EVERETT – When the new Future of Flight Aviation Center &Boeing Tour sought someone to lead its marketing effort to attract visitors, it ended up hiring the county’s longtime expert on tourism.
Sandy Ward, who had led the Snohomish County Tourism Bureau since its start in 1996, is now in charge of attracting people to the new aviation center when it opens in the fall.
“We’re very pleased to be able to get Sandy on board,” said Barry Smith, executive director of the Future of Flight Foundation. “I’m glad to have her expertise and enthusiasm for this facility.”
Ward, who lives in the Maltby area of south Snohomish County, said she’s happy to shift gears after nine years at the tourism bureau.
“It’s kind of an exciting opportunity to get in on something at the ground floor,” said Ward, who started as marketing director this week at the Future of Flight’s temporary office in Mukilteo. “This was one of those things that tickled my brain.”
Located on the northwest corner of Paine Field, the Future of Flight seems to have a head start on success. The center will be the new starting point for the Boeing Co.’s plant tour, which attracted about 82,000 paid visitors last year, making it is the single largest tourist attraction in the county.
But the Future of Flight has the goal of bringing in more than 230,000 visitors in its first year.
Helping the center reach that number will be the fact that the Boeing tour, which is offered now only on weekdays, will add weekends to its schedule.
“We’ll be open when the visitors are actually available,” Ward said.
Between now and the Future of Flight’s opening, Ward will develop marketing materials and a strategy for publicizing the center.
If the center does well, it will help lift the county’s tourism business as a whole, she said. The tourism bureau will have an information desk inside the flight center to provide information on other area attractions.
Ward helped launch the bureau – a nonprofit agency supported by hotel and motel room tax revenue – after doing similar work in Kitsap County.
Ward’s first steps into the tourism industry were almost accidental, she said. While going to college in Ogden, Utah, she applied at a travel agency to help support herself. Ward said she got hired because she’d “been to Hawaii and spoke a bit of German.” She then worked for other travel agencies and an airline before becoming a tourism director in Ogden.
Asked about her accomplishments at the Snohomish County Tourism Bureau, she points to the agency’s award-winning efforts to market the county to groups and conventions, as well as everyday visitors.
According to the bureau’s 2004 annual report, local tourism grew at a 5 percent rate in 2004, with visitor-related spending reaching $608 million countywide.
Reporter Eric Fetters: 425-339-3453 or fetters@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
