The power of travel promotion

Yahoo! Mat-Su — a new creative travel promotion campaign in print, television, online and social media will soon launch.

The theme and goal are unchanged (visit Mat-Su Valley’s many recreation opportunities), but updated images and HD-quality video will certainly create awareness in the in-state market. Alaska residents and their visiting friends and relatives account for 60 percent of visitor expenditures in the Mat-Su. Our new advertising campaign is aimed to lure Alaskans to your door.

The state’s $17 million tourism marketing campaign has been in full swing since last fall, creating awareness of travel to Alaska in all forms of media. The campaign includes a $5.7 million television buy, the largest ever for Alaska tourism promotion. The campaign has created an increase in responses for travel planning information and indicates an increase in travel intentions. Just last month, more than 200,000 Alaska Travel Planners had to be printed to keep up with the additional responses.

We are ready and optimistic for a record-breaking visitor season.

Travel promotion feeds a virtuous cycle of economic benefits. Visitor spending supports new jobs and generates additional tax revenue that pays for the initial investment many times over. Travel and tourism is a cash-generating machine for state and local governments. A recent McDowell study reports annual visitors contribute more than $208 million to state and local governments in taxes and fees.

Travel promotion dollars go toward much more than glossy brochures and ads in magazines; tourism bureaus research and execute marketing campaigns, represent the destination at domestic and international trade shows, engage and interact with key media and journalists, meet with group travel buyers and meeting planners, and maintain an interactive presence through websites, social media and other means to communicate daily with all stakeholders. The ultimate goal, of course, is increasing visitors and increasing visitor spending.

As the Mat-Su Borough Assembly considers next year’s budget, I urge our elected officials to take a hard look at the economic return of destination marketing. Across the nation, states and communities are reaping the benefits of increased travelers and tourists thanks to travel promotion. We in the Mat-Su Valley enjoy those same benefits, which is why we support the dedication of bed tax dollars to tourism marketing and tourism infrastructure.

Bonnie Quill (bonnie@alaskavisit.com) is the Mat-Su Convention and Visitors Bureau’s executive director.