About Visit Casper

We may be biased... but Visit Casper has the best job in town. Officially, Visit Casper is a joint powers board, and our mission is to bring visitors to Natrona County in support of our local economy and quality of life.

But what does that really mean? Every day, people are planning vacations, events, conferences, and sports tournaments around the nation. It is our job to attract them to choose Casper for their business and/or leisure trips. We do that through strategic marketing, sales, and PR efforts.  Read below for more information and click here for more information about how we're funded, our budget and what we do. 

1. Marketing. Visit Casper markets Casper as a destination for leisure travel, sports, events, and group travel both regionally and nationally. We do this by leveraging digital and search engine marketing, email, social media, printed publications, billboards, and other out-of-home tactics. Click here to review Visit Casper's 2022 Marketing Plan. 
    
2. Sales and Services. Visit Casper sells Casper to meetings, sports, special events and group travel planners looking for communities to host events and tours. The most common way we do that is by going to trade shows and meeting with people from a wide variety of industries looking for a home for their next event. Email Luke for more information about our sales initiatives.
    
3. Public Relations. Visit Casper works with a PR agency to pitch stories about Casper to media around the nation. It’s one thing to promote our community. It’s another to make sure people read about us in trusted media outlets.  In addition to pitching regional and national media, we also host journalists and influencers and continually meet with writers to keep Casper top of mind. Visit this page for story ideas and more information about our media efforts. 
    
4. Grants. Every year, the Visit Casper board allocates nearly $200,000 in grant money to fund events that bring people to our area. This includes things like the Wyoming Amateur Wrestling Association, CNFR, the state high school championships, the Central Wyoming Fair and Rodeo, Casper Soccer Club, the Symphony, Nic Fest, etc. Explore more about our grant program here. 
   
   But that’s only part of the story.
   
   Not only do we promote Casper through cutting edge marketing, sales, and PR programs, but we are also connectors, innovators and researchers who are obsessed with solving problems and removing the roadblocks that stand in the way of our community reaching its highest potential.  

Below is a list of high-five-worthy things we’ve worked on in the last 12 months that impact our community in BIG ways:  

1. Secured the bid for Wyoming’s High School State volleyball, basketball, wrestling, track, marching band, and spirit championships through 2026. These tournaments provide an economic impact of $13.9M for our community every year which equals jobs, earnings, and bottom-line profits to our local businesses. Competition around the state to host these tournaments is fierce because of the value they bring a community. We’ll work hard to make sure these tournaments stay in Casper year after year.
    
2. Created the Visit Casper Business Challenge, a program that provides seed money to existing or new businesses in the travel & hospitality industry. In the first year, the VCBC received 27 qualified applications and 4 local businesses received funding. This program puts lodging tax dollars to work quickly to drive immediate growth in the local visitor economy.
    
3. We’ve certified 1006 residents to be Certified Tourism Ambassadors™ for the Casper area. This means that there are nearly 1,000 industry professionals, many of them front line workers, who have been trained in exceptional customer service, local history, travel resources and how to answer visitor questions while they’re with us. The program continues to receive a five-star rating from participants. Dozens of CTAs will receive their 5-year pin in 2022.
    
4. In 2019, Visit Casper received the DMAP Accreditation from Destinations International, the highest accreditation awarded by the industry association. To be certified, an organization must demonstrate compliance with more than 100 performance standards relating to marketing, sales, operations, customer service and community relations.  Only 250 DMO organizations in the world hold this prestigious designation, we’re proud Visit Casper is one of them. (Simply put, it means we’re operating with the highest standards across the board. Our community deserves the best!)
    
5. Garnered significant media coverage for Casper and local businesses through public relations efforts reaching more than 970 million consumers in 2021. Highlights from the year include stories about CNFR in Cowboys & Indians, Backwards Distilling Company winning the Sunset Travel Forward Distiller award, and Historic Trails West being named to the Best of the Mountain West list in 5280 magazine. Through these efforts, we also landed Casper on the Top 10 True Western Towns list with True West Magazine in 2022.
    
6. In collaboration with Advance Casper and private business, we launched Choose Casper, a relocation effort to promote Casper as a top city to live and work. The site is also designed to help local businesses recruit high-quality talent and their families.
    
7. Secured the bid for several events in 2022 that will bring an estimated $800k in economic impact to our community including the Outdoor Writers Association of America (OWAA), the Beard and Moustache National Championship and MAGPUL Wyoming Governor’s Match.
    
8. Worked with the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association to guarantee that the College National Finals Rodeo stays in Casper through 2025.
    
9. Continue to successfully promote Casper to travelers passing through on their way to Wyoming’s national parks with the Road to Yellowstone campaign.
    
10. Created and continue to host 5150’ Restaurant Week to celebrate our local culinary scene and support the hospitality industry during the slow season in January.
     
11. Worked with Discovery Channel’s production of Street Outlaws to ensure they were able to film in Natrona County in 2020. We also partnered with Fly Rod Chronicles in 2021 to promote the world-class fishing available on the North Platte River. The show aired on the Discovery Channel, YouTube and Amazon in early 2022.
     
12. Created Film Casper, the official film office for Natrona County. Film Casper supports film efforts that provide economic impact to the community through location scouting, crew support, planning services and support.