Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - Buffalo is in the travel spotlight nationally ahead of the flip of the calendar to 2026.
Following an increased investment by Visit Buffalo in national public relations, the city has landed on two elite travel magazine’s best-places-to-travel short lists - Afar Magazine and Conde Nast Traveler - and also got an unexpected holiday nomination from Travel + Leisure magazine to close out 2025.
"This was very intentional on the behalf of Visit Buffalo with our new funding this year, where we hired a new public relations agency in New York City and utilizing all of their great connections," said Patrick Kaler, president and CEO of Visit Buffalo with WBEN. "We've been working these publications, the various writers, influencers who work for these publications to get Buffalo top of mind. And we're just so excited about the great storytelling that we've been able to share of all of these fantastic new attractions, experiences that will be released in 2026."
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Conde Nast Traveler, with an online readership of 5.4 million and a print audience of 6.3 million, put Buffalo alongside Portland, Ore., Route 66, Barbados and Guadalajara, Mexico in its Nov. 11 "Best Places to Go in North America and the Caribbean", highlighting the new Ralph Wilson Centennial Park and new Highmark Stadium as places of interest coming in 2026.
As for Afar, with an online readership of 2.5 million and a print audience of 1.1 million, the magazine named Buffalo to its December "Where to Go in 2026: Places That Are on the Rise and Off the Beaten Path" list of the 24 destinations – from Bucharest and Vietnam to East Antarctica and the Bahamas.
"The African American Heritage Corridor and all of the aspects of that that have been really coming to fruition over the last few years, coming out of the pandemic with the capital improvement dollars that have been invested into those different sites, we're excited to be able to tell those stories," Kaler said of the Afar. "Also the fact that the Richardson Hotel was, once again, featured, and they're under a new management company now. They also have their liquor and food license, so it's now back to being a full-service hotel."
Kaler says the timing of these features with Buffalo couldn't be more perfect.
"To line up for 2026, which is going to be a really good year for Buffalo, we have quite a few meetings and conventions that are on the books for '26, as well as a number of different sporting events," he said. "Of course, we'll be hosting the NCAA men's basketball [tournament] in '26 again. So we're really excited about how this is shaping up for the destination, again, as we also are still challenged with Canada. So having this type of press both nationally and internationally is just really fantastic news for our destination."
For a festive twist, Travel + Leisure, with 19 million digital readers and 7.1 million in print, reported this week that Buffalo, with its winter festivities and typical 25 inches of December snow, is the U.S.’s most Christmasy city: “There's snow place like a festive town around the holidays, and Buffalo, New York, has that Christmas spirit in droves.” The story included details from Visit Buffalo about the Tom & Jerry Trail and holiday markets at the Richardson Campus.
Kaler calls this special feature a help with the city's short-term window of visitation, especially in December, which is typically one of the lower occupancy months during the year.
"To maybe get a little boost before the end of the year, or even into January and February, those are the types of things that we hope for with these types of messaging that gets put out there," Kaler said. "I think it was great that the Bills had their Hallmark Christmas movie that helped elevate our overall notoriety with Travel + Leisure. Obviously our Tom and Jerry Trail, which we launched last year, also got the attention of the publication and their writers and their influencers. It's a whole mixture of all of those different experiences that aren't only just during the holidays, but will also go throughout the winter season."
One aspect that has been a game changer for Kaler and Visit Buffalo with its new funding is it allows them to do more nationwide branding and advertising for Buffalo and Erie County on a year-round basis.
"Typically our advertising would have been from May until September, maybe into October, but this allows us to advertise the destination year-round," Kaler noted. "And being able to tell a winter story now, we have a winter campaign that is nationwide on streaming TV services with a commercial, as well as radio spots on Spotify. We also have some national buys with Conde Nast and Bon Appetit, but also doing more direct advertising and some out of homes, such as billboards and a little bit more direct in some growth potential markets such as Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., where our research tells us that their propensity to travel is a little bit more greater, and their length of stay is about three days longer than, say, Central New York, Pittsburgh and Cleveland. So to continue to have year-round messaging in those markets will just continue to raise the awareness of our destination."
One of the markets that Kaler is continuing to keep an eye on as the weeks and months roll along is the Canadian market, even though relations between both nations continue to be strained as the result of tariffs. Visit Buffalo continues to dip its toe every now and then into the market.
"We do a little testing to see how the market is reacting to messaging, we did something around Canada Day back in July that was successful for a few weeks and then we saw a major drop off. We continue to see year-over-year, by month drops in visitation to our website by about 60%," Kaler explained. "We are going to be doing a special promotion in April and May for visitation into Buffalo and with Expedia. With Expedia, we can actually target travelers who are specifically searching Buffalo and Erie County and New York, and then we can target messages right to them with a special offer. That's something that we'll be doing specific for the Canadian market. Again, just kind of testing it before we go into the summer season to see if there's interest there, and if we need to put more dollars into that market, if sentiment has changed."
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