LAKE PLACID — Wouldn’t it be great to have a captive audience of 600 new potential visitors to the region? 

Actually, Lake Placid has this opportunity quite frequently. This year features a busy conference schedule, and many of the attendees of those conferences will be visiting and learning about Lake Placid and the Adirondacks for the first time. 

While those visitors are here, the Conference Center at Lake Placid crew is looking forward to residents, shop workers and other local businesses joining them in welcoming conference attendees and helping to make sure they have a great experience while they are here. 

If their experience is positive, not only are the conference attendees more likely to return to the area with their families on a leisure visit, but they’re also more likely to talk about it with friends and acquaintances, as well as to post on social media about it. 

The conference season at the Conference Center at Lake Placid got started last weekend with a 220-person conference, the New York State Academy of Family Physicians. It gets busy March through May, then after a few meetings scattered through the summer, it picks back up in the slower season of fall. 

About 30 conferences are scheduled in Lake Placid through 2016, and the number of attendees at each range from 25 to 3,000. That represents about 12,500 estimated room nights, which rounds out to about an $1.9 million economic impact in just rooms.

Many of the conferences will also allow for, and encourage, attendees to get out into the community, shopping in local shops and dining in local restaurants. The Conference Center at Lake Placid distributes schedules for upcoming conferences to local businesses so they know when to expect attendees to have downtime, as well as welcome signs to let them know their presence is appreciated. 

To view the full schedule of conferences planned in Lake Placid for 2016, go to www.roostadk.com/lake-placid-high-peaks/conferencecalendar.