Vol. 4, No. 4, April 2007
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On A Roll
Atlantic City has become a hot destination for business as well as pleasure
On Wednesday, March 14, the Atlantic City Convention and Visitors Authority held its First Annual Marketing Review at the Atlantic City Convention Center. Many industry leaders and ACCVA marketing partners attended that meeting to review the successes of 2006 and to hear what the Authority has planned for the future.
Since not everyone could attend that meeting, I thought I’d reiterate our past successes and future goals here. Let’s start with the Atlantic City Convention Center.
Many of you know our vice president of convention development, Gary Musich, a veteran of the casino industry. Gary joined our team nearly two years ago. By hiring Gary, I thought his vast experience and energy would reinvigorate the department. I must say that he’s done just that. One of the first things he did was reorganize the sales department, which in turn has proven successful in covering new geographic and business segments.
Let’s take a look at those successes. There was a dramatic increase in future meetings and conventions business booked by the convention sales staff in 2006. Bookings that occurred in 2006 will result in an increase of attendance to future shows of more than 200 percent. Rooms booked by those increased groups will result in a 78 percent increase and an increase in delegate spending of 88 percent.
For 2007, Gary and his sales team are looking to grow that convention center business by 5 percent, and hotel-based convention room nights by 20 percent. To accomplish this, convention development will expand into new markets—namely, Atlanta, Pittsburgh and Florida. They will also host two meeting planner conventions in Atlantic City, Experient and SGMP, and continue to optimize internet marketing targeted to group buyers, so successfully implemented with the launch of the ACCVA’s total meeting resource, www.meetinac.com.
Like Gary, Maureen Siman also comes to us from the casino industry. Her marketing and public relations expertise while Tropicana built the Quarter proved invaluable. I’m confident that same expertise will help pave the way for the future of the new Atlantic City we are building.
As vice president of marketing, Maureen wears many hats. Media Relations, Tourism, Graphic Services, E-marketing, Golf and Sports Marketing, Visitor Services, and Marketing Partnership… she oversees each department.
There were many successes in 2006 in marketing; I will touch on a few here. By working with individual media inquiries and visits, familiarization tours and outreach to major news outlets, Media Relations helped generate a tremendous amount of attention in Atlantic City. In print stories alone, more than 235 million impressions were generated. Among other goals for 2007, Media Relations will aggressively seek coverage for Atlantic City in the New York, Philadelphia, Washington and Baltimore areas with the help of its new public relations agency, Lou Hammond & Associates.
Tourism will continue to educate the motorcoach market, group tour leaders, multicultural tour operators and niche markets about Atlantic City in 2007. I think one of the most exciting projects we are working on is a new Visitor Profile Study to be conducted in 2007, with the results to be released in 2008. The last profile results were released in 2004, and proved to be invaluable.
Graphic Services has developed a new logo with more sophisticated colors to be featured on advertisements, and ACCVA collateral and booths used by Tourism and Convention Services that help sell Atlantic City as a more exciting place. A sleek, new three-minute promotion video will help maintain Atlantic City’s image in 2007.
Everyone knows that e-marketing is an innovative way to reach millions of people who are present and future Atlantic City visitors. Leisure e-newsletters and e-mail incentive campaigns have helped increase visitors to our website, www.atlanticcitynj.com, by 14 percent. We’ve also added popular and inventive micro-sites like our www.meetinac.com; the entertainment micro-site www.entertainmeinatlanticcity.com; and a fun interactive experience on our website that features links and information on dining, shopping, entertainment, and arts and culture in Atlantic City.
Through our Sports Marketing department, we saw the introduction of the Atlantic 10 Men’s Basketball Championships at Boardwalk Hall in 2007, and it will return for at least one more year. At the end of 2006, the ACCVA was announced as the new marketing arm for the Greater Atlantic City Golf Association (www.gacga.com). We will maximize our new role to help promote Atlantic City as a great golf destination in 2007.
The year 2006 was an exciting and productive one for the ACCVA. And for 2007, I really feel like we've hit the ground running. At 35 million visitors, we are the fourth most visited destination in the U.S., and all indications point to an increase in 2007.
I think by working together, we can help increase our visitor numbers even more. By forging ahead with our marketing plans, I would like to announce in 2010 that we’ve become the third most visited destination in the U.S. with 45 million visitors. It’s within our grasp, and by all working together we can make it happen.
