Possibly the most important goal of any ad campaign is repetition of an ad or series of ads. The way do that is with using a group of distribution channels together such as TV, Radio, web banner ads, direct email and web site for example.

The options are rather numerous and I won’t go into such detail because each special event, each niche target, and each ad campaign is unique.

The ultimate challenge for the RSCVA is to find partners in targeted markets and relevant lifestyle interests who can bring exposure to Reno such as the X-Games.

Working through the marketing channels of others and engaging in co-operative marketing with them will result in great exposure that is targeted and affordable with superior reward than has been evidenced in the past through the RSCVA’s failed, overly confident, and overly priced ad campaigns.

Past ad campaigns fell short of their goals, had the wrong goals, and were costly (high cost per thousand impressions) taking money away from other more lucrative opportunities in the process.

Goals, research, and targeting markets and visitors has been discussed in a prior post. Herein I will focus on marketing channels, comparative costs per impression, and vertical and multi-level integration.

Advertisers believe that print ads offer the best marketing because one can target subscribers, magazines and newspaper are portable, more than one person may read one ad, and travel and lifestyle magazines often publish articles about Reno and the region.

However, the cost per thousand impressions is high compared to TV, Radio, billboards, and kiosks. The rate to which a print ad converts to a hotel room rental is low compared to TV, Radio and kiosks.

Targeting a traveler that is on a plane with a print ad may make the airline happy but it does little to attract new and repeat visitation for the RSCVA.

Targeting retirees through regional print ads works against the desired enhancement of the visitor base.

Not all print ads are bad. The RSCVA just needs to direct its marketing dollar toward the right visitor lifestyle demographic in the right geographic markets.

This will work well for niche marketing campaigns when coupled with a special event and/or special hotel room rate discounts.

The RSCVA also wants broad image branding the likes of which can only be achieved through sophisticated TV and Radio marketing schemes.

The RSCVA sees special events as the vehicle to which national TV and Radio exposure will be attracted. Certain broadcasters are willing to co-sponsor certain events and they do the broadcasting. So potentially this is the most lucrative way for the RSCVA to reach the most people.

I think that once the RSCVA focuses on its targets and goals then some of these issues will begin to fall into place. For example, when the RSCVA commits to attracting a young, affluent air traveler from say, Florida, it might co-sponsor a national mountain biking event or triathlon which is broadcast at the best time of day and day of the week in and around Florida.

May I suggest touching base with Robin Holabird of the Film Commission in Carson City? She is a wealth of knowledge about event productions around the country. She may also use her office to help promote any such special event production. Just a thought.

What events and productions will come to Reno and foot the bill and which fit our marketing mold and goals?

I will define a target leisure consumer and a target leisure market for the RSCVA.

There are parts to this as follows:

1. Target Consumer/Target Markets
2. Marketing Strengths and Weaknesses
3. Setting Goals
4. Directions
5. Marketing

TARGET CONSUMER

1. The RSCVA should target the thirty-something crowd. They are upscale baby boomers for which the median age should be around 34.
2. Household incomes should be above $50K.
3. Target consumers who enjoy active lifestyles; see marketing Strengths & Weaknesses.
4. Niche market to ethnic/cultural groups, history buffs, and risk takers.

TARGET GEOGRAPHIC MARKETS

1. Target long distance fly-in markets with direct non-stop service to Reno and ports of entry into the U.S.
2. Target China, Japan, Canada, parts of Europe and key U.S. states.

MARKETING STRENGTHS & WEAKNESSES

1. Marketing equity can be found in: Nevada Style Gaming; entertainment/dining; rich historical sites; special events; great outdoors; divergent activities.
2. Equity can also be found among romantic vacationers who may be solo or couples looking to let loose.
3. Our attributes draw from Western culture, Americana, Casino life, the mountains and desert. These things should not be forgotten because they help make us unique.

4. On the weakness side, gaming is no longer unique in our country but Nevada-Style gaming is always the benchmark by which others gauge themselves.
5. The last several years have brought decline to downtown and the blight has hurt our image. This appears to be turning around.
6. There are no four or five star hotels in Washoe County thus limiting our ability to attract an upscale visitor to Reno. This potentially hurts the Airport Authority’s ability to attract new or added air services. The more better our air service, the more better the visitor base.
7. There are no national hotel chains that are competitive in our market. Thus there are limited choices for visitors looking to partake of their loyalty stay program. There are some fine hotels on or near Lake Tahoe.
8. The RSCVA has made considerable investment into positioning Reno as a golf and ski destination; has pursued related niche marketing; and has focused on print ads and in particular, in-flight magazines. This has not helped things.

SETTING GOALS

1. The RSCVA wants and needs more cash flow.
2. To do that the RSCVA must: increase the number of hotel rooms and upscale rooms; increase the ADR; fill first class airline seats; fill off-season and mid-week vacancies; enrich the visitor base.
3. The RSCVA has said that it also wants broad media exposure.
4. The RSCVA wants and needs to reposition itself in order to accomplish the above objectives.

DIRECTIONS

1. Reno’s tourism strengths are a combination of numerous activities and interests that are hard to target in one type of visitor.
2. The types of visitors that most closely fit the target criteria are cultural and historic travelers because they engage in multiple activities which Reno and the region can offer in quality and abundance.
3. Cultural and historic travelers are some of the most desired among destinations because they spend more, stay longer, fill mid-week and off-season vacancies and they do more things while on vacation.
4. Reno’s attributes, needed in order to compete for these sought after visitors, are things that are unique. vibrant, and an international draw.
5. In order to attract these visitors consideration should be given to Special Events; improving site attractions; creating more attractions; and projecting a fun, safe, and sexy message to adults.

MARKETING

1. The RSCVA must avoid the overlap with casino marketing.
2. The RSCVA must provide the best statistics possible in order to help gauge the effectiveness of any marketing campaign.
3. The RSCVA needs to co-op with State Tourism, neighboring visitor authorities, and stakeholders in the region, not just Reno.
4. The RSCVA also needs to offer direction to Reno Redevelopment so downtown can be more visitor friendly and functional. It can direct City/County Parks and Recreation to make the Truckee River and Peavine more accessible. Neighboring Park authorities can focus on improving visitor infrastructure at natural attractions such as the Black Rock Desert, the Gem Cave, or Petroglyph Sites as examples.
5. The RSCVA needs to sponsor and/or support special events which can attract the target visitor. Emphasis should be on bringing in select new national events and improving local and regional events of all kinds.
6. The RSCVA needs a combination of broad image branding and niche targeting.
7. Niche targeting will prompt a decision maker to immediately take advantage of special offers and special events. Or it will encourage a future visitor to keep Reno top of mind.
8. RSCVA needs to utilize the latest advertising trends and techniques because the target visitor is discerning, has many choices, and is hard to reach.
9. A consistent and repetitious image and message must be projected through vertical and multi-level ad campaigns.
10. Gaming should be value added as part of the unique Nevada-style entertainment-lifestyle mix that can only be found in Reno.

Reno is truly unique but what it that in terms of marketing to a younger, more affluent, higher educated, and busier visitor?

I believe it has to do with Reno’s unique group of attractions and self indulgences which people can’t get at home.

We do need to upscale our hotels and their amenities and we need more hotels with national loyalty programs. The RSCVA appears to be working toward this goal.

As the restoration of Reno matures, the pieces start to fit together for Reno to broadly reach out with an upscale, safe and fun image and for which, the RSCVA will find that the most bang for marketing buck will come from attracting Cultural and Historic Visitors.

Reno is fun, adult, sexy, risky, surrounded by nature, and a place of escape and self abandon.

This is a discussion of leisure tourism in America and in particular, the cities and states from which direct non-stop air service is provided into Reno-Tahoe Int’l Airport. For this discussion there are two sources of statistics to consider. One, the Lifestyle Market Analyst provides figures for pleasure travel by city. I find these figures good but they are limited by city so I prefer to use state figures which are provided by the U.S. Census Bureau. These figures are then combined with travel figures from TIA and also the Marketec 1998 Airport Traffic Distribution Study. The following figures are pre-2000 Census.

In the twelve states from which direct non-stop air service is provided, excluding San Francisco-Sacramento-Bay Area and also Reno-Tahoe itself, the gross adult population is 64,597,000.

The twelve states, in order of most visitors, are: Texas; S. California; Illinois; Michigan; Washington; Arizona; Minnesota; Colorado; Oregon; Utah; Nevada; Idaho.

According to the TIA 66% of all travel in the U.S.A. is for pleasure.

Also from the TIA 18% of all pleasure travel is by air.

This boils down to roughly 7.7 million adults that will travel by air for pleasure from states/regions with direct non-stop service to Reno.

According to the Marketec study the twelve states comprise 69.2% of the air visitors into Reno-Tahoe Int’l Airport.

Most of the rest of the arriving air visitors are coming from “Other States/Nations”.

According to the 1998 RSCVA Visitor Profile Study people from “Other States” have the highest propensity (73%) to fly to get to Reno.

Understanding these things will help to target a prime leisure tourist and help to direct the expenditure of marketing dollars in hopes of attracting a prime leisure tourist.

This all reflects back to the RSCVA’s positioning and messaging as a leisure tourism destination. We look to upscale our image and to attract a younger more affluent visitor. We also seek visitors that will stay longer and spend more.

In order to target a visitor we need to look at lifestyle habits and relate that to our unique mix of services and attractions. I look forward to that discussion in the near future.

This made me think. How many Junior Suites, Executive Sites, Full Suites, etc. do we have to offer and how much do the hotels want for these rooms?

If you can’t attract a traveler with a $150 a night jacuzzi room at the Peppermill we got problems.

I quess the result of the price/accommodation issue for Reno is a need for more upscale rooms. Would you agree?

Ellen’s comments about the desire for a national flagship hotel with a strong loyalty program are very good.

May I suggest that the monorail proposal might help to attract such an entity?

My research looked at numerous sources of fact from the government, Lifestyles Market Analyst 2000, Travel Industry Assoc. of America, National Golf Foundation and some others. There are hundreds if not thousands of facts that work together in order to make sense of Reno’s current market position and its potential for growth, areas of growth, and the image and message that naturally matures from this exercise.

The presentation is so big I cannot recreate it here. What I can do is focus on the most key issues and to entice Ellen to meet with me so I can present this information to her and to help her make sense of it because it’s big. Here we go with some key issues:

First we must define the size and location of our main markets from which leisure tourists travel to Reno.

I took a stab at the average commute to Reno from our main feeder drive-in markets and came up with a distance of 368 miles. If averaging 60 miles per hour that’s roughly a six hour drive. This is consistent with national averages for a driving vacation. With that in mind there are 6 million Californians of legal gambling age within 368 miles of Reno. (Voter registration figures from U.S. Census Bureau by County.)

Our fly-in markets encompass 12 States and 19 Cities with direct non-stop air service to Reno. This equates to roughly 7.7 million travelers across the nation. (TIA and Census Bureau figures.)

Reno’s fly-in statistics (provided by the Airport Authority and the RSCVA) show that about 1.8 million visitors are flying in and thus it seems clear that the distant travel market is not mature and there is room to grow. The main drive-in markets are showing over 50% penetration and that is mature. Would you agree?

Once we establish our markets and the travelers in those markets we can then drill down into the demographics and lifestyle choices of those travelers. From that we can derive a strategy that fits the mold.

However if we can’t agree on what the market is then we can’t define or target a leisure tourist. I look forward to some feedback on the above points. Thank you.

Part One – Rules of Reno Tourism
Part Two – Stats
Part Three – Strategy

We need to lay down some ground rules so that the discussion does not stray or get mired in argument. I’m going to do that now. Parts Two and Three will come later.

RULES OF RENO TOURISM

1. Business travelers help to fill mid-week and off-season vacancies. This is why we have a convention center.

2. Distant business travelers are more likely to fill First Class seats compared to their leisure counterparts. This is also why we have a convention center.

3. A distant leisure tourist is more likely to fill mid-week and off-season vacancies too. And they tend to stay longer and spend more than other tourists.

4. Reno’s image and message is saturated in the Sacramento and Bay areas, our main leisure tourist markets which are drive-in markets.

5. Reno’s tourist demographics mimic national trends. We have an emphasis on gaming as part of our unique mix of attractions as a destination.

6. Though gaming is not unique overall Reno is a unique gaming destination.

7. The number one reason for travel in this country is to visit friends and family and that applies to Reno.

8. Special events are added entertainment for visitors.

9. It’s fairly impossible to quantify the effectiveness or return of investment of any ad campaign.

10. The stakeholders are the primary beneficiaries of the RSCVA’s marketing and convention sales.

Can someone add to this list or argue against it before I move onto the Statistics?