In March of 2011, a study on visitors to Tioga County, PA was launched to understand visitor types, the effectiveness of recent advertising campaigns, and the economic impact and ROI of tourism spending in Tioga County. The research design utilized four distribution methods in driving respondents to an online survey link; the link was e-mailed directly to 2,400 inquiry email addresses, a postcard advertising the link was sent to 3,700 mailing addresses, and the link was posted on the Tioga County Visitors Bureau website and Facebook page. This paper explores implications for response rates by distribution method, online survey reliability and population representativeness based on the Tioga County Visitor Study results.