View From Afar S1, E16: IPW 2025 | Patrick Kaler, President and CEO of Visit Buffalo Niagara

I’m Billie Cohen, Afar’s editorial director, and welcome to View From Afar, a podcast that spotlights the people and ideas shaping the future of travel. And in this special series, I’m coming to you live from the floor of IPW, the annual travel conference organized by the U.S. Travel Association to share the best of America with the rest of the world.

In this episode, I’m sitting down with Patrick Kaler, who has been president and CEO of Visit Buffalo Niagara since 2014. In the past decade, he and his team have invested heavily in building the brand and in working with this western New York region to inspire travelers with new reasons to visit. And it’s been a success.

This year and next will see the culmination of several game-changing projects. Like new attractions that celebrate Buffalo’s Black history, including the country’s first museum dedicated to Black radio. The city will also welcome a hundred-acre waterfront park, exhibits and events marking the bicentennial of the Erie Canal, and a new stadium for the city’s NFL team.

And since Buffalo’s skyline is an icon of modern American architecture, there will soon be a new museum to spotlight the visionaries—like Frank Lloyd Wright, Henry Hobson Richardson, and Frederick Law Olmsted—who shaped the look of the city.

Transcript

Billie: Welcome, Patrick. It’s so good to have you here. Thanks for joining us.

Patrick: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity.

Billie: So, one of my favorite things about Buffalo is what people from Buffalo call themselves.

Patrick: Buffalonians. Buffalonians.

Billie: I love a demonym. It’s one of the coolest. *Laughs*

Billie: And then the other thing that I’m supposed to ask you—so our publisher, he and his family are huge Buffalo Bills fans. So the hard hitting question of the interview is, is this the year for the Buffalo Bills?

Patrick: It absolutely is, I think. I think everything’s lining up really well. We did very good in the draft. We’ve done very well in the off season as far as acquiring some other players. Josh Allen just got married a couple weeks ago, and I think we’re very excited about the whole positive attitude going into the season. So I’m very optimistic that this is our year.

Billie: Go Bills.

Patrick: Go Bills.

Billie: And what about Buffalo wings? So these are two of the big things that the city is famous for.

Patrick: Absolutely. So, Buffalo wings are very special and very unique to our destination. We actually have a buffalo wing trail and we’ve got our delicious dozen that was curated through several different sources.

But my favorite place is out in East Aurora, so it’s outside of the city of Buffalo. And it is at Bar-Bill, and they’re known for painting the sauce on their wings. And so it’s very evenly sauced. But it is my favorite.

Billie: That’s awesome. We’ll have to put that on the list to try it.

Patrick: And, and I don’t share that very often, so I must really appreciate Afar for sharing my favorite wing spot in Buffalo and Erie County.

Billie: I always joke that as travel writers, our job is to ruin stuff. You know, like we find out what the locals like and then we tell everybody about it. So those are some of the things that Buffalo is really, really known for. But there’s a lot of other things going on in the city and the region that maybe people don’t know about. I was curious, you could tell us a bit about what has been happening. There’s a lot of openings.

Patrick: Yeah. So, this is actually the 200th anniversary of the Erie Canal. This is part of our big overall celebration within New York State. But we are the terminus of the Erie Canal in Buffalo. One of the big things that’s been taking place over the last few years is the recreation of the Seneca chief boat that has all been done by hand, by volunteers.

And the boat is going to be traveling up the entire length of the Erie Canal starting in September, and going all the way to New York. It’ll take about a month, but that has been one of the great highlights of 2025.

But Buffalo is so well known for its architecture, its arts and culture. People don’t realize that we have one of the top 20 contemporary art collections in the world in Buffalo, at the Buffalo AKG. Two years ago they had the grand reopening of the Buffalo AKG because they couldn’t even put out 15% of the collection prior to the expansion project.

On the architecture side, we have three of the most prominent American architects with Richardson, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Sullivan. And our Frank Lloyd Wright sites are just truly amazing. We have one of the largest and most complete restorations of a Frank Lloyd Wright site anywhere, and that would be the Martin House.

The Darwin Martin family also had a summer home in Southern Erie County. That’s called Great Cliff, that’s going through a restoration right now as well. And then we have other examples of Frank Lloyd Wright architecture in our destination too.

Billie: You can make like a whole road trip trail through it, right?

Patrick: Exactly.

Billie: I wrote about that a couple years ago. I love Frank Lloyd Wright and architecture, and I think you, as you said, I’m not sure if a lot of travelers know how deep the roots of American modern architecture go in Buffalo.

Patrick: Exactly. I think people, when people automatically think of Buffalo, they think that it’s snowing there 365 days out of the year, that we lost—

Billie: Is it only 360?

Patrick: Exactly. That we lost four consecutive Super Bowls and you know that we are kind of a down on its luck Rust Belt City.

And that’s where it’s been so exciting, especially for me being in my role for the last 11 years, is to talk about all the transformation that’s taken place in our community. And a lot of it is so grassroots and at the local level that many philanthropists within our community really made the investment with the example of the Frank Lloyd Wright sites, you know, that really started at the local level of people wanting to bring those back to life because the Martin House actually sat vacant for a number of years. The kids in the neighborhood would roller skate in the house. They actually tore down the back portion of the house and built three apartment buildings.

So the restoration has been bringing all of those back to life and recreating it. And again, using Frank Lloyd Wright’s original designs, finding the ways to actually recreate it. All of these things have been really grassroots and that’s what I think is so special about our destination is that we have repurposed and brought back to life so many of these things that just sat dormant for so many years.

Billie: You’re explaining that ideas are coming from the grassroots, from the community. From the tourism DMO side, how do you turn that into an experience for a visitor?

Patrick: Well, when I first came to Buffalo, in 2014, that’s when the Martin House was kind of in their whole construction and restoration. I said, actually, that’s an interesting story for us to be telling because there were tours that were still taking place.

But I said it’s our opportunity to tell the story of, how did it all come together? How did $50 million get raised for this? And people can come in and see the restoration, but you know what? They’ll also make a return visit to see it in its completion when it’s all done as well as. On the outside they did a whole restoration of the landscape architecture.

So another great story is the restoration and the reuse of the former Buffalo State Hospital for the Insane. That’s now being transformed into a boutique hotel as well as office space, living space, retail space. It’s also going to be the hub of the new Buffalo Architecture Center, but it sat dormant for so many years.

And this is designed by Richardson. So it’s a beautiful, wonderful, gothic building that sits on a hundred acres of land. And this also goes back to telling the story of the services that were being given to the patients of the hospital because it’s big, open, and airy. And that was all part of the treatment that they were putting into place for these patients that were in place, that they did have this great park space, that the hallways were big open with big windows to let in natural light that you could see the outdoors.

And again, you know, when you hear transformations of spaces such as a, you know, a prison or a hospital for the insane, you know, are you doing ghost tours and those types of things? We want to be very respectful of the patients that were at the hospital because many of those patients still have family members that lived in Buffalo.

So it’s really talking about the very humane way that the patients were being treated. And now as it’s being transformed into this boutique hotel and people are actually spending the night in these rooms, you know, giving a nod to all of that and the now the new reuse of that big space.

Billie: There’s also a lot of restoration and rejuvenation and new things happening with the Black history of Buffalo.

Patrick: Yes. I guess one of the good things that came out of the pandemic were that there were lots of grant opportunities from the federal and the state.

And, prior to the pandemic, my organization was creating a whole experience around our African American Heritage Corridor. And we have not been able to launch it yet. And so again, you know, this is like six years in the making. But what happened was that many of those sites were given grants to update their sites. One example is the Colored Musicians Club, one of the oldest Colored Musicians Clubs in the United States. And, you know, they had all of the greats that were performing there. so they had a great museum experience on the first floor, and then you could go upstairs to the club level and actually hear a jam session. Unfortunately, it wasn’t ADA accessible, so they were able to get funds to put in an elevator, expand the experience, and so that will finally be opening up later this year.

Another one is the Michigan Street Baptist Church. That was actually a stop along the Underground Railroad. But the church became within disrepair. It needed a new roof. And so they just completed their whole restoration of the church, and it’s ready to go now and it’s just wonderfully beautiful. And we just did a launch of our new African American Heritage Guide in the church this last weekend. We had so many of our partners that came to the press conference.

And again, this is an important story that needs to be told again, because of our proximity to Canada, you know, to be a part of the Underground Railroad and to be able to tell those stories in a very genuine and authentic way.

Billie: Yeah, and it’s nice that it’s finally—it took all these years, but it’s finally happening. So you brought up Canada. Now we all know international tourism is taking a hit in some places. And travel from Canada is down and you’re so close to Canada. How is that affecting tourism in the Buffalo Niagara areas?

Patrick: So it typically, we rely on about 35 to 40% of our overall visitation coming from Canada and, you know, when the exchange rate is in our favor or in their favor, I guess, you know, we will see more travelers coming over. Right now our overall, cross border traffic is down over 20%, through the month of May.

You know, very concerning for us. And, I’ve done some interviews in Canada as well. I did an interview on CTV and my feedback from the Canadians were, it’s not about the tariff, it’s not about the exchange rate. It’s really about our sovereignty and the rhetoric that’s coming out of Washington, D.C. about us becoming the 51st state.

And, I reached out to every single one of those people that, you know, wrote to me, called my office, and I said, I apologize. I can completely appreciate where that is very insulting to you. We are the city of good neighbors. We want these Canadians coming across the border. We’ve always had a Buffalo Loves Canada campaign that’s run for many years.

I mean, it preceded my arrival in Buffalo, and just because of the overall importance for us. So now we’re going to be starting to dip our toe back into Canada starting in July, just to see what we can, find, you know, are there visitors who are willing to make the trip over? Because what we were hearing was that we love you Buffalo, but we’ll see you in four years after, after the administration has moved on and we’ve got another president that isn’t going to be so insulting to us.

Billie: Do you feel like, because of your geographic proximity to Canada, you’ve become kind of the de facto tourism ambassador. Locations, maybe along the border that are experiencing the same thing where you’re collaborating and sharing knowledge on this?

Patrick: Absolutely. Especially within our Great Lakes region, talking to our friends in Detroit. Minnesota, being here at IPW, we’ve been having those conversations, you know, what are you seeing? With the Great Lakes, we actually talked about the possibility of maybe even going and doing some media opportunities in Canada collectively together. The problem right now is that there’s been a ban on many of the media outlets to do stories on travel to the United States.

And so, you know, in our own conversations with our friends in the media, they said, we love you Buffalo, but I can’t even get a story into a publication or into a blog. But please continue to send us information. We’ve been sending care packages to some of our travel writer friends. Sending them some Buffalo wing sauce, some sponge candy, just to, you know, keep ourselves top of mind as a destination. And just saying, when the time is right, we’re ready to welcome you back and have you come back and we’ll host you, and, you know, have you experience some of the new things in Buffalo.

Billie: Are you finding in this situation, with the vibe coming from Canada, are you finding any opportunities in that that you didn’t expect?

Patrick: We are finding some new opportunities, especially domestically where instead of putting many of our resources into Canada, we’re kind of looking at some of our growth potential markets as well. And looking at research and what other markets aren’t we currently advertising in that are coming to Buffalo, looking at how much time they typically spend their overall visitor spend. And so we’re going into Boston, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Chicago with some new messaging.

But the problem with that is we haven’t been going in with a message, and so it’s not as if we’re flipping a switch, just because we’re advertising and meeting with travel writers that we’re going to start to see a big influx right off the bat. But it’s starting to establish those relationships. And with our new funding of Visit Buffalo Niagara, where I have a larger budget, we’ll be able to sustain that. But this gives us the opportunity now to start going into those markets a little bit more aggressively than we have in the past.

Billie: And it seems like a good time, right? So we’ve got America 250 coming up, so it is a time to celebrate America and have, you know, people from the United States go to places in the United States.

Patrick: And those are great drive markets as well as we have great airlift into our destination that are pretty economical. We’ve got JetBlue and Southwest with flights coming in from those cities. And so we just see that as a good opportunity. But like I said, there are also great drive markets where people might be, you know, taking a family trip, and we might be a stop along that way.

Billie: Oh my gosh, thank you so much. This was so cool. Really enjoyed talking to you.

Patrick: Appreciate the opportunity.

Billie: Thanks for coming.

Thanks for joining us for this episode of View From Afar. In the show notes, you’ll find links to everything we discussed today, as well as Visit Buffalo Niagara’s social media handles and website. And be sure to follow along this week to hear more interviews with industry experts.

You can find more Views From Afar on afar.com. And be sure to follow us on Instagram and TikTok. We’re @AfarMedia. If you enjoyed today’s exploration, I hope you’ll come back for more great interviews. Subscribing always makes that easy. And be sure to rate and review the show on your favorite podcast platforms. It helps other travelers find it.

This has been View From Afar, a production of Afar Media. The podcast is produced by Aislyn Greene and Nikki Galteland, with assistance from Michelle Baran and Billie Cohen. Music composition from Epidemic Sound. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to their other fine shows like Culture Kids and The Explorers Podcast.