Mercer County aims to boost tourism with new website, airport upgrades

Mercer County launched a new tourism website last month that will serve as the county’s central tourism center. The launch is part of a broader push to increase visitors, including planned renovations to the Trenton-Mercer airport.

The site focuses less on Princeton than the 2025 Mercer County Visitors Guide, which was released by Visit Princeton, the region’s previous destination marketing organization. Its information ranges more broadly from dining and shopping options across Mercer County to a commemorative history of the county in honor of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

The website was funded in part through a $240,000 grant from the state’s Division of Travel and Tourism. The grant funding will also be used to expand digital marketing and “support major events and festivals throughout the county,” Samuel Weiss, a spokesperson for Mercer County, wrote to The Daily Princetonian. In the future, the county will use funds on “marketing Mercer County as a destination through regional billboards, targeted advertising campaigns, social media, digital platforms, and event promotion,” Weiss added. 

The shift away from Visit Princeton, which received similar grants in previous years, follows the creation of the county’s Division of Tourism and Travel in 2024. The Princeton Mercer Regional Chamber of Commerce and the county government then mutually agreed that the new division should operate the destination marketing organization, according to Weiss.

Weiss added that Visit Princeton was mostly focused on promoting tourism activities that would support the businesses that were part of the Chamber, and that Princeton was “heavily represented.” The Visit Mercer website, by contrast, is more focused on representing “every community” in Mercer and “build[ing] connections across all twelve of our municipalities.”

Laurence Saul, the president and CEO of the Princeton Mercer Regional Chamber of Commerce, similarly wrote that the switch involved “a more countywide approach to promoting Mercer County.”

“The goal of the tourism website is to encourage more people to explore Mercer County by connecting them with the amazing sites and experiences that our community has to offer,” Weiss wrote.

In another move to help boost tourism, the Trenton-Mercer airport is currently being upgraded, as the new site lays out, to better accommodate travelers as well as meet projected increases in traffic. In July, Breeze Airways announced that it would begin offering flight routes at the airport, and some flights began on Sept. 20. Commercial flights currently only travel to Charleston, S.C., and four airports in Florida, including Miami and Tampa. 

Prior to this year, Frontier Airlines was the only commercial airline operating at the airport. Frontier’s current destinations include Florida, North Carolina, and Georgia. Allegiant, which operated from 2016–2018 at the airport, was added again in February 2026, offering trips to several destinations in Florida. The Infinity Flight Group, a flight school, also operates out of the airport.

According to Weiss, the first part of the upgrade is building a new Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting Facility, which began in 2024 and is projected to be completed this year. The next phase is the construction of the Terminal Replacement Project, which will replace the current 50-year-old, 28,000-square-foot terminal with a new, 125,000-square-foot one. 

One student, Sophia Rizzo ’29, explained in an interview with the ‘Prince’ that the two times she used the Trenton-Mercer airport went “relatively smoothly,” except for the fact that she had to pay a $50 late fee despite arriving an hour before departure time. Rizzo said she does “intend to fly out of the Trenton-Mercer airport in the future, just because the flights are normally a bit cheaper.” 

Another, Jackson Kane ’30, said that he was not even aware of the existence of the airport, “because we’re so close to Philly and Newark.” 

Some residents are opposed to the project, claiming that the construction will have detrimental environmental effects. In particular, groups such as Trenton Threatened Skies have raised  concerns over the effects of increased plane traffic on air pollution as well as potential PFAs contamination of the site. Some residents worry that these chemicals, if released, could contaminate nearby drinking water.

According to the official environmental assessment, the construction of the airport will have no significant environmental impact. The Public Involvement section of the environmental assessment notes that any “PFAs found during construction will be addressed in accordance with NJDEP [New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection] requirements.”

Some county residents have also expressed concerns over the noise levels at the airport. Huntley Lawrence, a consultant working with the airport, told the Mercer County Board of County Commissioners on Aug. 13 that the airport received 37 noise complaints between July 15 and Aug. 11. The Public Involvement section of the environmental assessment states that noise levels will not increase outside of the airport property as a result of the construction.

The airport upgrade is funded with a combination of county and federal funding. The total cost of the airport expansion is estimated to be approximately $300 million, according to a comment from Weiss last year.

Weiss noted that, although the airport project is often referred to as an expansion, the size of the airport property will remain unchanged. He wrote that “improvements to the airport will allow us to continue to position the airport as a major regional hub for travel and business, bringing more resources and jobs into our local economy while making travel more convenient for residents of our region.”

Grace Beckish is a News contributor for the ‘Prince’ and a member of the Class of 2030. 

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