When the largest ever season of walk-in visitors came to town this year, the Nacogdoches Convention and Visitors Bureau knew they had a winning strategy.

The Azalea Trail and the historic sights have always been a draw for tourists. But CVB Executive Director Melissa Sanford said this year's 27 groups visits and more than 2,000 tourists were evidence that a new Internet-based marketing strategy was paying off.

"The wave of the future is this technology, and I think it's great for us to be able to try these new things and see how it's working," she said.

For the first time, the CVB began augmenting its regular newspaper and magazine ads with digital ads placed on Web sites in Houston and Dallas, the biggest market for potential tourists. Sanford credits the CVB's presence on the Houston Chronicle's Web site with increased visits to the CVB's own Web site and subsequent visits to town.

"From our Web site, we're able to track where people are coming to our Web site from," Sanford said. "From those statistics we were able to see that some of our advertisements that we did were very successful."

Success for the CVB equals an 8-percent increase in hotel and motel tax collections in the first quarter of this over the same quarter of last year. Collections totalled $189,292 in the first three months of the year up from $175,745 in 2007. Because 2007 boasted a large increase over 2006, Sanford said the continuing trend of annual growth is even more special.

While the percent increase so far this year has not matched last year's increase of 22 percent, Sanford said she's budgeted conservatively, expecting certain fluctuations in the economy.

"Just because we're having one good quarter doesn't mean that the next quarter is going to be just as good."

But Sanford is hoping the next quarter will be just as good, if not better. The CVB is preparing an overhauled Web site to accompany their digital marketing strategy, and expects local tourism to continue to grow.

Reflecting on the CVB's success so far this year, Sanford summed it up neatly. "It's great news," she said.