Visit Montgomery County CEO Earns Maryland’s “Tourism Person of the Year” Award; Organization Takes Top Honors for Best Website, Best Digital Campaign

Kelly Groff, president and CEO of Visit Montgomery County received the distinguished award of Tourism Person of the Year at the Maryland Tourism & Travel Summit held recently in Ocean City. Now in its 33rd year, the prestigious award is given to an industry leader whose exceptional commitment has significantly enhanced and perpetuated the tourism industry in Maryland.

“I am thrilled to win Tourism Person of the Year, and it’s an honor to be recognized by my fellow hard-working peers in the Maryland tourism industry,” said Groff.

Visit Montgomery County also won honors as Best Website and Best Digital Campaign.

The criteria for the Best Website award specified that the new website should demonstrate a creative implementation of a brand that is visually pleasing, unique, that captures the spirit of the brand and is user friendly. In late August, Visit Montgomery launched www.VisitMontgomery.com with updated features like a county-wide calendar of events, interactive map and a trip builder.

The Best Digital Campaign award was received for the Brand Connect campaign with The Washington Post online. The new campaign brought together content generated by the Visit Montgomery staff with consumers searching the Post website. The #1 article was “Summer is for Biking in Montgomery County,” which promoted the new Capital Bikeshare program.

Read more about Kelly and Visit Montgomery in the release.