Oneida County Tourism honored for digital food tour

UTICA, N.Y. — Capping off a year where visitor spending in Oneida County totaled $2.7 billion, Oneida County Tourism (OCT) received two awards from the New York State Tourism Industry Association (NYSTIA) for a 2021 digital-marketing campaign promoting the delicious foods for which the region is known.

The A-Z Food Tour on OCT’s Instagram page, organized by Sarah Calero, director of communications, tantalized tastebuds. It also garnered both the “Excellence in Tourism Marketing Campaigns, Projects & Programs: Digital Marketing” award and the “Recovery & Resurgence: To Assist Community & Local Business Recovery & Resurgence” award from the NYSTIA.

The awards, presented in late October, recognize outstanding initiatives and achievements of the state’s destination-marketing organizations, attractions, and other tourism-related businesses.

“The A-to-Z Food Tour is a perfect example of how a simple campaign can create a positive impact in the community for residents while having a positive impact on local tourism and the tourism economy,” Calero said in a news release announcing the awards.

Oneida County Tourism President Kelly Blazosky praised Calero for creating the award-winning campaign. “I was so proud for Sarah,” she says. “She put so much work into it.”

The campaign happened during a tricky time, Blazosky says, when OCT was starting to market again after the height of the pandemic but didn’t want to market in its usual areas within a four- to six-hour drive.

The A-to-Z Food Tour allowed OCT to hit a sweet spot of marketing to people within a small footprint as well as encourage local residents to start going out to eat again, she says.

Rather than focus on select restaurants, the food tour asked Instagram followers to name their favorite local dishes for each letter of the alphabet. The delicious results included dishes like bananas foster French toast and gourmet grilled cheeses along with Utica–area specialties like riggies, tomato pie, and upside-down pizza. Restaurants featuring the selected dishes were linked, and the end result is a 26-stop tour for both resident foodies and visitors looking for something tasty to eat.

“It gave us really almost an evergreen kind of food tour,” Blazosky adds. By evergreen, she means a product that remains usable and relevant with some routine updating. The guide is available on the organization’s Instagram at www.instagram.com/ocnewyork/.

Food is universally comforting, Blazosky notes, and the beauty of the A-to-Z Food Tour is that everyone can use it whether they live here and are looking for a new place to try or if they are visiting for a weekend tournament at the new Nexus Center and need to feed the family.

With all the offerings on the food tour, Blazosky is confident visitors will find something that sounds delicious to them. “One of the things that comes up in conversation [about the area] is the sheer diversity of food,” she says. The food tour features flavors from around the world including Mediterranean, Indian, Italian, Asian, and American dishes.

While OCT didn’t track results with the individual restaurants, Blazosky says it received positive feedback from the eateries. “Every one of them was so pleased,” she notes.

After a strong tourism year in 2021 for Oneida County, Blazosky says that 2022 is shaping up to be even better. “This year was back to a solid, real good summer season and fall season,” she says. Hotel-occupancy rates are good, and the fall events and offerings have benefited from the nice weather, she added.