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by VDC Staff
Information for In Committee news reports are sourced from GoldenDomeVt.com and the General Assembly website.
The Scott administration is taking steps to bring more tourists to Vermont, attract new residents, and reach a broader audience
A Vermont House Committee heard testimony on Wednesday about the Scott administration’s efforts on tourism and marketing the Vermont brand. Heather Pelham, the Commissioner of the Department of Tourism and Marketing, testified in front of the House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development about the department’s successes and new programs that they’ve developed.
According to an economic impact analysis conducted in 2024, Vermont sees $16 million visitors and brings in $4.2 billion in direct spending revenue for lodging, dining, transportation, and other consumer businesses. The state also sees a taxation benefit of $293.5 million in tax revenue. Commissioner Pelham affectionately refers to tourists as “temporary taxpayers” due to this added benefit of tourism.
The $4.2 billion in direct spending revenue makes up 9% of Vermont’s GDP, which is much higher than most other states with those states seeing about 3% of their GDP in tourism revenue, according to Pelham.
In order to spread the state’s brand and appeal to other regions, Pelham’s department conducts paid advertising campaigns among other strategies, and according to their research, their paid media ads show a 547:1 return on dollars spent in direct tourist spending and a 43:1 return in tax revenue.
During her testimony, Pelham explained that 2025 was a difficult year for Vermont due to a lack of Canadian tourism, especially during the summer months. However, her department ran ads during the fall of 2025, including ads featuring statistics about Vermont tied to a message of “100% Love for Canada”. Her department doesn’t have data yet on the longer trends of Canadian travel sentiment in Vermont but Pelham reported that broad trends indicate that overall Canadian to United States travel is down to 15% from 25% in prior years.
The Department of Tourism and Marketing conducted a statewide listening tour to identify what will make tourism more sustainable and effective. The department also conducted a visitation study and concluded that Vermont isn’t rejected as a travel location but instead simply overlooked. Only 14.8% of respondents reported that they would like to travel to Vermont in the next three years—placing Vermont under Maine, Massachusetts, and other New England states.
While this data is disappointing, Pelham reminded the committee that tourism is a competitive market and our state needs to do its best to tell our story in an attractive way, in which she reports that her department is making headwinds in new areas. Through hiring a consultant firm, her department was able to determine what a BIPOC specific visitation strategy looks like for Vermont, and tailored to this strategy, her department plans to unveil a new campaign this summer to ensure that our state is telling our story in a way that is attractive to visitors of color. “That’s very exciting for us”, said Pelham.
While tourism is the primary focus of her department, Pelham explained that marketing the Vermont brand effectively can mean relocation to Vermont permanently and part of her work is to promote Vermont as an ideal place to live or work. Included in this is the GROW (Grants for Relocation Outreach Work) program funded by the legislature. According to the Agency’s website, The program works with local community organizations to “conduct relocation, recruitment, and retention activities in order to encourage and support new residents relocating to Vermont.” Grant funding eligibility relies on collaboration with other organizations and their efforts to reach and serve broad audiences, e.g underrepresented communities and new and diverse residents. In its first two years, the GROW program brought to Vermont 97 family units consisting of 195 individuals from 32 different states, as well as internationally. The program receives $2 million during the 2026-2027 grant cycle.
The department boasts a broad local partnership appeal across the state for the GROW program that incorporates a diverse variety of organizations, including the Vermont Professionals of Color Network and Out in the Open to support both BIPOC and LGBTQ+ individuals who may need additional help navigating a relocation to Vermont. Pelham explains that these partnerships and outreach creates opportunities for interaction with local communities with the hope that new families and individuals can feel comfortable and excited about remaining in Vermont long term.
Commissioner Pelham also elaborated on her Department’s DEIA (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility) initiatives and the strategies they have employed to ensure that Vermont is welcoming to all visitors. This includes ambassador training and making sure that there is cultural sensitivity in what it means to be a frontline hospitality worker.
Another tactic that her department has focused on is through paid content creators, a.k.a influencers. In alignment with DEIA initiatives, the department specifically partnered with either persons of color or LGBTQ+ identifying individuals to, “tell our story through their eyes and their experiences here in Vermont”, said Pelham.
According to the February 2025 Budget Book published by the Agency of Commerce and Community Development, “VDTM has made a concerted effort to select BIPOC and LGBTQ+ individuals, as well as individuals with a disability, when we look to create partnerships with social media influencers. Last year VDTM was able to partner with the influencer agency, Development Counselors International (DCI), to host five diverse content creators which enabled us to reach markets that may not normally consider Vermont as a place to vacation.” Among the five influencers paid to promote Vermont were, @chubbydiaries and @onairplanemode__.
Commissioner Pelham finished her testimony with an explanation of staffing numbers and her department’s efforts to create large amounts of images of Vermont through the seasons by hiring and partnering with videographers and photographers.
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Categories: State Government, Tourism
Can not comment on this tourist economy as it welcomes everyone including drug dealers.
Disgusting.. we obviously have the wrong person in this job and they are very poorly directed.
What marketing fool focus’s our marketing dollars on a small group of sexual deviants instead of the much larger group of straight family people.
Only those with their own agenda not that of the public, their boss.
Governor Scott needs to fire her ass, or at least redirect the departments focus to the major demographics and stop wasting our money.
Just rolling downhill like a snowball headed for hell …….
So we have a department, appointed by Snot, that is focusing our tax dollars on DEI initiatives, no longer applicable per the Trump Administration. Focused on race and sexual preferences to draw that crowd to Vermont? And speaking of DEI, don’t we already have a protection for individuals that inhibits basing on race, religion, sex, etc.? Anyways, I personally would like to have our Legislature spend that money on retaining the Vermonters it has, instead of looking to greener pastures. Make Vermont attractive by honesty, good morals, truth, hard work, stop trying to make Vermont blend with society. You’re turning her into a trashy whore. And when it all shakes out, there’s a golden dome where we point our eyes, to the ones who lead us down the road, some of us kicking and screaming. Others, cheering as we are all driven into the ditch. We all shall suffer, the just and the unjust.
The smell of Epstein is in the Vermont air.
Yup Ya gotta get real. Can’t keep natives here, the state is poison to good tourists, But the bad tourists love the state. Vt is in competition with many other states for all the aspects of human interests. Another position VT is in, low place on the totem pole of viable states. Didn’t the state welcome the China delegate? What was that really all about? China tourists?
Maybe, just maybe, if the streets and parks were walkable, your tourist numbers might improve.
I recently spoke with a teller at a Brattleboro bank. She was relieved because she had been promoted to work at a branch in New Hampshire. Referring to Brattleboro, she said, “We can’t take our kids outside here.”
And obviously, it ain’t just Brattleboro…there’s another couple towns in VT that start with a “B”…. slipping my mind at the moment…..