by Geoff Fox
Visitors to Hancock, or those unfamiliar with the town after just moving here, will have a new town map and business directory to help them.
The tri-folded pamphlet has a list of 132 businesses, lodging, facilities, museums, churches restaurants, and other locations throughout Hancock.
On the inside flap, there is a map where each of those numbers are located.
The Hagerstown and Washington County Convention and Visitors Bureau printed them for the town and the pamphlets came at no cost to the town, Town Manager Mike Faith said.
“They paid for the design of the brochure, the revisions, and the printing,” he said.
Faith said the town received a total of eight cases of 1,500 brochures, or roughly 12,000 brochures.
Faith said most have been distributed with one case at Town Hall and “a couple cases left in my car.”
The brochures have been distributed around town to businesses, hotels, and the kiosks along the trails.
With the brochures being distributed into the businesses and hotels in town, it allows hikers and bikers who are passing through town on one of the trails an idea where they can find a restaurant or a grocery store if they need one.
“It’s just a good explanation of the services that are available in Hancock,” Faith said.
The last pamphlet came out years ago, so it will be every year or every other year the pamphlet will be updated, Faith added.
“We’re just really thankful,” Faith said of the county’s visitors bureau.
The bureau and town were collaborating on the brochure and the town had to approve everything along the process, and proofread it before it went to press.
Director of Marketing and Communications for Hagerstown and Washington County Convention and Visitors Bureau Betsy DeVore said the Town of Hancock’ s Economic Development staffer first approached the bureau to do the pamphlets.
She said the town adds, deletes, and updates all the information in the pamphlet. Once that is done, the bureau contracts with a local designer, Origin Design Collective, to produce it.
“The Convention and Visitors Bureau pays for all design work and printing,” Devore said in an email.
The eight cases of 1,500 pamphlets are a normal amount of pamphlets produced, she added.
They are printed for the beginning of the summer season for distribution in town and at welcome centers along Interstate 70.
Pamphlets are updated and reprinted as needed at the request of the town.
DeV ore said whenever the Convention and Visitors Bureau is asked to print similar pamphlets for municipalities in Washington County with similar and related projects for Williamsport, Keedysville, and Boonsboro over the years.
“As the state designated agency to promote tourism in Washington County, we work to attract visitors from outside a 50 mile radius, and support tourism business inside of Washington County,” DeVore said. “This includes all the towns and municipalities that compromise Washington County.”
