WEST SPRINGFIELD — With kids out of school and tourism on the rise, tourism advocates in Western Massachusetts turned to area mayors Friday to help promote the region’s third-largest industry.
“We have to market ourselves,” said Eastern States Exposition Chairman Eugene Cassidy, who also serves this year as chairman of the board of the Greater Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Ray Berry, president of White Lion Brewery and chairman of the public relations committee for the Greater Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau, said local residents have a role to play: Word of mouth is the best form of advertising.
White Lion Brewing president and founder Ray Berry stressed the importance of positive word-of-mouth advertising when tourism promoters met with area mayors at the Big E on Friday.
“When someone tells you something directly, you believe it,” Berry said.
The agency, which uses the marketing name “Explore WesternMass,” met with Springfield Mayor Domenic J. Sarno, Chicopee Mayor John L. Bio and Agawam Mayor Christopher Johnson at their first mayoral roundtable, which gathered at the Big E in West Springfield.
The stakes are huge: Citing statistics first released in January by research firm Tourism Economics, the tourism bureau said tourism supported 11,466 jobs in the region, which covers Hampden, Hampshire and Franklin counties, in 2022. That makes tourism the third-largest industry in the state as well as the region’s third-largest industry after health care and education.
And many of these jobs are young people’s first jobs, as well as their first opportunities for leadership or management roles, said Peter Carmichael, president of Six Flags New England in Agawam.
“I often meet people who started their careers here,” he said.
Six Flags, which starts its weekday water park season next week, employs 3,000 seasonal workers, about one-third of whom live in Springfield and two-thirds are spread across the core cities of Agawam, West Springfield and Springfield.
Six Flags does not release attendance figures for its individual parks.
According to the Massachusetts Tourism Office, tourism in Western Massachusetts generated a cumulative economic impact of $1.3 billion in 2022, with 4 million tourists visiting the region that year and spending $872 million, or $2.3 million per day.
Johnson said Agawam was on the verge of losing Six Flags during the transition from Riverside Park to corporate ownership. Six Flags’ new owners had planned to build it in West Hartford, Johnson said.
Biot said Chicopee may not have tourist attractions like the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, the Big E or Six Flags, but it does have Westover Air Reserve Base and its civilian airport, as well as hotels and restaurants that rely on tourism.
He said the city of Chicopee is working on developing downtown Chicopee Center to make it a more vibrant place.
Sarno cited Ironman 70.3 Western Massachusetts, which took place this past weekend, and Hooplandia, a three-on-three basketball tournament taking place next week at the Big E and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and Museum.
But Tourism Director Mary Kay Wider said the department still needs support for Beacon Hill’s tourism industry if it is to continue receiving state funding, which makes up the majority of its $2.1 billion annual budget.
