Be Here Now- A conversation with Lisa Berger, Ulster County Tourism Director
by Zac Shaw for Ulster Strong
Ulster County’s tourist business is not just back—it’s booming. “It started out as what I would call an uneven year. It’s ending very strong,” Tourism Director Lisa Berger said.
By the state’s own accounting, 2024 set a local record. “We had $1.1 billion in direct tourism spending,” Berger said, citing the I Love NY tourism economics release published in August. “That’s 43% of the region’s tourism sales total,” and it generated “$60.2 million” in local taxes.
The trajectory points to continued growth. Though workforce and housing headwinds remain stubborn, and lines can run a little long at popular spots, there seems to be little that can stop our area’s ascendant visitor economy.
Within the broader Hudson Valley market of a dozen counties, Ulster ranks third in visitor spend behind Westchester and Orange. Those numbers, Berger said, track to what businesses feel on the ground: fuller weekends, higher average rates at premium properties, and steady demand for natural beauty and luxury attractions.
The county’s competitive edge, Berger argued, remains structural. “Our biggest strength—our beautiful, great big outdoors—is still a place that people want to be.” She pointed to a deliberate expansion of connected trail networks and small but telling pieces of infrastructure that blended recreation with commerce: “Blue Duck Brewing just opened in Kingston… Overlook Bikes is right next to them… and the O&W Rail Trail is directly linked… You can get on right from there,” a link she expects to be “a huge boon” for food-and-beverage spend. Similar connectivity is surfacing in New Paltz. “The people who own Woodstock Way and Kingston Carriage House are opening something called New Paltz Way… It sits right on the Empire State Trail/Wallkill Valley Rail Trail. What an asset that’s going to be.”
Premium attractions continue to validate the region’s ascendant brand. “Both Inness and Six Bells just were awarded a key from the Michelin Guide,” Berger said. The high-end concepts, she argued, work best when they’re authentic to place: “What these successful high-end places all do really well is connect people to our beautiful outdoors… once you have gone hiking or gone biking or stepped in one of our streams… that somehow gets into you and it never leaves you.” The Six Bells Country Inn in Rosendale—a reinvention of the former 1850 House by Audrey Gelman—illustrates the county’s magnetism for style-driven investment. Berger called it “a concept hotel… everything in Six Bells Country Inn is for sale,” paired with “a spectacular restaurant called The Feathers.” The appeal, she suggests, is cultural as well as natural: an “upstate and chill” cottage-core aesthetic with bucolic bliss.
Berger describes her office’s remit as having evolved from promotion to stewardship. “When I started in this business, they were called directors of tourism promotion agencies. Then the word shifted to destination marketing… what I am now is fully squarely involved in destination management.” On any given day that can mean “working with people who have great ideas” for new investments—she referenced a “farm-to-table, incredible high-end resort” in Marlborough—as well as troubleshooting the friction points locals feel. “Being able to identify where those hotspots are that are causing pressure… we want this place to stay beautiful.” That work includes partnerships with state parks, rail-trail associations and land trusts to spread visitation, improve parking and safety, and promote ‘leave no trace’: “We never, ever, ever want to be on the no-go list of overtourism.”
The balancing act is cultural as well as logistical. “If tourism’s doing its job, it’s going to the places that maybe aren’t getting enough of that love and saying… what if we started letting people know about you? Especially our amazing historic and cultural sites,” she said, recommending bikeable detours to Hurley’s Main Street museum or a stop at the D&H Canal Museum. “Don’t just be here consuming our culture. Be a part of it.”
The county’s marquee music venues are busy. “I feel like music is having a moment in Ulster County right now,” Berger said. One challenge: the ability for visitors (and workers) to move between destinations after dark is limited, with rideshares often hard to come by and little late-running public transportation. “This is a big issue that needs to be solved in our very geographically large county that’s also very rural in a lot of places.” The county, she said, has been exploring “demand systems… like they have out in Colorado,” app-based shuttles that function like shared taxis. She also cites Greene County’s for-profit trolley as a daytime model that could be adapted at night. Crucially, Berger notes, there is a funding mechanism to build from: “In Ulster County, 50% of the occupancy tax collected goes to two dedicated funds—one’s for transportation, and the other one is for housing.”
Those funds tie directly to another binding constraint. Staffing can be difficult, and housing is limited for the potential workforce. Berger bristles at the premise that tourism jobs are inherently low-skill or dead-end. “It bothers me tremendously when people call hospitality jobs low wage, low skill… it’s one of the few industries where you can go from being a front desk clerk to a CEO.”
The larger issue, she argues, is supply and fit: “We don’t have enough people in the labor pool. We just don’t.” Her prescription is targeted and flexible housing. “I would love to see some creative housing solutions geared towards the hospitality industry,” she said, citing a Oneida Nation project near Turning Stone that offers “flexible housing arrangements… a townhouse for four friends” with communal amenities.
Recession risk is on the horizon, but Berger sees resilience in the county’s value proposition. “Nobody is recession-proof,” she cautioned, but the pandemic reset habits in a way that favors Ulster. “People realized being outside was really important. Minnewaska State Park is $10 for a carload… you can spend the whole day there.” Access management is tighter at sensitive sites like Sam’s Point, but the breadth is significant: “Almost two-thirds of the Catskill Park sits within Ulster County. There are a lot of places that people aren’t going to right now,” and four of the five Catskill fire towers are in-county, all free to visit.
Berger’s office is also writing the medium-term playbook. Ulster hired Beyond Green Travel to produce a sustainable tourism strategic plan, with a focus on safety at road crossings on popular trails, parking, and communications. “Helping the people who are coming here to adopt leave no trace principles… so that everybody is having a better experience.” On the marketing side, demand is being cultivated beyond the New York metro to Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.—drive markets that help smooth seasonality. And within the county, the team aims to better connect visitors to under-the-radar cultural assets to spread spend and goodwill.
The call to the business community is straightforward. “Visitors[s] spend $1.1 billion in Ulster County, and we understand that that fuels a lot of businesses, large and small, and not just hospitality businesses,” Berger said. The department intends to keep growth aligned with quality of life. “We do everything we can to balance the needs of the visitor with the resident,” she said. That can mean helping a cider startup expand, troubleshooting trailhead congestion, or simply pushing out information that keeps calendars full. “If it’s letting people know that the Pickle Festival is this weekend and that they should go because pickles are the bomb… then we’re doing the job.”
Her door, she emphasized, is open. “If I can’t help [a business] directly… we are a great resource for connecting them to other people, including Ulster County Economic Development [and] the IDA… If we can’t answer a question for you, it’s our job to get you the answer, and we will do that.”