ESTES PARK, Colo. — The Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) is not broken, but some of its functions should be transferred to the Local Marketing District (LMD), consultant Scott Hannah told the LMD board at its meeting Tuesday in the municipal building.
Hannah analyzed the CVB and came up with recommendations for the LMD as the first step on the way to producing an LMD operating plan to present to the Town board by June.
Among Hannah’s recommendations are the LMD should:
• Do year-round visitor research starting this summer on Estes Park and on our competitors
• Analyze that research for trends
• Present that research to a company that does branding work, and engage that company to produce marketing and creative pieces for Estes Park
• Develop a marketing plan that clearly defines goals and strategies that will include publicity, the Internet, group sales and the Visitor’s Guide. The LMD board should review this plan on a quarterly basis.
• Redesign the Visitor’s Guide to make it more upscale
• Hire a design team to apply the branding work and integrate it into the marketing efforts
• Shift some of the pay-per-click money from “Estes Park” to “Colorado” to “Colorado National Parks”
• Expand search engine key words and tag lines
• Expand the e-mail database
• Retain the services of an online search marketing company
• Be responsible for the Visitor’s Guide
• Create a new Web site
• Increase display advertising to support overnight visitors in regional and national markets.
What does all this mean in terms of money?
Hannah estimated it will cost from $35,000 to $45,000 to retain an outside public relations firm; $12,000 for online research; $20,000 for branding work; $50,000 for a new Web site; $40,000 for a search marketing company; $25,000 to create a new design; to be determined, for display advertising.
The LMD should shoot for a target audience of 25 to 30 percent Colorado tourists and especially overnight visitors. The publicity should include more regional and national markets and less Front Range, he said. The Web site could provide limited changes this year leading to major changes in the future.
Functions he would transfer to the LMD from the CVB are advertising, public relations, communications, the Web site, Internet marketing, group sales, the Visitor’s Guide, stakeholder sales and new events — events he said that should be developed to supplement activities in the shoulder season.
He has not determined whether the call center at the CVB should be converted to a sales area or whether it should stay with the CVB. That is a hybrid area, he said. However, conference sales marketing and existing events will remain under the purview of the CVB.
Chairman of the LMB board, Ken Larson, thanked Hannah for his presentation and emphasized this is an assessment and recommendation and the board has not taken action on it.
“The CVB has done a good job,” Larson said. “It’s not broken. Thank you to the CVB and staff for getting us down this path. It’s time we had this study done, though.”
Larson asked Hannah about the methodology for identifying Estes Park’s true competitors. Hannah said that is done easily, by asking tourists what other destinations they considered.
“It’s not the same as popularity,” he said.
Hannah said that in popularity as a destination in the state, Estes ranks third, after Denver and Colorado Springs.
Board member Scott Webermeier wanted to include a survey question on day visitors versus overnight visitors, to determine who spends the most. If the visitors did not go downtown, he wanted to know why not, and he wanted to know how many return trips they made to Estes Park.
“You definitely want to be counting that,” Hannah said. “The day visitors are important, but you want to make sure the spending (on marketing) is consistent with what you’re getting statistically…. Once you understand your visitors, it makes he rest of marketing easier. Now, there’s a lot of data with gaps.”
Hannah recommended creating an online survey to net 2,000 responses on who’s spending money here and where they are spending it.
Board member Lee Larson asked whether, compared to other tourist communities, we are spending too much or too little on marketing.
Hannah replied, “You can never spend enough.”
However, there’s no equation for exactly how much to spend. Tracking the publicity and Internet inquiries will convince board members that the money is being well-spent on the community’s behalf, he said.
Larson called the recommendations a “critical step in putting together a plan to go forward as the LMD.”