{"id":8902,"date":"2012-05-25T18:37:44","date_gmt":"2012-05-25T22:37:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/?p=8902"},"modified":"2012-05-29T18:20:26","modified_gmt":"2012-05-29T22:20:26","slug":"high-hopes-in-n-h-this-memorial-day-weekend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/2012\/05\/25\/high-hopes-in-n-h-this-memorial-day-weekend\/","title":{"rendered":"High Hopes In N.H. This Memorial Day Weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

moosemannaturephotos.com<\/p>

Rick Libbey<\/p><\/div>\n

Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial start to summer \u2014 for New Hampshire\u2019s Division of Travel and Tourism Development<\/a>, at least. The DTTD just launched a television marketing campaign<\/a>\u00a0in Boston and New York featuring happy kids running in the woods and playing on the beach. This year, the tourism office\u00a0predicts that visitors will spend $86 million in New Hampshire this weekend \u2014 an increase of five percent from last year.<\/p>\n

Of course, the Director of the Institute for New Hampshire Studies<\/a> at Plymouth state, Mark Okrant, made sure I understood that, really<\/em>, Memorial Day is a spring<\/em> holiday. So while the tourism industry\u2019s performance this weekend will be a good indicator of how people are feeling about gas prices and the economy in general, it doesn\u2019t really predict tourists\u2019 behavior in the upcoming months.<\/p>\n

Photographer Rick Libbey, who goes by \u201cthe moose man<\/a>,\u201d will be setting up shop in Meredith, NH this weekend at the 21st annual Memorial Day Weekend Craft Festival<\/a>, where he has spent Memorial Day weekend for the last 5 years. Rick is banking on the same customers that the DTTD is targeting with their television ads in Boston and NYC. \u201cI\u2019m seeing that they\u2019re spending,\u201d Rick told me. After the recession hit, Rick restructured his business to keep prices down. He says that helped his business thrive despite the downturn. \u201cWhen people see a nice piece of art at an aggressive bargain price, they\u2019re gonna get it.\u201d<\/p>\n

His mantra is \u201cthink smart, play smart, and by all means have a smile on your face.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial start to summer \u2014 for New Hampshire\u2019s Division of Travel and Tourism Development, at least. The DTTD just launched a television marketing campaign\u00a0in Boston and New York featuring happy kids running in the woods and playing on the beach. This year, the tourism office\u00a0predicts that visitors will spend $86 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51,14],"tags":[35,507,499],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8902"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8902\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}