Visit Tri-Cities: Tri-Cities’ marketing team draws eye to region, dollars to economy
The future looks bright for Visit Tri-Cities in 2019 as this year marks our 50th Anniversary. Tourism is economic development and over the past 50 years, Visit Tri-Cities has been successful in promoting the Tri-Cities and increasing visitation to our region, which impacts our entire community.
Additionally, having a robust tourism profile elevates awareness of the Tri-Cities as an ideal location for new business investment, expansion or relocation. We foster this by promoting the quality of life attributes that make the Tri-Cities an exceptional place to live, work, play and visit.
In 2018, the Tri-Cities realized roughly half-a-billion dollars in economic impact through visitor spending. These dollars help small businesses thrive while fostering a healthy economic climate for new businesses to invest.
Visitor spending also generates significant tax revenue, which helps lower each Tri-Citian’s tax burden. These taxes also help keep our communities safe by paying for emergency services like police and fire as well as education by helping fund schools and teachers’ salaries. They also help pay to keep our parks beautiful and so much more. Additionally, 6,100 Tri-City jobs are supported by visitor spending. Quality of life fostered by Visit Tri-Cities’ work is felt throughout our region.
To generate greater economic impact, we created a digital marketing manager position, which will focus on driving user-generated content (UGC) in 2019. UGC is positive word of mouth advertising; it’s authentic; it leverages the power of people’s social media networks, allowing us to promote the Tri-Cities around the world; and it’s trusted as a high-level of confidence is placed on recommendations from family, friends and colleagues.
Our digital endeavors also include increased mobile engagement and targeted digital display advertising. We will also be creating more virtual reality (VR) videos in 2019 to drive visitation through compelling content and immersion experiences.
Sports and conventions are big business, with big challenges in 2019 and beyond. Two of our region’s most significant competitors just expanded or are in the process of expanding their sports infrastructure and convention space, giving them greater capacity to attract and host sporting events and conventions.
To address this, Visit Tri-Cities has partnered with the cities of Kennewick, Richland and Pasco to commission a Tri-Cities Sports Facilities Market Analysis and Feasibility Study. The goals of this endeavor are to expand capacity for sports programming for residents and generate economic impact from regional, national and international sports events.
To address competition for conventions, our team is embracing innovation to increase our profile as a destination of choice. As an example, our new digital marketing initiatives will be used to give our conventions sales and sports development teams an edge as they travel and work with decision-makers across the country to bring their events to our community.
Another strategy we will build on this year is working with national and international travel writers. Last year this netted exceptional exposure, including the Tri-Cities being recognized by CNN Travel as the “New West Coast Wine Region.” This recognition was the direct result of the work of our team and members of our Wine Tourism Council.
Finally, we have launched a new campaign this year called “BE MORE COOL.” This campaign is multigenerational. It embraces diversity and puts a spotlight on the Tri-Cities as a place filled with vibrancy, outdoor recreation, food, wine and family fun. The campaign is quirky, comical and encourages visitors to elevate their “COOL” simply by visiting the Tri-Cities and enjoying the things you and I have access to every day.
Visit Tri-Cities is the marketing arm of the Tri-Cities and we will continue to do exceptional work in 2019 through innovation, stewardship and collaboration with others. Not that you need our encouragement, but … BE MORE COOL in 2019, Tri-Cities.