From a broad view of these Pocono Mountains, the region is home to many, home away from home to many more.

Four seasons of fun — winter, spring, summer and fall — stretch across 2,400 square miles of forests, lakes, rivers and mountains, as well as historic downtowns and iconic family resorts.

By the numbers, the Poconos is a destination to 30 million people from New York and Philadelphia — two of the top five metro areas in the U.S.

As a driver of the local economy, tourism and hospitality contributes $4.8 billion — with a "B" — to the Pocono Mountains. With an industry that big and that intertwined with the Poconos, it means nearly half of all the employees in the region are in hospitality and tourism in some shape or form. That accounts for nearly half of the labor income.

All those statistics, data, and numbers don’t tell the whole story — especially when people are at the heart of the Pocono Mountains success story.

“I’m so grateful to be part of the Kalahari family.”

People like Betty Veliz — a longtime guest at Kalahari Resorts & Conventions who one day took the leap to start her career there.

“I started here like two years ago and definitely being through Kalahari's Rising Star program helped me tremendously to grow up as a leader and also lean to my recent promotion.”

Betty has been promoted to Convention Services Manager. Kalahari leadership recognizes her potential and is supporting her and her career.

“We just saw the passion that she had for the industry. And the passion that she had for the guests and the attention to detail and the drive that she had. And we knew that she was going to do something really, really wonderful for us.”

Don Pleau knows what it takes to rise — from dishwasher as a young adult to General Manager of this massive operation that welcomes guests and corporate events, requiring an equally massive crew behind and in front of the scenes.

“So having a facility like this is, it's its own city. And we can have as many as 5,000 guests on the property. And we need every single imaginary business to support this. We have accountants. We have CPAs. We have, we're a licensed EMT property here in the state of Pennsylvania. So we have EMTs on property. We have our own security team that's made up of people that are aspiring to go into the police force or who have been in the police force and we have human resources experts. It takes every type of business there is to be able to run a property this size.”

Same story down the road at Camelback Resort — a pioneer in diversifying its offerings for all seasons. Like other Pocono employers, Camelback has a number of warriors now out in the world… like Laurent, a recent graduate.

“Before I came here, I had no idea we had twenty-nine departments here. So it's hospitality management, but it… we have our own finance department, we have our own human resource department, procurement, recreation. We have one of the biggest aquatics departments, over 400 lifeguards. We have our mountain operations with snowmaking. And then in the summer we turn into… we have an outdoor water park. We have our zip lines, mountain coaster. It's a big recreational aspect to this resort as well as the Rooms Division and there's a career for everyone at Camelback Resort.”

Laurent met Camelback’s Managing Director, Dave Makarsky, on campus one day. Pretty soon, the international student from Albania was part of the team.

“We have a number of students that then come for internships or co-op programs and ultimately, the graduates come here looking for permanent employment. Like Laurent, right? Laurent's one of them, absolutely.”

East Stroudsburg University continues to build its Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Management program, connecting aspiring leaders in the industry to career tracks like Camelback — and others.

“We literally at our peak season have 1,400 associates across twenty-nine different departments. So we are always thinking about how we stratify, how we diversify our workforce and the local partnerships with East Stroudsburg University and NCC and the Monroe County Technical Institute. They all play a part with us.”

Back at Kalahari — Betty and Don and this “city” of employees are confident in the power of the Poconos, providing career pathways through education and real-life experience.

“I started as a cashier. I was demoted because my English, it wasn't very good. As a bagger, then I work my way up to it and I be better than I become number one cashier, move up to a hostess, then server, then assisting the managers. And then I move up to a higher scale. I said, okay, I wanted it to be a captain. And I made my way up to a captain and look who I am right now.”

“We are strong supporters of the hospitality industry. There's forty-seven million Americans within four hours of where we're sitting right here this morning. And if you go up to twelve hours, a third of the population of the United States lives within twelve hours. So the Poconos has nothing but opportunity ahead of itself.”

Pocono tourism — with people at its core — for a vision, action and strategy.