Visit St. Mary’s outlines marketing targets, visitor data and new ambassador training to boost overnight stays

Liz Miltenstein, executive director of Visit St. Mary’s, told the Economic Development Commission that the tourism entity is focused on driving out-of-area visitation and overnight stays while reinvesting lodging-tax revenue back into local marketing and event support. Miltenstein said Visit St. Mary’s operates as a destination marketing organization (DMO) with a staff of three, receives county funding via a portion of a 6 percent lodging tax and works under a memorandum of agreement with the county. The organization also runs a sponsorship and marketing-amplification program (MAP) that helps event organizers advertise to target markets. For fiscal year 2025, Miltenstein reported visitor analytics derived from location and transaction data. She said about 14 percent of observed mobile devices in the county met Visit St. Mary’s definition of a “visitor” (less than two weeks’ stay and more than 50 miles from home), and those visitors accounted for roughly 16 percent of spending activity captured in the dataset. Demographic highlights she cited included that about 57 percent of visitors were age 25–54 and 52 percent had an estimated household income above $100,000. Miltenstein said Visit St. Mary’s has identified four primary advertising markets for FY26 — Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and Norfolk — and that the office purchased a new geolocation analytics tool (Zartico) this year to better target ad placements and measure visitor behavior. She also described workforce and front-line training plans: Visit St. Mary’s plans to launch a tourism-ambassador program for front-desk and customer-service staff to improve visitor referrals to local events, restaurants and attractions. The pilot cohort will be free to participants, will include familiarization tours and customer-service training, and the first (beta) class is set to open for applications in August. Miltenstein highlighted recent cooperative projects: a federal EDA grant-funded Southern Maryland commercial promoting waterways and trails that Visit St. Mary’s is producing with Calvert and Charles counties; a Maryland Alcohol Manufacturing Promotion Fund award to support craft-beverage promotion; and influencer and media partnerships to amplify county attractions. Commission members asked about distinguishing business and leisure travelers. Miltenstein said the Zartico tool does not directly classify purpose, but she looks for local event and business patterns to infer whether spikes in lodging and traffic are driven by conferences, base activity or leisure events. No formal commission vote or county policy decision was taken during the presentation; Miltenstein’s remarks were informational and staff asked commissioners to continue supporting marketing partnerships and the MAP program that provides event-level marketing support.