At the Dec. 23 meeting, Jeff Shipley of the Seneca County Chamber of Commerce presented a year-end tourism report showing gains in overnight visitation beginning in April 2024 and several initiatives planned for early 2025.

Shipley said research the TPA (tourism promotion agency) produces by county shows an increase in overnight visitors from April onward compared with 2023. "Every month from April on, we have had an increase in overnight visitation from 2023 in Seneca County," he said. He identified in‑state visitors as an opportunity (about 35% of overnight visitors) and said the chamber will focus marketing on New York State workers and nearby domestic markets, including parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Shipley attributed a large short-term bump to heavy, targeted marketing around the April 8 solar eclipse. He said the five-day eclipse weekend (April 4–8) saw average daily occupancy of about 80 percent, average daily demand of around 170 properties and 851 identified booked nights; he estimated approximately $308,000 in short-term rental revenue for that period and cited an average daily rate of $363.

The Chamber described a suite of initiatives for Q1 2025: a tear-off tourism map listing every county tourism property, a packages app to package and sell multi-venue experiences through vacation-rental and accommodation partners, participation in the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Corridor route, a regional outdoor-experiences video campaign, and a partnership with Wheel the World to inventory accessible properties and list them on a global accessibility-travel platform.

Shipley said the TPA ran an $80,000 digital media budget in 2024 that yielded more than 3 million impressions and 170,000 engagements for the Discover Seneca brand, and that the chamber plans a Texas A&M conversion study in mid‑2025 to better measure dollars-in-market tied to advertising. "We are going to be working with Texas A&M University... to measure how much money has been spent in market and we can tie it back to those ads," he said. The chamber said it intends to return with a fuller presentation in January and to follow up on details for a building project in Tyre.

The presentation drew procedural and budget questions from supervisors about return on investment and program funding; Shipley pointed to rising occupancy-tax revenues and higher website visits as key indicators and said conversion data will be a future focus.