Category: Marketing

Did the Summer White Sale Hurt Local Businesses?

There was a “letter to the editor” published in the News Herald on July 18th from Reggie Lancaster talking about how the Summer White Sale didn’t help local tourism, but actually hurt the existing businesses.

Quote:

Few people have more of an appreciation of what our Tourist Development Council members do than I. I spent 11 years on the board and chaired it for four years and have fond memories of serving with some great people. I would like to offer some constructive criticism to the advertising agency and the board in regards to the current advertising effort referred to as the Summer White Sale.

Although well intentioned, I don’t believe the advertising campaign produced the desired results. Instead of enticing new guests to come to Panama City Beach, it largely accomplished offering reduced rates and incentives to guests who already had reservations or at least plans to come here. Consequently, while everything else in the country was going up in price, we were reducing already stressed profit margins in the accommodation industry.

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PCB White Sale Campaign update – with stats

YPartnership’s PCBWhiteSale launched on May 5 2008 with PR and strategic ad placements hitting all the major feeder markets to our area. Besides the creative being weak at best on their “coupon” web site, the actual campaign numbers don’t look that bad.

Part of what I do at my day job is analyze web stats, so this is right up my alley.

The report, available for download below, defines “total hits” and “user sessions” and reports from May 4 to May 23. Based on what Peter Yesawich of YPartnership was saying at the strategy workshop I can only assume in the web stat world, “user sessions” would have to mean unique visitors. Seeing as total pageviews is defined, I would say this is correct.

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2008 Bay County Tourist Development Council Strategic Plan

Today at 2pm at the Bay Point Marriott is a public workshop discussing the 2008 Bay County Tourist Development Council and Panama City Beach CVB Strategic Plan.

Below is a link to the rough draft outline.

Some of the key initiatives include:

  • Protect our key asset, the beach
    • Seek additional funding from state and federal sources
    • Develop additional beach maintenance, grooming, recycling and trash removal
    • Work to enhance the overall beach experience
  • Develop Panama City Beach in a year-round tourist destination
    • Look into an enhanced Sports Complex and convention center
    • Entice sports promoters to hold sporting events here
    • Work with Audubon Society to develop eco-tourism opportunities in Bay County
    • Attract new family friendly entertainment venues that operate year-round
    • Embrace a strong special events philosophy to assist existing events, foster new events, and attract additional events to the community

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Panama City Beach Needs more Branded Hotels

Kaoru Chikushi from HVS International wrote a piece on Panama City Beach that was published on HospitalityNet.org titled The Need for More Branded Hotels in Panama City Beach, Florida.

You should read it, but I’ll summarize it here.

Chikushi estimates that approximately 7 million visit Panama City Beach each year with around 250,000 spring breakers and 15,000 “snowbirds”. Again, not sure where the numbers came from, but 250,000 sounds much more realistic that the “millions” others in the media tout.

I was glad to see Chikushi references Panama City Beach as “once known as the Redneck Riviera” and describes our area as being in an “era of transformation.” Signaled by the new airport and Pier Park, she finds justification in Panama City being named the #1 place to own real estate in the next 5 years (the Business 2.0 article).

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Destinations around the country searching for tourists

“What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” has been swapped for “do Vegas right now.” According to the New York Times, the slogan was swapped for something that had a stronger call to action.

It is no secret that the cost of living is going up in real time. With gas prices here quickly approaching 4 bucks a gallon, the cost to travel is also quickly becoming a huge deciding factor on where people are going, if they are going at all.

In the New York Times article, Urgency Replaces Subtlety in Summer’s Struggle for Visitors, the second destination mentioned as making a change in their advertising direction was Panama City Beach. Peter Yesawich was quoted, “There is a palpable nervousness on the part of everybody in the industry.” “We’ve seen some of these conditions individually,” Mr. Yesawich said, referring to problems like high fuel prices and reduced capacity on airlines, “but never all of them at once.”

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Panama City Beach TDC CVB Strategic Planning Process Outline

I was able to get my hands on the Bay County Tourist Development Council Panama City Beach CVB Strategic Planning Process Outline. It spells out where we are wanting to take Panama City Beach over the next couple of years and how we are going to get there. Following are excerpts from the document with the option to download the whole document at the end.

In January, the Bay County TDC initiated a strategic planning process to help chart the course for the Panama City Beach Convention & Visitors Bureau in coming years.

Building off of the initial work conducted, the CVB developed four key initiatives and potential funding strategy to serve as the framework for discussion as the initiatives are explored and articulated in advance of the final plan. This document includes the initiatives, as well as the notes from the retreat.

In June, a final strategic plan will be presented to the TDC for adoption.

Key Initiatives:

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The Summer White Sale has been released

I was unaware that this had been finalized, but I guess final numbers were supposed to be in by April 25th by all the retail partners participating in this program.

I came across this press release:

Savings Roll In: Panama City Beach Announces ‘Summer White Sale’ With Discounts From 50 Tourism Partners

PANAMA CITY BEACH, Fla., May 6 /PRNewswire/ — Surf is up, and prices are down in Panama City Beach, Fla.

This award-winning destination on the Gulf of Mexico launches its Summer White Sale today, offering great savings on everything you need for the perfect beach break. The White Sale joins more than 50 Beach accommodations, restaurants and attractions. They team up to present 75 different discount offers with a total value of more than $6,000. All offers are valid now — Aug. 31. More local businesses can join in for additional savings to roll in all spring and summer long

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TDC/CVB Marketing Committee Actions 4/18/08

A complete recap will follow, but here are the actions taken by the TDC/CVB Marketing Committee at their meeting today.

Changes to Summer Marketing Campaign

The committee voted 7-2 to approve the theme “Summer White Sale” along with an accompanying estimated savings statement such as “Save up to $1000”. The exact amount of estimated savings to be included in the advertisements will be determined by staff and Y Partnership after the tourist-related businesses submit their discount offers. The motion also directed staff and Chairman Phillips to develop a co-op plan so that sufficient funds can be raised to upgrade the newspaper advertising to color.

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Towne of Seahaven prepares for Origin Rental Marketing

Intrawest is heading up the hospitality management side of the Towne of Seahaven. With a portfolio that includes Sandestin and Baytowne Wharf, The Village of Tremblant, The Village at Copper Mountain, and more, they have a pretty good track record for success. Marketing plans include:

  • A hospitality-specific website that will cater exclusively to the rental aspect of The Towne of Seahaven. It will first be Origin-specific and will grow as other rental properties come online.
  • 45% of the entire marketing budget (for the next six months it is over $200k) will go to digital-based marketing efforts to include extensive SEO (search engine marketing) and PPC (pay per click) marketing driving traffic to the new site.
  • They will utilize the existing world-wide Intrawest database for a strategic, targeted email and print-mail campaign advertising vacation deals/opportunities at The Towne of Seahaven.
  • They are planning to hire an outside sales manager to promote business to business rentals, events accomodations, etc.

The Intrawest rental management team at the Towne of Seahaven has just accepted the bid for the website design. I am in the real estate sales and marketing business and we typically estimate around 60 days from beginning to end on a new website design but I was not given any deployment projections in my meeting with their marketing department.