Marketing Your City, U.S.A.

A Guide to Developing a Strategic Tourism Marketing Plan

Kaye Sung Chon, Ronald A Nykiel, Elizabeth Jascolt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781136381874
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

With Marketing Your City, U.S.A.: A Guide to Developing a Strategic Marketing Plan, you'll discover how easy it is to market your hometown to potential tourists. You'll find a simple, sure-fire strategy proven to bring out the charm and beauty of any town, anywhere. You'll learn ways to improve the "packaging" of your community, while at the same time improving its visible appeal to tourists. Marketing Your City, U.S.A. gives you the guidelines for developing and selecting objectives, key strategies, and tactics that will help you produce or increase revenue through increased tourism. In Marketing Your City, U.S.A., you'll find the marketing process broken down into easy steps that are outlined and completely explained for a theoretical destination: "Your City, U.S.A." You will learn how to arrange a sample "calendar of events," how to effectively plan a yearly series of promotions, and how to formulate a proposed budget for advertising, promotions, and public relations. Marketing Your City, U.S.A. is written in such a way that you can either implement all the strategic marketing steps or just the ones that particularly pertain to your hometown. The five easily applied marketing objectives you'll find outlined in the book include:

• how to enhance your city's overall environment
• how to broaden your city's economic base while providing for new revenues
• how to develop your city's infrastructure to be visitor-friendly and to increase the length of visitors'stays
• how to effectively market your city's resources for tourism
• how to communicate with both audiences--the public and local residents After reading Marketing Your City, U.S.A., you'll find tourism a win-win situation: the more you attract tourists the more outside revenue you'll gain. You'll approach tourism with a confident strategy that guarantees your hometown's success. Tourism can be difficult and overwhelming, so let Marketing Your City, U.S.A. guide you every step of the way.

PART ONE:
THE STRATEGIC TOURISM
MARKETING PLAN

THE PREFACE

The first step in the marketing plan is the Preface, which is an introductory statement that briefly delineates what the document is all about or what to expect. Let's look now at the sample preface for Your City.

PREFACE

This strategic tourism marketing plan contains many recommendations for Your City, from a mission statement to specific tactics that provide both generators of revenue and environmental improvements. Its focus is strategic, covering the next three to five years with respect to the overall tourist market, as well as tactical, in that it addresses more immediate action steps to increase returns in the current and subsequent fiscal years. The strategic and tactical elements should be viewed as interlinked, and to a large extent, they are by-products of each other.

Overall, the strategies and tactics, while seeking to generate revenue, are based on the premise of improving and preserving the community, its appeal, and its attractiveness. The environmental and competitive assessment highlights its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The mission statement suggests an overall vision for Your City that, once agreed upon, should be the focal point upon which future actions are based.

Finally, this strategic marketing plan should be realistic in its application of resources, focus of attention, and recommended action steps. It suggests specific ways to achieve its goals and objectives either from an operation and manpower methodology or a resource allocation perspective. It strongly urges coordination, cooperation, and communication to support the achievement of its mission.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Following the Preface, the written plan should move on to the Executive Summary. This is the key to presenting, communicating, and convincing busy government and corporate community leaders to pay attention and to read on. The executive summary should articulate the organization's mission statement, goals and objectives, strategies and tactics, as well as address issues and highlight the planning document's recommendations. Let's examine a typical executive summary for Your City's plan.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

An environmental and competitive assessment of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats reveals a crossroads in terms of tourism for Your City. The overall ingredients for Your City's success are based in the assets of the community, yet the accumulation of weaknesses and threats can disrupt the status quo. A major downturn at one of Your City's largest employers and the incremental deterioration of the visual environment and Your City's infrastructure are potential and real threats.

In summary, Your City is at that 50 to 60 percent threshold, where it can secure its position as a “destination within a destination,” or it can struggle to maintain its current status quo. The recommendations contained in this tourism marketing plan focus on the former option.

At this point in time, and for the duration of the plan's five-year period, the following mission statement is appropriate:

Your City seeks to enhance its overall environment by providing for the broadening of its economic base, newly generated revenues and growth through tourism, and related infrastructure development that complements its residential attractiveness.

Tourism marketing, infrastructure, and new economic development needs to be targeted as an action plan to offset pending attraction-related economic declines. A reasonable goal to strive for is a 7 to 10 percent annual growth, measured in revenues, during the planning period.

Five objectives have been identified to address this goal:

1. Enhance the overall environment, both physically and perceptually.
2. Broaden the economic base while providing for new revenues.
3. Develop the infrastructure to be visitor friendly and to increase the length of visitors’ stays.
4. Maximize resources for tourism marketing.
5. Improve communications to all audiences, including the marketing realm, the public, and local residents.

In order to achieve these objectives, three primary driving forces need to be addressed in the focal points of the strategy: (1) change the initial visual perception of Your City's overall tourism environment; (2) increase cooperation and synergy with the nearby attraction's marketing efforts; and (3) maximize the focus of marketing expenditures on promotional offers to produce room-related revenues.

To address these driving forces, this plan suggests the full use of all marketing weaponry—promotions, advertising, cooperatives, sales, events, and public relations—to work in synergy with the overall goal of revenue generation. Related strategies and tactics for each category of weaponry are suggested within the plan.

Further, the objectives are supported with over forty specific recommendations; some require immediate attention, and others are to be implemented during the planning period. Also presented are four budget planning approaches. Highlights from these recommendations include:

• selecting a vision or theme for the future (two are suggested for selection);
• optional concepts to immediately improve the poor first impression by tourists of Your City's infrastructure;
• potential development concepts to provide an additional attraction for Your City, while broadening the economic base;
• infrastructure improvements to increase tourists’ length of stay and to create a more “visitor friendly” Your City;
• utilization of a full-service advertising agency and public relations agency or a full-time tourism marketing coordinator;
• a promotions and events calendar;
• a public relations and communications strategy; and
• a specific cooperative opportunity.

This marketing plan strongly urges Your City to develop its own identity or “draw” through the selection and communication of a vision or theme. Two such themes and appropriate supporting slogans are presented for discussion.

Six primary issues emerge for decision making: (1) The need for a full-time marketing/tourism function or an advertising and public relations agency; (2) the selection of Your City's vision or theme; (3) the need for new and related economic development; (4) an immediate plan for infrastructure items related to Your City's visual perception; (5) improving communications; and (6) consideration of a 7 percent versus a 5 percent room occupancy tax.

Acting on the recommendations, reallocating budget expenditures, and the resolution of the previous issues should result in a measurable increase in revenues (7 percent to 10 percent on an annual basis); increased room occupancies and rates for lodging facilities; visual enhancements to the city; improved infrastructure for both visitors and residents; and the preservation and potential enhancement of both residential and commercial areas within the city.

COMPETITIVE AND ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT

A section usually located in the beginning of the planning document is the Competitive and Environmental Assessment. This step provides a realistic assessment of the tourist destination's strengths and weaknesses and its surrounding opportunities and threats (commonly referred to as the SWOT analysis) and then takes a close look at its competition. A strength is an asset or a resource of your city/town that can be used to improve its competitive position, such as an amusement park, a new medical complex, or a strong retail base. A weakness is just the opposite—a resource or capability that may cause your city/town to have a less competitive position, which can adversely affect tourism. For instance, empty commercial space or vacant buildings are categorized as weaknesses. Opportunities are developed from a tourist destination's strengths, or set of positive circumstances, and can include tourist overflow from a nearby metropolitan city or the opportunity for special events within your city/town. Threats are viewed as problems that focus on your weaknesses and which can create a potentially negative situation. Depressed commercial activity or a competing tourist destination's growing summer music festival are some examples of threats.

Often it is helpful to take a multidimensional analytical perspective in this step of the process: first examine the surrounding areas, and then imagine the future, or project what is likely to occur in your surroundings. Let's now view the environmental and competitive assessment for Your City.

COMPETITIVE AND ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT

Your City's tourism and marketing plan strategies should be based on a realistic assessment of the area's environmental and competitive position. This assessment should include a factual SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis that is both objective and subjective in nature. The perspective should also include looking around at your competition, looking within at Your City itself, and looking ahead to the next five years.

Strengths: Looking around, Your City's key strengths include its proximity to a metropolitan city and its area attraction with an annual draw of 250,000 visitors, both of which are major tourism infrastructure strengths. Another strength is its specific layout that naturally separates its residential community from its commercial industry. Certainly, Your City's attractive residential area, with its natural greenery, well-maintained homes, and landscaping, is another ...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• ABOUT THE AUTHORS
• Preface
• Introduction
• PART ONE: THE STRATEGIC TOURISM MARKETING PLAN
• PART TWO: WORK FORMS
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index