and Tennessee.

Their economic impact on the county includes annual tourism spending here of almost 232 million dollars, and represents $4,000n dollars in tax savings for county tax payers.

Some of the successes in tourism over the last year include increasing the collaboration with the Mon Forest Towns, which includes helping to create the new gravel bike riding and bike packing trail system which is connecting all 12 Mon Forest towns, which are Marlinton, Durbin, Cowen, Davis, Elkins, Franklin, Parsons, Petersburg, Richwood, Seneca Rocks, Thomas, and White Sulphur Springs. These include over sixty-day rides, as well as overnight bike-packing trips -which are similar to backpacking but done on bikes.

While the winter season still dominates tourism in the county, the CVB is working hard to increase the tourism during the other three seasons by promoting biking, motorcycling, fishing, hiking and hunting.

Charles Evans of the Snowshoe Area Resort Collaborative (or SHARC for short,) talked about their efforts to not only build and improve the trail systems here, but their Backcountry Management Model also includes providing for the safety of the people who enjoy all the remote backcountry here. They do this by providing services and training in things like remote rescue, medical services and wildfire control.

In the keynote presentation, Destiny Workman, the Advertising Manager of the West Virginia Tourism Cooperative cited that 87% of our visitors come back, but to ensure that this continues, they help businesses and the CVB to develop and use social media platforms such as Google to promote the county and its offerings for tourism. She said the use of AI is becoming increasingly popular by people planning their vacations, so our advertising should be designed to be very AI friendly by making information easy for AI search engines to find by using thirty plus photos of their business or tourism sites.

At the end of the Tourism Summit, Faulknier announced that Tim Wade has been selected as the 2026 Tourism Person of the Year. Wade, who is a local farmer, runs the Laden Bottom Farm on Route 39. He graduated from the third class ever to attend PCHS and had a 39-year career as a Custodian for the Pocahontas County Schools. Wade also is one of the founders of the Huntersville Tradition Days and is quite a local historian, sharing his knowledge with everyone including tourists. Wade was presented with a plaque commemorating this award.