Coast to Coast: Best of Burlington Reaches San Francisco

Burlington businesses are always looking for different ways to spread the word out about the great things this region offers to residents, students and/or visitors. With that in mind, eighty businesses recently donated items to the BBA’s Best of Burlington on-line auction.

The auction, which ran from November 11 to December 12 on biddingforgood.com, generated quite a buzz, due in part to the promotion efforts of the BBA, who ran ads for the auction on the WCAX and Burlington Free Press websites and sent out over 5000 auction emails.

All told, between people following, watching or bidding on items, the action had 412 active users who placed 663 bids on 109 items. After the bidding was complete, there were 80 winners from three cities in Canada and five states in the U.S., including eight winners from Massachusetts and a lady from San Francisco who won a stay in a Burlington hotel! In Vermont alone, 28 different zip codes were represented by bidders.

“We view the auction as a success,” said BBA Executive Director Kelly Devine. “Our goal was to get the word out about the great things in Burlington and 77% of our bids came from outside of the city.” Devine also said that restaurant gift certificates, hotel rooms and entertainment tickets were among the best sellers. “People will have to come to Burlington to redeem those items. The city could be seeing the benefits of the auction for quite some time.”