#phillyosophy

Are we really calling it a fandom? Wow part of me is totally about it and the other part of me is like how did we get here

it got boring for me over the years (i like pineapple on pizza sorrynotsorry, unless their too sweet)

New advertisements featuring photos of well-known local scenes including Franklin Square, Reading Terminal Market, Elfreth's Alley, and art and music attractions will start to pop up later this month.  Visit Philadelphia will spend $1.1 million this winter to put the ads online, in print, in Suburban Station, and on a 10-car double-decker NJ Transit train that will go from Secaucus, New Jersey, to the Meadowlands for the Super Bowl.  Later this year, the ads will appear in special sections of Amtrak's Arrive magazine and the US Airways magazine, and in New York's Penn Station.

"We're coming off a strong 2013 - 39 million visitors came to Philadelphia and the countryside," said Meryl Levitz, president and CEO of Visit Philadelphia, formerly the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp. That, she said, was up 45% from the 27 million who came in 1997, the year the group began marketing the region.  Those visitors generated $27 million a day in "fresh money through the five-county region," she said.

The ads also will be seen on billboards along I-95, the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and Route 30 in New Jersey.  With statewide cuts in Pennsylvania tourism funding, Visit Philadelphia's budget went down between $3 million and $4 million a year.

The nonprofit group has received a $850,000 state grant to showcase in ads Pennsylvania towns in this region, and with the merger of American Airlines and US Airways, plus Qatar Airways' beginning nonstop daily flights in April between Philadelphia and Abu Dhabi, tourism officials see a big opportunity.  Levitz said she planned to meet next week with Jack Ferguson, head of the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau, to talk about ways to "make the most" of the airline merger and the new flights to the United Arab Emirates to boost opportunities for conventions, sightseeing, hotel stays, and the region's economy.