Lake Placid, Adirondacks USA —The Lake Placid CVB/Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism (ROOST) is pleased to announce the launch of the new destination website for the Lake Champlain Region.

As the accredited Destination Marketing Organization (DMO) responsible for promoting Lake Placid and Essex County to the traveling public, ROOST maintains several destination websites, including lakeplacid.com, whitefaceregion.com, adirondackhub.com and lakechamplainregion.com.

The Lake Champlain Region website redesign was undertaken with the primary goal of making it easier for visitors to plan their trip with simpler, more direct navigation, including quick links to lodging, events, and activities. The new site has a clean look, with a home page that features the new regional logo, a dynamic slide show and a link to news releases that will allow multifaceted promotion of seasonal activity and event highlights.

Unique to this region, the main navigation also features a link to "group tours". This resource was developed specifically for the Lake Champlain region, which lends itself nicely to that market with a number of historic sites, and attractions that can accommodate groups. There is also a main navigation link called "living here", which provides resources for local residents and marketing partners such as local events listings, as well as relocation information.

The new site provides a greater online presence for businesses in the region. Those with photo listings have a full page display that includes a large featured image and up to 4 additional images that open in a slide show format, a description, a map and a downloadable PDF of their brochure, if provided.

The site was developed on an open source, collaborative platform, so features and applications can be added as necessary. "The real change is on the back end - the flexible content management system allows us to easily generate fresh content on the site, a must-do to ensure search engine optimization," said Carol Joannette, ROOST executive vice president. "Plus, the entire site integrates social networking mechanisms, allowing our visitors to easily share content about our destination with their friends on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and other popular services."

The site serves as a valuable marketing tool that will facilitate increased leads generation through newsletter and contest sign-ups. "These leads allow us to maintain a conversation with interested visitors via promotional emails that provide updates about events and experiences available in the lake champlain region," added Joannette.

Site content continues to be fine-tuned, and regional residents and visitors are encouraged to explore its pages, and to submit photos of the region for display. Businesses in the region should contact Suzanne Maye, Lake Champlain Region marketing coordinator at 518.597.4649 or suzanne@lakechamplainregion.com with any questions.

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The Lake Placid CVB / Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism is the accredited destination marketing organization responsible for promoting the Schroon Lake, Lake Champlain, Whiteface, Saranac Lake and Lake Placid regions to the traveling public via traditional advertising, communications, and by harnessing the power of electronic media. They operate a main office in Lake Placid and one in Crown Point. www.lakeplacidcvb.com

CONTACT:
Kimberly Rielly, director of communications
Lake Placid CVB/Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism
kim@lakeplacid.com