Partnerships key to event and attraction marketing
To the editor:
In the highly competitive world of special event, arts and attractions marketing, promoters face stiff competition for attendance and dollars, begging the question: How do we stand out in the crowd? At the Lee County Visitor & Convention Bureau, we believe the answer lies in partnerships.
Partnerships spread out the fiscal impact and encourage greater exposure for more businesses and organizations. Partnerships help events become self-sustaining, lessening the need to seek grant funding. And perhaps most rewarding, these alliances add value for the participant, which not only draws them to your event or attraction, but gives them reason to come back to our destination.
This is why we now require partnerships to be integral to projects that seek Tourist Development Council grant funding. Already we can point to partnership success stories such as the Calusa Blueway Paddling Festival. Since capitalizing on partnerships to add value to everyone involved in this annual fall event, Blueway Festival organizers have experienced a 100 percent increase in room nights.
The Blueway Festival has partnered with local accommodations to promote both the event and area hotels, and the partners have stepped up with creative cross promotion. The Residence Inn by Marriott Sanibel Gateway created a micro website to ease research for potential visitors. The San Carlos RV Park & Island Resort promotes multiple events on its website to show visitors they will have plenty to do during their stay. Likewise, a page on the Blueway Festival website allows partners to upload their own events to show prospective festival goers the multitude of offerings throughout the weekend. Even competing events can help one another by cross promoting the events, such as the Blueway Festival has done with the American Sandculpting Championship Festival.
Adding Canoe & Kayak magazine and Subaru as event sponsors increases national exposure for Lee County, and draws elite paddlers and new visitors to the destination. Lastly, adding The Florida Paddling Trails Association increases the pool of potential attendees and helps spread the workload. The FPTA is taking responsibility for selling passes for entrance into all festival events. At the same time, the increased involvement of businesses and organizations has helped the Blueway Festival become more self-sustaining, and the amount of TDC funding needed each year is decreasing.
As has been proven with the Blueway Festival, partnerships add value for the visitors to our destination, encourage visitors to return to Lee County and provide a win-win cross promotion for everyone involved. When the event kicks off this year Nov. 3-6, we look forward to learning new ways the partnerships paid dividends. For details, visit the event website.
Tamara Pigott
Lee VCB Executive Director