Come for the wine, stay for the weed
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- Mendocino County, California is Out to Change the Stigma on Cannabis Tourism
EDUCATION CAN OVERCOME STIGMA
Big Task Ahead
Mendocino County is out to change the stigma on cannabis tourism
It’s no secret Mendocino County is well-known for its cannabis cultivation. As part of the Emerald Triangle, Mendocino and its neighboring counties — Humboldt and Trinity — make up the largest cannabis-producing region in the country.
The Way Forward
Earlier this year, Visit Mendocino County, the region’s tourism bureau, took over cannabis marketing. On July 1, at the start of Visit Mendocino County’s new fiscal year, cannabis was included among its communication pillars in the organization’s $1.8 million budget, said Executive Director Travis Scott.
Visit Mendocino County’s other pillars are wellness, culinary, wide open wilderness, animals, murals, harvests, throwback tourism and Mendocino cooperatives.
Come for the wine, stay for the weed
Local cannabis operators are also doing a good amount of marketing, with some going with the tagline ‘Come for the wine, stay for the weed.’
- The work began with education.
There’s still a lingering stigma so getting the travel ecosystem and the hotels, and the travel stakeholders of the county educated is vital.
The education component is followed by conducting a market assessment, which includes working with business owners in the cannabis space to help them understand that going above and beyond a retail transaction is vital to the visitor economy.
But because the federal government continues to list cannabis as an illegal drug, regulations don’t allow Visit California to spend any money on advertising materials, such as visitors guides.
And Visit Mendocino can’t buy programmatic ads on the internet or take out ads in magazines.
So while Visit California doesn’t have dedicated funds for cannabis tourism marketing, it can — and does — encourage journalists to write stories about cannabis destinations in the state.
“Our job is to use the platforms that we’ve created (the Visit California website) to try to get more eyeballs on their message,” said Visit California representatives. “Cannabis isn’t splashed everywhere, but you will find it mentioned, contextually, in the editorial content that’s on that site.”