Above: Nicole Johnston is the new executive director of Visit Fairmont.
FAIRMONT — Nicole Johnston is the new executive director of Visit Fairmont. Johnston’s job with the Fairmont Convention and Visitors Bureau known as ‘Visit Fairmont,’is to market and promote the city.
Johnston assumed her new role last week. The position has been vacant since former director, Stephanie Busiahn, left in May. Johnston was selected for the position by the Visit Fairmont Board.
Visit Fairmont promotes the city through a variety of mediums, including billboards, digital campaigns, magazine ads and brochures. The goal is to get people interested in what Fairmont has to offer.
“When people are driving on the interstate, they’ll want to pull over and check out Fairmont,” Johnston said.
She said the goal it to get people to come to Fairmont, whether they visit for a day and support local businesses or end up making a permanent move here.
Johnston grew up in the Fairmont area and graduated from Fairmont High School in 1993. She got her travel and business management degree from Rasmussen in Mankato.
“I worked for a couple travel agencies in town right after college,” she said.
Then she moved away for a while and most recently she spent several years as an office manager at a local business.
She shared what got her interested in the position.
“I enjoy to travel and had an interest in trying something new. It was a good fit, working in with my travel background,” Johnston said.
Johnston lives in the area now and has three children, all of whom have attended Fairmont Area Schools.
She’s looking forward to keeping up with the work that Visit Fairmont has already done.
“I’m excited to help local organizations and business continue to grow,” she said.
When asked what some of the best things Fairmont has to offer are, Johnston didn’t hesitate to say the lakes.
“They can be used year-round,” she said.
She also mentioned Fairmont’s many parks, the disc golf course, mini golf course and the Aquatic Park.
Visit Fairmont board member, Ned Koppen, said, “We hired Nicole because we felt like she had the right skillset, talents and personality and felt like she would be able to take the reins of an already well-established organization and carry it forward.”
Another board member, Jason Subbert, said that tourism not only brings in revenue, but often leads to someone making the move to a new community.
He also shared that Visit Fairmont is funded by the cit’s lodging tax and the money raised is then used to help increase tourism in the area.
“Nicole is a Martin County resident with a great understanding of Southern Minnesota. A big part of the job is connecting people with resources and we think she’s a good fit for that,” said Subbert.
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