SANTA FE – The New Mexico Tourism Department (NMTD) is boosting its investment in New Mexico’s fairs, festivals and events in fiscal year 2024 after a successful inaugural year of the Tourism Event Growth and Sustainability Program.

NMTD awarded a total of $460,692 in grant funding for 35 tourism-related events scheduled over the next 12 months across New Mexico. In total, NMTD will be supporting 17 New Mexico communities through the program, including two tribal communities. In the program’s inaugural year in FY23, NMTD awarded $177,000 in grant funding to 16 tourism-related events.

NMTD first implemented the program in FY23 to provide more specialized support for tourism-related events. The program provides support in the form of sponsorship, cooperative advertising, and an event accelerator.

For FY24, NMTD is supporting 14 events through sponsorship, nine events through cooperative marketing support and 11 events through the event accelerator. NMTD supported six events through sponsorship, five events through cooperative marketing support and five events through the event accelerator in FY23.

“We created this program one year ago because we recognized that New Mexico’s fairs, festivals and events require a more specialized form of assistance from the New Mexico Tourism Department, and the growth we have seen just in the second year demonstrates how much demand there is from local communities for this type of support,” said Tourism Secretary Jen Paul Schroer. “Our hope for this program was that it would help take to new levels the events that New Mexico communities rely on for tourism – and we are already seeing that take shape.”

Through the event accelerator, participants will work with a team of experts that will provide technical support intended to establish best practices and scale operations in a sustainable manner. Technical support will include an online discoverability audit and strategic planning for optimizing digital presence and online ticketing.

The support provided through the event accelerator is intended to help take participating events to greater heights by enhancing capacity and driving more visitation. Four out of the five event accelerator participants from last year were able to “graduate” to the cooperative marketing tier of the program for FY24.

One of those events is the Bernalillo Indian Arts Festival, which used its time in the event accelerator during FY23 to overhaul its website and invest in on-site survey technology. Through these improvements, event planners can now use the data retrieved from last year’s attendees to better promote this year’s event and point prospective attendees to a more dynamic website.

Another “graduate” of the event accelerator program is Smokin’ on the Plaza, a family-friendly barbecue cook-off in Lovington, NM. Event planners used the accelerator to improve their digital advertising strategy. Armed with insights from last year’s digital advertising, event planners can now fulfill a bigger and more targeted marketing strategy through the cooperative marketing option in FY24.

One of the returning participants in the sponsorship component of the program is the Las Cruces International Film Festival, which saw a 30 percent increase in ticket sales in 2022 compared to the previous year. The festival featured over 100 films from 20 different countries. In addition, 50 students from New Mexico State University gained real world experience by directly working on the festival.

"The Las Cruces International Film Festival is grateful for the support of the New Mexico Tourism Department. Their backing allowed LCIFF 2023 to be our best year yet with attendance of over 10,000 and special guests Giancarlo Esposito, Kevin Reynolds and Patrick Fabian. LCIFF is the largest film festival in the country run by a university – New Mexico State University,” said Las Cruces International Film Festival Executive Director Ross Marks. “The New Mexico Tourism Department's support of the event not only boosted tourism significantly in Southern New Mexico for the 5-day event but gave students real world experience and unique out of the classroom learning. The festival looks forward to continued collaboration with the New Mexico Tourism Department increasing tourism in Southern New Mexico."

Through the cooperative marketing support option, recipients participate in a 2:1 cost sharing model on behalf of NMTD that provides grants up to $10,000 for partners. Participants in the event accelerator may receive up to $5,000 for implementation of technical support and strategic planning. The event sponsorship component of the program provides up to $50,000 in direct sponsorship support for participants.

Below is a complete list of program participants for FY24:

More information about the program is available at www.NewMexico.org/industry.