(Credit: Steve Thurston, 2023)
(Credit: Steve Thurston, 2023)
Rebecca Wood has won the 2022 Outstanding Tourism Executive of the Year award from the New York State Hospitality and Tourism Association. Wood is the resort president of Six Flags Great Escape Theme Park and Lodge Resort. As resort president, she is the highest administrator at the Great Escape.
She was presented the award during a lunch for park staff.
“This past year was nothing short of a series of challenges followed by amazing celebrations because of you guys,” she told the staff at the lunch. She recalled the difficulty the park had finding enough workers to run the rides, along with challenges with COVID-related process and procedures.
“We chose this industry not because of how easy it is, but because of how fun and rewarding it is,” Wood said to the staff. “This is not my award. You guys make this job so ridiculously rewarding.”
Gina Mintzer, the president of the Lake George Chamber of Commerce and CVB nominated Wood for the award.
Mark Dorr, president of the NYSHTA said Wood was one of about 60 or 70 nominees for the statewide award. Dorr said the nominations are sent to other tourism associations outside of the state, to people who would not know the nominees or their parks. Those associations narrowed the list from about 60 nominees for Outstanding Tourism Executive of the Year, to five or six people and then they use a common set of guidelines to pick the winner.
“All the work that you do, really does resonate with the tourists,” Dorr said to Wood and the park staff. “I really hope that you have the best season that you’ve ever had.”
Mintzer said it was Wood’s focus beyond the park that impressed her.
“You opened your resources to promote the area, regardless of whether or not Six Flags would be open,” Mintzer said of the work Wood and her staff did early in the pandemic.
“Then you come to 2022, throughout all of this time, using all of your resources to still promote Lake George,” Mintzer said, adding that Wood promoted the entire region. “It wasn’t just about Six Flags, it wasn’t just about some hotel, it was about our whole area, our community at large.”
Wood started at the park in 2009 in the marketing area and was named president four years ago this month, she said.
"It's exciting to emerge from COVID and see what the new world looks like," she said, after the award ceremony, adding that nothing is quite the same, that some of the changes they made in order to open and stay open really worked and will remain.
Touchless ticketing was one example, she said.
The park changed its front gate area in 2021, mid-pandemic, to allow guests to walk in without crowding into a tighter queue. What had been the ticket gate with kiosks, turnstiles and sales windows, is now an open entry leading to the old-world style retail shops just inside the former ticket gates. It welcomes the guests much more she said.
"The way that the park ran ticket booths is not necessarily the way that it runs today, and it gave us the opportunity to celebrate what is the beauty of that front gate," she said.
The park opened as Storytown in 1954. The founder, Charles R. Wood sold it, bought it back and sold it to what is now the Six Flags Corporation in 1996. He died in 2004.
She is no relation to Charlie Wood, though she gets that question a lot, she said.
The park opens May 20 this year.