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DCVB Public Relations Efforts Paying Off for Door County

Recent media coverage for Door County in some major Midwestern publications is helping generate increased awareness for one of the Midwest’s premier vacation destinations.

As part of their mission to promote Door County as a top tourism destination, the Door County Visitor Bureau (DCVB) uses a variety of public relations initiatives to generate editorial stories about the county, said Jon Jarosh, director of Communications & Public Relations for the DCVB.

Each year those efforts help generate a wide variety of travel stories about Door County and this year has been no different, including articles in some nationally distributed media outlets. Most recently, the Chicago Tribune featured a full page story headlined “Cycling Door County” in its Sunday, Aug. 25 travel section and the September/October 2013 issue of Midwest Living magazine includes an eight-page feature story on fall travel in Door County titled “Door to the Door.”

“Those are just two recent examples of some great media coverage we’ve helped earn for the county this year,” Jarosh said. Additional articles have appeared in publications such as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, AAA Home & Away magazine, Family Fun magazine, the Discover Wisconsin TV show, the Joy Cardin radio show and a number of regional television news stations, to name just a few.

The DCVB posts article highlights on a special page of its website, DoorCounty.com, to give interested visitors an idea of what others are saying about Door County. “But our In The Press page has also been a great place for us to share article highlights with our local tourism partners and show them a little of what we’ve been able to accomplish from a PR standpoint, too,” Jarosh said.

Some of the public relations initiatives used by the DCVB this year include inviting travel journalists to experience the county on both group and individual editorial press trips, providing images to help illustrate travel articles, providing on-air or on-camera interviews with reporters and providing editorial support such as story ideas or fact-checking. Affiliations with the Midwest Travel Writers Association and the Society of American Travel Writers provide additional opportunities to build relationships with professional travel writers.

“The nature of the PR world is that earned media coverage tends to ebb and flow,” Jarosh continued. “What we can control is the effort we put forth. We continue pushing every day and do our best to keep Door County top-of-mind for travel writers, editors and producers and are very pleased when those efforts pay off in terms of great media coverage for our destination,” he said.