When the economy put the damper on her 2010 marketing budget, Connie Del Signore, president and CEO of the Annapolis & Anne Arundel County CVB, found inspiration from a partnership model established several years ago by the CVBs of Pittsburgh, Portland, Ore., and Milwaukee.
"They had been quite successful, and gave me the idea of contacting Newport [R.I.] to discuss combining our efforts," Del Signore says. "As destinations we have many similarities like maritime heritage, East Coast location and so on."
Del Signore’s move has blossomed into improved business for both destinations. Annapolis and the Newport & Bristol County CVB collaborated on meeting planner events in the Washington, D.C., market this year and shared planner lead resources to stretch their marketing efforts.
Social media has been another point of collaboration with a targeted planner universe via Facebook, Twitter and Flickr sites. For 2011, Annapolis and Newport are considering teaming up for more planner events and trade show appearances.
This partnership is only one innovative marketing solution that has emerged from these difficult economic times. Creativity is the essential tool CVBs or, as they are also called, DMOs (destination marketing organizations), are using to not only market for business but also for their own value to local economies.
The up news in these down times is there are significant and more concerted efforts at every level of the tourism and hospitality industry to assist DMOs with survival and maintenance of operations and services. Among the beneficiaries of the wider initiatives are meeting groups.
Fund Finders
In California, the Sonoma County Tourism Bureau is directing its destiny by generating some of its own funding via BIDs (business improvement districts). BIDs collect additional fees from local businesses to fund improvements within a district’s boundaries, and go by names such as special services area or community improvement district. Funds remain in the district to benefit businesses that contribute the money.
According to Tim Zahner, director of marketing for the Sonoma bureau, BIDs throughout the county have helped prevent some of the dire budget situations that have cropped up recently for DMOs that rely on membership dues and occupancy taxes for their operations and services—funds that sometimes get diverted to other uses by local governments that are strapped for cash.
"We assess a 2 percent fee over and above hotel occupancy taxes that goes into the BID fund," Zahner says. "In our case, the fund goes toward operating and promoting the county as a tourism destination."
Meeting groups benefit from free destination services that the fund supports, he adds.
Research Pays
Whatever method a DMO might launch, many use research to back up their efforts. They want to ensure that stakeholders, governments and others with funding controls have the local story about the hospitality industry’s economic impact.
One manager who values the role that research plays for her bureau in procuring and preserving funding is Shelly Green, president and CEO of the Durham [N.C.] CVB.
"We do research every other year with Global Insights about the economic impact of visitors to Durham," Green says. "They tell us what visitors spent on a trip that included Durham, and how much they spent while they were in Durham. D.K. Shifflett & Associates’ research on 45,000 households a month about travel consumer spending also helps us."
Green says she often has presented data to local government officials who, when they have a specific need for figures, call on her.
"Staying in communication with them in this way lays the groundwork for funding requests," she says. "We have been successful in getting a third of Durham’s 6 percent occupancy tax now, but we would like more. When we can use research to demonstrate how marketing investments pay off in sales tax revenue, this helps our cause."
Green believes that many DMOs don’t do enough research on tourism impact, which is increasingly important in today’s recessionary climate.
"Our job as DMOs is to prove we are using public money in an effective way," she says. "Many outside the industry think they know what we do, but they don’t. You don’t have to spend a lot of money to do research, but you do need the right information to show ROI."
Adam Sacks, managing director of tourism economics for Oxford Economics, a tourism consulting company, also advocates that bureaus research and communicate information on the economic impact they and their members generate.
"The best ones, like Orlando’s CVB, engage their local industry and communicate regularly about what they are doing," he says. "Philadelphia is another one that has had several successful marketing campaigns. They do research sharing and form various partnerships for special offers to customers, and so on.
"Quality research is one way DMOs can fill in the understanding gap, and it doesn’t have to be extensive," he continues. "Oxford Economics has just released our DMO survival kit [see sidebar] about how to have the research information in place when questions arise."
National Power Plays
Research is also a significant tool in a new national effort by industry associations to demonstrate value to policymakers and the general public as never before.
Combining resources are the U.S. Travel Association and Destination Marketing Association International (DMAI). Both are ramping up advocacy efforts on behalf of the entire industry and the DMO and meetings sectors in particular.
Executives of both associations say there has been a history of misunderstanding about the industry’s economic impact, particularly about business travel. They say the need for a culture change has been red-flagged recently by the economic recession and negative comments about the industry by elected officials.
"We need to take control of our own destiny," says Geoff Freeman, senior vice president, public affairs for U.S. Travel. "So we’re focusing on several key areas, including research, grassroots help in getting industry allies, cultivating the media and trade communities to tell our story and, of course, the legislative realm. We want to work with policymakers to encourage understanding of what trade shows and meetings mean, and how DMO marketing for these activities boosts local economies."
To this end, U.S. Travel has created a Meetings, Incentives and Trade Show Council, which is charged to cultivate a collective voice for the sector. Partnering in the effort is DMAI’s Advocacy Committee, co-chaired by Richard Scharf, president and CEO of Visit Denver, and Gary Sain, president and CEO of the Orlando/Orange County CVB.
"We used to think we just needed to do our job to attract and serve visitors, but we now know we really have to tell the story that it doesn’t just happen," Scharf says. "We must let our communities know we are good stewards of public dollars and that the marketing we do drives the economy, creates jobs and pays taxes locals don’t have to contribute."
Scharf says the committee is doing a "call for papers" to glean ideas that have worked in various communities that can be effective elsewhere. An example is the Tourism Pays video the Denver CVB produced that can be adapted for use by other DMOs. The DMAI website will soon contain case studies, PowerPoint documents and other resources to help members in their efforts to promote themselves to stakeholders.
Stephen Perry, DMAI chair and president of the New Orleans CVB, says the first priority for his DMAI term is to create a unified industry voice for the industry, starting at the grassroots level.
"As a $700 billion business, our industry is twice the size of the U.S. auto industry, and it reaches into virtually every county in America," he says. "But we have allowed ourselves to be taken for granted. The recession has been a wakeup call as DMOs at all levels have struggled to maintain market and services.
"Most people think the travel industry is just getting on planes and going to Disney," he continues. "They have no idea about the industry’s depth. So we have a lot of educating to do and this requires both political and fundraising efforts."
