The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
State officials move to boost tourism business
State officials are making a big bet they can reinvigorate Connecticut’s tourism economy despite a summer season that has been shortened by the closing of attractions because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development and its Office of Tourism this week announced a new $1.2 million tourism marketing campaign that will begin on Monday and continue through Labor Day. This multimedia campaign, which will have the unifying theme, “So Good to See You, Connecticut,” is primarily aimed at Connecticut residents as well as likely travelers from nearby states, according to Randy Fiveash, director of the Office of Tourism.
The marketing campaign will include:
⏩ Paid social media campaigns across Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Pinterest.
⏩ New content on the state’s official tourism website,
CTvisit.com, which had about 7 million visitors in 2019.
⏩ Paid search marketing and content seeding programs.
⏩ A new video series showcasing how tourism businesses have adapted their operations to optimize visitors’ safety as well as enhance their experience.
⏩ A new television campaign that will run in-state, starting July.
The campaign is drawing high marks from some industry experts as well as excutives from within the industry.
“I’m glad to see how they are going to be using video,” said John Lombardo, general manager of Saybrook Point
Resort & Marina in Old Saybrook. “Hopefully, we’ll be able to capitalize on the fact that airline travel is going to be less.”
Wooing in-state customers to return to the Saybrook Point Resort is critical for the business. Lombardo said
about 55 percent the resort’s guest come from Connecticut.
Jan Louise Jones, a professor of hospitality and tourism at the University of New Haven, said the timing of the marketing campaign is perfect.
“All indicators do show that people will choose to travel regionally before returning to international
travel,” Jones said. “Connecticut is perfectly positioned between New York City and Boston where residents are looking to get out of the city and travel. It is crucial to invest in marketing regionally right now.”
But Fiveash acknowledged that the $1.2 million being invested in this campaign doesn’t represent any new funding. The total tourism budget for this year is $4.2 million and the $1.2 million being used this summer represents money that wasn’t spent during the March through May period when Connecticut tourism businesses were essentially under lock down.
“It didn’t make sense to spend it because the demand for travel wasn’t there at that point,” he said.
Setting the impact of the cornavirus aside for a moment, the $4.2 million that will be spent on tourism this
year represents and increase of only $100,000 over the 2019 budget.
That’s a pittannce compared to what many other states spend promoting tourism. The average state tourism office funding, according to the U.S. Travel Association, is about $18.7 million per year.
Fivesash said “we feel like this amount ($1.2 million) was appropriate for what we are doing.”
But Connecticut tourism officials may be quietly following the lead of their counterparts in other states, according to Bryan Lavin, a professor in the department of international travel and tourism studies at Johnson & Wales University in Providence. Lavin said the shortterm focus right now for many tourism organizations “is on the stay-cation mentality,” attracting consumers living in your home state or
those who live close enough to visit a tourist attraction and return home in the same day.
“The focus in Providence right now is that we’re pretty much giving up on 2020,” he said. “The state of Rhode Island is expecting a 40to-50 percent reduction in tourism dollars.”
While trying to minimize loses within the tourism industry for this year, Lavin said tourism officials in Connecticut “should be focusing on building up conference activity and other travel bookings for 2021 and other travel long term.”
“The focus should be on laying the ground work for the next three or four years,” he said.
But by focusing on staycation tourism for the remainder of this year comes at a price, Lavin said. It will have an impact on the hotel and lodging business, he
said, which will in turn hurt state tax revenues.
“Hotels are critical, because they are bringing in the most tax dollars,” he said.
A study released last year found that tourism in Connecticut generated $15.5 billion in sales supported, an amount that was up by up 5.5 percent from 2015. Tourism in the state generated $2.2 billion in tax revenues, including $960 million in state and local taxes.
Connecticut had 84,254 jobs directly related to tourism, according to the study, a number that reflected seven consecutive years of increasing tourism employment. But a little more than half those jobs were wiped out by coronavirus closing in April, according to the Connecticut Department of Labor.