Mediaguide calls the Philadelphia region home and I was fortunate enough to be invited to a marketing strategy session hosted by the Greater Philadelphia Tourism & Marketing Corporation (GPTMC) yesterday. They gathered leaders of hotels and hotel associations from the city and region as well as a few marketing and advertising professionals to discuss 'who' and 'where' ideas for attracting visitors to our city.
It was a very interesting session with some extremely talented people and it was great to see a quasi-public entity and the private businesses working together to address city and regional issues.
One of the topics we discussed centered around the difference between a 'vacation' and a 'getaway'. The difference is a matter of perspective. Baltimore or New York may be a 'getaway' for a Philadelphia-resident like me, but would probably be a 'vacation' for a family who lives in Phoenix or San Francisco.
With that in mind, the fact that the hotel & gaming industry revenue has dropped by 5-25% over the past year depending on the market and our current economic near future is in crisis; making both 'vacations' and 'getaways' more elusive, I was curious as to where various industries within the Travel category advertised on radio in 2008.
I looked at 4 segments of the Travel Category for 2008, Hotels/General Resorts, Tourism Promotion, Bed & Breakfasts and Casinos.
Except for the Bed & Breakfast category, the Top 10 markets receive the smallest share of radio advertising. I would attribute this to the fact that those in the travel industy believe that regardless of whether a large US city is a 'vacation' or a 'getaway', it is an interesting destination for citizens in smaller cities.
That may be true, but it should not mean those of us in larger cities would not want to visit other larger cities and would like to know what is there to do that is different than home.
I would argue that in a down economy the local radio advertising in each of these categories should be more evenly split and the creatives should really drive us to websites for deeper information on the unique attributes of the city, large or small.
With both the travel and radio industries looking for revenue, creating ad packages that offer a clear connection between radio-based introductions and web-based information with high-value offers for local travel could benefit everyone.
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