USA: Visitor Counts Soar As Marketing Ffocus Shifts

Last year, more tourists spent their vacations on the Long Beach Peninsula than ever before. They also spent more money than ever.

In 2014, the visitor count was up 14 percent over 2013. Visitor spending increased for the third year in a row, reaching an all-time high of almost $156 million.

Those figures are a testament to the appeal of local tourist attractions and the hospitality of locals, Long Beach Peninsula Visitors Bureau director Andi Day said in an interview last week.

“It’s a team effort,” Day said. “So many people are doing such great work.”

More marketing

During a presentation to the Long Beach City Council on July 6, however, Day stressed that if local leaders want to capitalize on the momentum they’re seeing right now, they’ll need to make a bigger investment in professional marketing.

Day’s figures come from the Washington State Travel Impacts and Visitor Volume Report. Produced by the Portland marketing and economic research firm Dean Runyan and Associates, the report provides a comprehensive look at how travel influences the state’s economy. Staff at the Visitors Bureau and other “destination marketing organizations” [DMOs] around the state use the local data to determine how the tourism industry is doing, and to guide decisions about how to promote their region to potential visitors.

The Visitors Bureau is a private, non-profit marketing organization that promotes Pacific County — and the Long Beach Peninsula in particular — as a travel destination. The county and cities of Ilwaco and Long Beach contribute a percentage of their lodging tax revenues to the bureau each year. Tourists pay this tax (which is also known as the hotel-motel tax) on guest accommodations, and state law says it must be used for activities, events and projects that are designed to increase tourism. About 300 local businesses pay a membership fee in exchange for the bureau’s services, which include advertising campaigns, public relations, social media marketing, assistance to visitors and networking opportunities.

Summer sells itself

At the July 6 city workshop, Day talked city officials through a series of slides that show how the Visitors Bureau is marketing the region, and how those efforts are working out.

Day explained that the Peninsula is now seeing so many summer visitors that it no longer makes sense for the Visitor’s Bureau to spend its limited budget promoting special events that take place during the busy season. Instead, the bureau has shifted to a strategy of promoting local attractions that are available year round — food, outdoor activities, arts and culture — with the idea of attracting tourists during the fall, winter and spring.

“We need to focus on things that are available 24-7-365,” Day explained.

Investment in Visitors Bureau services does appear to be paying off — Runyan and Associates found that every dollar the Visitors Bureau spends on marketing returns $344 in visitor spending.

Among the state’s 39 counties, Pacific County ranks somewhere in the middle for overall visitor spending, but does extremely well compared to other sparsely-populated parts of the state — Pacific County pulls in more tourist dollars per resident than any other county except San Juan County, a famously scenic and costly travel destination.

The area only seems to be gaining momentum. In the first quarter of 2015, the county’s hotel tax collections were up 21 percent over the same period in 2014, and in Long Beach, they were up 19 percent. During the same period, the Visitors Bureau helped 13 percent more guests than in 2014.

In the future, Day said, the Visitors Bureau will continue to use the Runyan report, their own visitor surveys and other sources to make data-driven decisions about marketing. That data helps the bureau produce “measurable results,” Day explained. “That’s one of the things we really bring to the table as a professional marketing organization.”

Where they come from

According to Day, most visitors are Washington residents who live in the I-5 corridor, though some visitors also come from British Columbia, the Portland area, and other parts of the Northwest. So, marketing efforts directed at the densely populated greater Puget Sound area tend to yield the most return on investment. But the Visitors Bureau is also starting to think about how to attract international tourists. Last year, the Peninsula was listed in a German-language travelers’ guide, which may explain why Germans have been the biggest group of international visitors (aside from Canadians) in recent months.

Market research also shows that Chinese tourists have a significant amount of disposable income, and have taken a strong interest in touring the Pacific Northwest — Sea-Tac and Portland airports have both recently added non-stop flights to China. With that in mind, the Visitors Bureau has developed some Mandarin-language marketing materials in collaboration with Long Beach.

“We would be smart to position ourselves for this in the near future,” Day said.

Unlike other small, or out-of-the-way communities, where leaders have sometimes tried to entice visitors by building theme parks, casinos or outlet malls, the Peninsula already has built-in attractions with enormous appeal — beaches, rivers, bays and forests. So another obvious group of potential tourists is outdoors-enthusiasts.

“We don’t have to build anything new. We just have to find people who like what we have!” Day said, adding that people who come to enjoy natural attractions are willing to travel and tend to be good stewards of the places they visit.

During the workshop, Day said that more generous, and longer-term support from local community leaders would enable her organization to capitalize on the growing interest in the Peninsula.

Currently, the county contributes about 40 percent of its lodging tax to the bureau, while the cities of Ilwaco and Long Beach contribute a little over 30 percent on a year-to-year basis, making the bureau one of the lowest-funded DMOs in the state, according to Day.

“Our peers are consistently receiving 50 to 80 percent of available lodging taxes on a multi-year contract,” Day said.

Pacific County pulls in more tourist dollars per resident than any other county except San Juan County, a famously scenic and costly travel destination.