Two Dickinson Convention and Visitors Bureau employees receive state awards for tourism endeavors
May 6—DICKINSON — On the Western Edge, the Dickinson Convention and Visitors Bureau (DCVB) works year round to attract visitors on all the multiple possibilities there are to explore nature, restaurants, museums and much more. Recently, two DCVB employees were recognized on the state level for their innovative contributions to the tourism industry.
During the North Dakota Travel Conference that took place April 25 through April 27 in Grand Forks, DCVB's Multimedia Manager and Visitor Services employee Joel Walters and Sales and Marketing Coordinator Julie Obrigewitsch were one of several tourism employees awarded. Walters won the Sakakawea Award for a Behind-the-Scenes Tourism Employee for creating The Coffee Cruise — a traveling trail of unique coffee shops along the Old Red Old Ten Scenic Byway. Obrigewitsch received the 2020 Marketing & Technology Award, which was delayed to be presented due to the pandemic.
DCVB
Executive Director Terri Thiel spoke on how impactful both of these employees are, beginning with Obrigewitsch.
"... She's been very active and progressive about the Google market," Thiel said, adding that Obrigewitsch has done everything from Google Ads, Google My Business to knowledge panels. "Also, she's been giving some workshops on it too. So she's worked with the Google company now in fact and she's taught herself a lot of different things. She does our ad management when we start to put these together on paid ads also. So it's been a variety of different types of social marketing with that."
Prior to 2020, Obrigewitsch attended a travel conference with a representative from Miles Partnership on the importance and value Google can provide to organizations with all the free services.
"It seemed really interesting to me... Our office is on a very limited budget and I always look at the free things before I look to spend any money on anything. So it seemed like it would be a perfect fit for our office. So I came home from that conference and I implemented it right away. And after that, I added 648 photos of different hospitality businesses in Dickinson to Google. And since then, as of today, we have over 12.7 million views of those photos," Obrigewitsch said. "So it's not just adding the photos that was important; the important thing about adding the photos was that it adds to the value of our community. When people go online, they're using Google as the No. 1 search engine. They're going online looking for those great photos, so that they know what businesses that they want to go visit. And by providing those great visuals to those people, that puts people in those businesses doors and that's what adds to the value of our community."
Winning this award is not something she intended, but noted that she was only doing her job.
"You always want to be challenged in what you do and you always want to go a step further and try to learn something new. So that's really all I did," she added.
Walters began his career at the DCVB right out of high school in 2003.
"So he's been here a long time doing a lot of different things," Thiel said. "But he did create The Coffee Cruise and that's been a regional experience for people and we started it between Mandan and
Medora
and (added) all the unique coffee shops along the way."
With The Coffee Cruise, Walters has created contests, daily posts, photoshoots, videos and other marketing projects to promote that program.
"The benefit is kind of twofold. One is for those small communities in coffee shops to get people to stop there and the other one is that we're also getting all the analytics from that because we drive them back to our website," Thiel noted.
Along with launching an innovative program, Walters has been the sole creator on the last couple of guides the DCVB has distributed to visitors and into the community. Walters noted how thrilled he was to receive an award that highlights what the DCVB does year round.
"It feels very nice to be recognized. But I am excited that we're able to bring a little bit more notoriety specifically to The Coffee Cruise," Walters said, adding that the program is getting ready to run for its second year. "So I'm really glad it's getting some traction, but also just to bring a little bit of awareness to what we're doing at the CVB at large as well. I'm really happy for that. We collectively put in a lot of work here every year... whether that's trying to market the community or the region."
When asked how it feels to have two of her employees recognized on the state level, Thiel said that she was beyond proud.
"I've got the best employees. I really do. I just have the best. They are energetic, they are innovative, they are hard workers — both of them — and for all that we do here, there's no 'I' in it. It really is all of us, and we bounce things off each other," Thiel said, adding it's a fun environment to work in.
The Coffee Cruise will be coordinating the Old Red Trail Rummage Sale on June 4, which will be conducted virtually via Facebook. For more information, go to
visitdickinson.com/coffeecruise
.
For the upcoming summer season, Thiel encourages people — even locals — to come check out the DCVB office and see what they haven't explored yet on the Western Edge.
