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A Note about the Lake City Visitor Guide
**We are extending the deadline for purchasing ads in the Visit Lake City Guide from September 15th to September 22nd**
Dear Lake City Businesses and Organizations,
While you contemplate whether or not to have an advertising presence in our new travel guide, as the manager of Lake City’s destination marketing efforts, I wanted to say a few words about the project.
First, we are really excited to publish a guide that Lake City’s guests and potential visitors can use as a resource for their travels. We encourage all Lake City’s visitor-facing businesses, from lodgers to restaurants to retailers to attractions to services, consider placing an ad. The guide is a two-year publication (2026-27), which will not only be available locally, but will be on the shelves of travel information centers across the region. We are on track to print in November of this year so that we can begin distributing it in December. The guide, along with our map and other pamphlets, will also be mailed to the hundreds who contact our office each year to ask that we send information to them in anticipation or consideration of their journey to the banks of lovely Lake Pepin.
This guide differs from the Chamber Community Guide that was published in 2022, in that it is not a “Chamber specific” publication. This means we invite all Lake City and other area businesses to participate. While the guide will attempt to break down all that Lake City has to offer in neat categories and design that takes cues from our website visitlakecity.org, placing an ad will not only assure your presence, it will stand out to anyone sifting through its pages. As a bonus, those who purchase ads will be recognized in a ‘list of advertisers directory’ in the back of the guide. Budget minded establishments can also purchase a simple advertisers directory listing by itself. Unlike the Chamber specific guide from 2022, there will not be an expansive directory of all Chamber member businesses in this publication.
The guide itself will be a high quality glossy print publication that will appear as much like a book as it does a travel brochure. While approximately half the size of a traditional magazine, our 64 page guide, loaded with beautiful photos and imagery, will be “perfect bound” (like a book), with a pleasantly visual and tactile “soft touch” cover. By making it stand out above others, we are confident that those who pick one up won’t toss it with the fast food bags and other things that fill a car on a trip, but will place it on their coffee tables or bookshelves to reference throughout the years as a high quality souvenir from our area. The guide will also include a relocation section, so even if your organization isn’t directly visitor-facing (ie, real estate, healthcare, schools, churches, auto services, construction and home services, and companies looking to recruit employees), in many instances purchasing an ad may still have a big impact.
We sincerely hope that your business or organization will contribute to this effort by placing an ad. As you are all well aware, the costs of materials have risen dramatically in recent months and years. Printing materials are no exception. This guide is a costly endeavor, but, based on our conversations with visitors and locals alike, we believe it to be an essential one. We’ve done our due diligence by being as financially responsible about this project as we can be without sacrificing its quality. We’ve kept sales and some design in-house, and have written and secured a small grant to offset some costs, but, like all of our work, this is a community effort.
Will you help us reach the finish line while also promoting your business by purchasing an ad?
If I’ve managed to tilt the scales with this letter and you’re wondering how to go about the process of advertising, please get a hold of us soon. While we’ve extended the deadline for purchase, we are still on a tight deadline to deliver all final ads to our design partner by the first of October.Please call our office at (651) 345-4123 and chat with us, or email Heather at director@lakecity.org, or me at lcchamber@lakecity.org, to get the ball rolling.
Thank you for your consideration,
Ed Hoffman
Visit Lake City
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