Each year VisitPITTSBURGH, the city’s official tourism and promotion agency, releases an Official Visitors Guide to Pittsburgh. This year there’s a change.
“What makes this a little bit different this year is that our visitors guide, we’re changing the orientation from a portrait type of orientation to a landscape, which makes it very different than all of our competitive cities,” said Craig Davis, president and CEO of VisitPITTSBURGH.
That means instead of opening and viewing the guide like a magazine – it opens from the bottom, sort of like how one would flip through a calendar. David said this change is meant to better integrate the paper guide to the agency’s website.
“What is happening now is, of course, digital media is taking over much more than paper media but we still get a big call for paper,” said Davis.
More than 100,000 of the guides go out each year in an effort to attract vacationers and conventions to the city which boosts tourism.
“Tourism is a $5.5 billion industry for Allegheny County, it’s one of our largest employers,” said Davis. “What this guide does is it allows us to really put our best foot forward.”
He said that isn’t too hard, as Pittsburgh continues to make numerous “best of” lists.
“Condé Nast magazine, which is an upscale magazine for tourism, named Pittsburgh one of the top 20 places to visit in the world,” said Davis. “Last year we were named by the Travel Channel as one of the top “all American” vacations and the year before we were named by National Geographic Traveler as one of the top places to visit in the world.”
The visitors guide gives a rundown of restaurants, lodging, shopping, museums and other cultural happenings in and around Pittsburgh.
