Marketing the City of Amsterdam: Part 1

The Basics – What’s Out There?

The Official Tourism Site for the State of New York  is usually the first website people will visit to get information about a New York State destination. Looking at the regional map we would assume Amsterdam is located in the Central New York region. Clicking on the map of NY Central Region opens the tourism website for Central New York.

Montgomery County is not listed as part of  the Central, or any region on the NYS region map!

On the NYS Official Tourism website, we can click on the header CITIES & TOWNS, from there we are presented with an entry box where you can type in Amsterdam. You are then presented with the following description:

What is wrong with this picture? First of all Amsterdam is listed as a town. There is a town of Amsterdam, but the site is describing the city of Amsterdam. The Noteworthy Indian Museum has been closed for some time now. The Walter Elwood Museum closed since last year’s flood.  None of the underlined links are working. The majority of the locations described (Fort Johnson, Lake George, Halcyon Farm B&B, The Brown House) are neither in the town or city of Amsterdam.  There is no Visitor Center or garden at Riverlink Park.

Clicking on the SEE & DO tab for Amsterdam brings up the following:

Out of the five Locations listed, only the Amsterdam Municipal Golf Course is operational and in Amsterdam. The New York State Outdoorsman Hall of Fame is in Vail Mills/Broadalbin.

Clicking on the EVENTS tab gives us the following for Amsterdam:

Finally, clicking on the STAY tab brings this up:

Here we have some useful information, places to stay actually in the city and town of Amsterdam (along with a few that are not).

Overall, I would say the New York State Tourism website failed in terms of marketing Amsterdam. The outdated information and lack of an accurate, viable description of our  history and local events is not helping. The NYS Tourism link to the Amsterdam Mohawks baseball website and schedule is dead. Updated links, including the Riverlink Park Concert Series, would draw more people to this area.

Failure to include Montgomery County or Amsterdam in any of the identified regions is just inexcusable.