Detour: City of Light... getting here is the easy part!

"I would think that it would behoove a company to spend some money to create two on-the-go trolleys that would travel a circuitous route around the city."

Sounds like a real money-maker!

I always though that the City Spy Maps http://www.thespymap.com/ that you get for free at hostels all over Europe would be cool to have here. They give you all sorts of recommendations on the touristy and the not so touristy things to do in a place. Visitors from the world juniors may have learned something about Buffalo and maybe checked out something other than their hotel bar(see Russia) and the Galleria.

I agree with jbeatty on this. Instead of a new transportation loop what is needed is the dissemination of information to visitors. When you go to any city in Europe or the world for that matter, just about every hotel \ tourist place will have a free map, paid for by businesses and sponsors who get ads on it, showing you the tourist highlights, options for food, and information for transportation. You will also find maps around the city at key points that show tourists (and locals) where they are and where information can be found so you never get lost. There isn't a single map anywhere in downtown to direct people where to go or tell them where they are. There should be one at City Hall, Lafayette Sq, the Amtrak Station, Bus Station etc.

I feel, with proper information, you wouldn't even need a route to do what you are suggesting. The NFTA runs several routes are high frequencies through the places you talk about. and for 4 bucks for a day pass, most visitors will easily throw that down, if they knew about the routes and how to get someplace. This is where the maps come in. Think about going to Boston \ NY or anyplace in Europe. You will easily toss 10 bucks to travel around via bus or train in those places for a day. We have the routes and destinations to get you there, what is missing is a place that brings the information together.

It was also worth mentioning that the NFTA created 2 new routes for the Junior's Tournament to provide a simple route to get people from the HSBC to restaurants in northern downtown as well as to all of Elmwood and the Museums. I am not sure well it was utilized but again who knows if anyone even knew about them. We do a poor job advertising what it already out there.

Then again, trolley's \ street cars are nice.

I don't understand. If you go to a hotel concierge they will give you a booklet with a city map inside of it created by the convention and visitors center. There are several private tour bus providers in WNY. Mostly for Niagara Falls. If they thought there was money in it they would be offering packages.

The Frank Lloyd Wright stuff is great, but it only attracts a very small portion of the people that visit WNY. The same for the other buildings/exhibits.

Blaming this on the convention and visitors center is crazy. That group has stepped up to the plate in recent years.

There already are Buffalo maps with local destinations listed. It might not be as hip as a Spy Map type booklet, but it's not fair or correct to say that we don't have anything like that already.

I think most cities in the US have challenges promoting their attractions to tourists. Sure, the NFTA, the Convention & Visitors Bureau, and the City can share blame -- they're such easy targets; but, I don't know that many younger people hold themselves hostage to these types of entities anymore when they are looking for things to do in a new city.

'What's the best way to get the Frank Lloyd Wright boathouse?' Really? Use the internet. Why would this be a problem?

Pull out a smartphone to go on sites, such as Yelp, and you can quickly find things to see nearby based on your physical location (thanks to GPS technology). The challenge is to get Buffalonians to start writing about local institutions on various sites to make it easier for tourists to access up-to-date information about all the places that Buffalonians say they frequent. Now, every person can be their own convention & visitors bureau.

I don't know why we even have a CVB if they can't even do the very basics right.

I wonder why we are still talking about Ani Difranco and Tom Fontana. Neither one lives in Buffalo and neither has been a permanent resident here for a long time. Ani lives in New Orleans and New York City. Tom lives in Brooklyn. They may have been born here but what have they done for us lately?

In a number of domestic and European cities, hotels offer the "Where" magazine. I've used it religiously in Toronto for finding restaurants, museums and markets, as well as for Ottawa and Montreal. It is not available in Buffalo, to the best of my knowledge.

When visiting Buffalo I always pick up a copy of the Buffalo Niagara Visitors Guide. It will sit next to me in the car. Very good maps. This well done publication does an excellent job of covering "things to do". Their web site is good too. And then, of course, with the internet you have the ultimate guide, which is evermore portable.

As most visitors arrive in cars, personal or rental, I'm not sure how much use a dedicated bus/trolly would be outside of normal service.

http://where.ca/toronto/

the cvb has an excellent map out already:

http://www.visitbuffaloniagara.com/visitors/maps/Buffalo_Niagara_map.pdf

having said that, there is merit to the idea of a well-marked, dedicated tourist trolley that takes you to the most in-demand places so you don't have to figure out on your own which bus to take, where to get it, how much it costs, where to get off, and how to find your destination once you've exited. that can be a real challenge for those not blessed with a good sense of direction or a confident, adventurous streak.

Did the CVB staff a tourist booth in the lobby of the Arena to encourage and answer questions? This seems like the most basic of services to provide. Most of the professional conferences I've attended in other cities have such a booth in whatever venue they use.

I did find the special hockey edition of the CVB paper map placed in coffee shops and cafes downtown.

Just tossing ideas out there.. How hard would it be for the CVB to have a Buffalo App. Make it available for ipods and androids. Maybe have Ipad rentals with preloaded tours.

Last I looked many of the cool City scape apps don't include Buffalo like Layar. I'm not a programmer otherwise i would add a map. Seems the info is out there just need to put it together with a slick UI.

Right now I use a combination (google maps, trackers, navigations, yelp-type apps etc), but could see the usefulness of a solid app.

Our peer examples are is Pittsburgh. The on and off options at a low fee get a tourist/visitor everywhere they need to go really. All along the way, the trip is narrated with history, local lore and tidbits.

http://www.pghtours.com/Home_Page.html
http://www.justduckytours.com/

I stayed at the Adams Mark for several weeks this summer and there were maps and brochures for all of WNY in the lobby. There were also taxis outside the Adams Mark 24/7. There are plenty of things to do in downtown Buffalo, Elmwood and Allen. All the recent talk about Buffalo being a ghost town is crazy. I brought a friend to Buffalo who had never been there before and he loved it. The trolley might be a good idea, but I believe Buffalo is easy to get around for those willing to take the initiative

The thing I noticed is that our maps don't include mass transit. Other cities include rail and some major bus lines.

Besides the lack of mass transit, The NFTA doesn't use color coding. When I go other cities, I tend to use mass transit when I see different colors for lines. As stupid as that may sound, it keeps me from going the wrong way. I went to Boston recently and used the color coded rail lines to get in and out of the city.

I think a specific colored buses for specific lines would be nice. Clearly only the most popular lines would have colors. I can't think of a major city whose mass transit I used did not have color coded lines.

Imagine a "Blue" line with a certain corporate sponsor?

The moral of the story is that CVB (and Buffalo) would be well served to hire a digital media expert (hello, anyone 23 years old) who could bring the marketing approach into this century. I also think Buffalo would be well served by a cool, inviting Welcome center that serves as peoples' port of entry. The Market Arcade could be that with some help

Love the trolly idea. The Wendt purchased the open air bus for Tielman, which was one of the best presents to the city-Tim gives great tour.

Although it's easy to go off in many directions about this topic (trolleys, bus lines, GPS, guidebooks), I find myself coming back to the basic focus of the article: Amtrak to Buffalo, then.....[yes, all the useful comments people posted to get to the attractions]. But what about the connection between the two? Imagine coming to Buffalo for the first time and getting off the train on Exchange St (if you were fortunate enough not to get off in Depew) and how that would feel to you. You're in a small brick shed under an elevated expressway and no sign of life anywhere. Sure, you might have figured out that the rail transit line is nearby, but which station should you try to walk to? Down past the fenced-in open pit? Up the hill that passes right under the skyscraper? Imagine it after dark.....

I know the idea of an intermodal transportation center has been discussed here in the past and some have made the point that low ridership on Amtrak doesn't justify this kind of infrastructure. Maybe so, but it's a chicken - egg issue. The ridership will continue to dwindle if people coming here by train feel like they've been dropped off in no-man's land.

The intermodal transit hub was in the original concept for canal side, and IMO should have never been dropped. People coming here by Amtrak, Bus, or Metro should have a simple way to connect to the others.

Several years ago I wrote the NFTA suggesting they create a loop that would go to our "Hot Spot's"; Botanical Gardens, zoo, AKAG area, Chip Strip, EV, etc. I thought they should be best equipped to pull this off. It could start out operating on a weekend day and then grow day by day as people become more aware of it and the need arises. I think a bus at each "spot" every half hour would be fine. Hours in service and frequency could also increase along with demand. Offer it for a flat fee with unlimited on/off for the day and local and non-local tourists would have a great way to get around to all that we have to offer.

Take a look at how downtown NYC leverages an interactive map: http://www.gvshp.org/_gvshp/preservation/map/index.htm

Since the Buffalo Niagara CVB and our role in the community is mentioned throughout the comments to this post, I thought I'd offer a few notes of clarification. The first being that we are a sales and marketing organization. As such, we promote the efforts of Forgotten Buffalo, the Campaign for Greater Buffalo and other tour operators and would be happy to do the same for the type of tourism shuttle that Queenseyes posits in his post.

It should also be noted that the CVB's budget for 2011 is $3.25 million, NOT the $7 million figure that was mentioned in one of the comments. Our competitors in places like Cleveland and Columbus have those kind of dollars at their disposal, but, alas, we do not.

As for the map pads that the CVB creates and distributes throughout the community, yes, Tops Markets are highlighted on the map. Tops helped underwrite the cost of the map. We try to leverage our resources whenever possible by soliciting sponsorships like this one.

When it comes to our efforts in digital media, social media and the Web, I don't see how any fair-minded critic can describe them as anything but contemporary and effective. The CVB's Buffalo Facebook page has more than 11,000 fans. Compare this to CVB-operated sites for Pittsburgh (4,312 fans) and Cleveland (2,801 fans). Our latest video production, "Buffalo: This Place Matters" has received more than 154,000 views on YouTube, and our website had 495,000 unique visitors in 2010, with an average time on site of nearly 6 minutes.

You should also know that we are in the process of re-designing the www.visitbuffaloniagara.com website in 2011. Part of the rationale for the re-design is to ensure the site is mobile friendly and ready to take full advantage of the rise of the smartphone.

If anyone has any additional questions about the CVB and our tourism promotion efforts, I would be happy to take them at healy@visitbuffaloniagara.com.

Ed Healy
VP, Marketing
Buffalo Niagara CVB