Photo-Illustration: Curbed; Photos: Getty, State of New Jersey
On a trip to Dublin last March, sauntering around the pubs and cathedrals and all that cobblestone, an odd thing caught my attention: an electric-blue billboard advertising my home state glowing against the gray skies. “Greetings from New Jersey,” it read.
Apparently, it wasn’t just Dublin. Through the spring and summer, the Garden State offered salutations to pedestrians from the tops of London taxis and beckoned from German train platforms. Had the good people of Phibsborough or Shoreditch ever heard of “must-sees” like Liberty State Park or the American Dream Mall? Would they like to experience “rolling farmlands, captivating beaches, majestic mountainsides, historic towns, tax-free shopping meccas, top-rated golf courses and culture-rich cities”?
If invitations to the state lead to any actual visits, it’ll be thanks to a concerted effort from the New Jersey Division of Travel and Tourism, generally, and Ann Pilcher, specifically. Since joining the agency as its first international marketing manager in late 2023, Pilcher — a permanently hurried but endlessly chipper type who’s been in the industry for more than two decades — has been showing off New Jersey to FIFA officials, South Korean bureaucrats, and Irish camera crews.
Who else features on her list of honored guests? “Italian journalists — and they are going to be in Cape May,” she tells me. “I have Swiss and German travel agents coming in November.” Next month, Munich, Germany, will host a promotional NFL game between the New York Giants and the Carolina Panthers. During the game, taxis with New Jersey silhouettes will circle the stadium. So far, Pilcher says Germans seem to love the state’s array of greasy spoons. “Diners,” she tells me, “are very intriguing to our friends in Germany.”
Tourism in New Jersey, as everywhere else, collapsed with the pandemic. Visitation fell to 2012 levels, leading to a loss of $17 billion in visitor spending. Once people began to book flights again, the state’s tourism agency expanded its remit from the domestic market to international jet-setters with an investment of several million dollars. And rather than compete with New York or Boston, New Jersey’s tourism strategy seems to be accepting of its second-tier cultural status, marketing itself as a great addendum to whatever you were already planning on doing in Manhattan. “Location, location, location,” Pilcher says of the sell.
It’s an approach that’s worked elsewhere. In the early 2010s, airlines targeted travelers passing between the Americas and Europe via Reykjavik Airport with layover packages, enticing flyers to spend a few days in the country sightseeing. In less than a decade, annual visits beyond the country’s terminals quadrupled to more than 2 million annually. New Jersey has a similar vision for skimming some off the top. Within ten miles of the state are four international airports that jointly serve some 50 million passengers every year.
Iceland has hot springs and views of the northern lights, but Jersey is offering a more eclectic mix of attractions: To draw travelers, the state’s tourism agency has assembled a database of more than 1,030 destinations, including beach escapes, quaint towns, wineries, and a megamall of Big Gulp–size features like roller coasters and an indoor ski slope. Once, when I called Pilcher, she was zooming through Mercer County with an Irish film crew in hot pursuit. “I’m taking them to Princeton right now, and we’re gonna go to the campus and the art museum,” she said. Plus, Grounds for Sculpture, the 42-acre sculpture park in nearby Hamilton — if time allowed.
“Before I started discovering New Jersey, I always thought of The Sopranos, the Jersey Shore, and, you know, airports,” says Ed Finn, who has been on Pilcher’s tour and hosts a travel-focused radio program in Dublin. He returned to Ireland as a full-blown convert — and the recipient of some amount of sponsorship money from New Jersey Tourism. When reflecting on his visits, Finn lands on excessively generous appraisals of the state that tend to end with comparisons to other places. Sussex County, in the state’s rocky green northwest corner, reminded him of rolling hills he’d seen in Barbados. Cape May offered him the “gorgeous beaches, the seafood, and the fun of the Hamptons.”
The campaign also pushes the state’s version of man-made splendor — places like Atlantic City and the trash-carnival vibe of Seaside Heights. And, of course, the American Dream megamall, which before opening in 2019 burned through two developers, two decades, and $5 billion, is “one of our newest attractions,” says Jeff Vasser, head of the state tourism agency. At 3 million square feet, it’s also surely the largest. Within its walls are more than 400 stores, 11,000 parking spots, an indoor ski slope, and full-size roller coasters. Perhaps most important of all, “MrBeast Burger is located there as well,” Irish journalist Shane Cullen reminded his viewers during an interview with Vasser. (In 2022, the project drew a gross income of $422 million — less than one-quarter of its stated target.)
Much of New Jersey — postindustrial, heavily suburbanized, blemished with superfund sites — is a jarring departure from, say, the Roman Colosseum or Central Park, but Pilcher is undeterred. The idea is to draw in tourists on a trip they’ve already booked. Then maybe, just maybe, they’ll come back of their own free will. There’s something appropriate about all of this. Advertising New Jersey as a place to stop on your way to somewhere else comports with one of the state’s prime insecurities: that what the bigger sibling states say about it being a mere liminal space may be true. But by embracing that status, even just a little, and begrudgingly at that, they may win some international converts.
And there is culture and custom to be found in Jersey, just like anywhere. “If you’re from New Jersey and you write 30 books, and you win the Nobel Prize, and you live to be white-haired and 95,” Philip Roth, a literary son of the state, once wrote, “it’s highly unlikely but not impossible that after your death they’ll decide to name a rest stop for you on the Jersey Turnpike.” True to form, Judy Blume and Toni Morrison got rest stops. Roth got an intersection in Newark. Pilcher’s incoming German guests may want it added to their itineraries.
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