August 11, 2020

Jenny Sanchez:
Hello, I’m Jenny Sanchez. Welcome to “Sullivan 180 Presents… Take Five!” Our guest today is Roberta Lockwood from the Sullivan Catskills Visitors Association. Roberta, thank you for joining me.

Roberta Byron-Lockwood:
Well, thank you you for having me here today! It’s a pleasure.

Jenny Sanchez:
Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little about the Sullivan Catskills Visitors Association?

Roberta Byron-Lockwood:
Sure. I’m Roberta Byron-Lockwood, and I’m the president and CEO of the Sullivan Catskills Visitors Association. And you wonder what that may be, what we are is the ‘destination marketing organization’ for the Sullivan Catskills. Our role is to make sure that “it happens” in the Sullivan Catskills and that we grow the wealth and the tourism economy as much as possible, to help the economic base of all of the residents of our County and our communities.

Jenny Sanchez:
Can you talk to us about some of the challenges and opportunities the County and particularly the tourism sector has faced since the pandemic?

Roberta Byron-Lockwood:
I think we’ve all faced heroic time because it’s just been absolute craziness since this has all happened, but, I think it’s safe to say across the United States, the tourism industry took the hardest hit. We all kind of re-pivoted. We found our businesses pivoting and changing and becoming very much a part of the community and servicing their community: servicing the needs of what we needed during this time. Prohibition was making hand sanitizer. How many of our businesses just services the children of the community, made sure their neighbors were taken care of, made sure that our healthcare workers, our essential workers were fed and taken care of. Our association, kind of flipped their switch instead of marketing ourselves to the traveling public, we kind of came inside. We went out of the marketing of outside of our area, and we focused our concentrations on working with our members, working with our businesses, making them aware of opportunities for them. I’m giving them COVID updates. We navigated all of our businesses through each one of the phases. And as we’ve done that, we’ve tried to share and give guidances for all of our businesses as to what they need to do, what they need to take care of, how they are going to conform with both CDC, state and local concerns. As far as dealing with our residents, our frontlines, and also visitors, now that they’re coming back. So it’s been an ongoing, adventure for all of us, and though it’s been a trying time, I think it gave us all a moment to take a look at the capacity that everyone has in this County. They never cease to amaze me. And I am so proud of the tourism industry here and what we’ve been doing, and through this entire time was we were responsible for that ‘Takeout Sullivan Catskills’, made sure that everybody knew who was open, who had takeout, who had carry out and what you could find every single day. And we updated that. We also updated social distancing and what you can do in our Sullivan Catskills with your children and your families during this time that you really shouldn’t be close to one another. So we took the time to list all those activities from our Dove Trail, which we’re so proud of and has been a real part of a social distance scene, along with our hiking trails, www.trailkeeper.com, updating all of that information, making sure it was in the hands of our traveling public and our residents. Making sure that everyone understood what parks were open, what the limitations were, what you can do on a rainy day, how you can entertain the kids. Some of the online services with our museums, our exhibitions, music, so many of our social clubs work through us and with our members to deliver meals to those that needed help. We also put together a gift certificate program for our members, and businesses in our community, inspiring them to spend a hundred dollars in each of the businesses. And for every time that they did that, we added an additional 25. We’re also looking at a new program that has been unveiled and exactly all of our businesses will start having those decals sent to them: “Catskills Confidence”. And what we’ve done is we’ve tried to instill with visitors and those that choose to travel no matter what, that they can have confidence that when they choose the Sullivan Catskills, they can have the “Catskills Confidence” because all of our businesses have aligned themselves to be certain that they’re going to conform to all of the guidances, make sure they do the right practices, the social distancing and everything that’s out there. So what we have is a whole campaign out there to assure everyone that there’s “Catskills Confidence”.

Jenny Sanchez:
Is there anything else you’d like to add or any resource?

Roberta Byron-Lockwood:
I think that working with us, supporting our local businesses, I think the collaboration that we’ve all done, I mean, from working with you guys at 180, working with our fellow economic development partners, I know we’ve got a great working relationship with Renaissance and we’re all excited about our new location down the street at the new Sullivan Mall. We’re all excited to team up with BOCES and be able to, to have available to not only our visitors, but for our businesses, the ability to have a seminar and education incubator right there. So we’re able to have them get best practices and share things that they’re going to be able to implement immediately into their marketing plans as we move forward.

Jenny Sanchez:
Can you please provide the best way to reach out to you or your organization for more information?

Roberta Byron-Lockwood:
Absolutely. Our number at our offices is (845) 747-4449. You can reach us on there. You can either go on the internet, you can check our website at www.SullivanCatskills.com. You can find us on Facebook Sullivan, Catskills, and we encourage you, if you’re away and you want to share our number 800, 882-CATS We’re always there and we’re always ready to assist with itineraries, ideas, recommendations and all of the finest things that are happening right here in our backyard.

Jenny Sanchez:
Thank you so much, Roberta, for joining me again and for all of the wonderful works that you and everyone else at the Sullivan Catskills Visitors Association does for our County.

Roberta Byron-Lockwood:
Thank you. And thank you for letting us share this opportunity with everybody. We appreciate all that you do as well.