State marketing effort ups budget

A national marketing and public-relations firm with an office in Northern Colorado plans to boost the state’s competition for tourists.

Following a nearly $14 million increase in its annual budget earlier this year, the Colorado Tourism Office hired Kansas City-based MMG Worldwide to design a new marketing strategy for Colorado tourism.

MMG Worldwide markets exclusively for the travel industry, including cruise lines, rental car companies and resorts. It has offices in Fort Collins, St. Louis, Miami and New York, and employs 140 nationwide.

The boost in the state tourism office’s budget brings it to $19.3 million a year. That’s up from $5.6 million last year, a figure that ranked Colorado 35th in the nation in dollars spent marketing to potential vacationers.

The additional money was needed to make the state more competitive in the tourism industry, said Clayton Reid, president and managing partner of MMG Worldwide.

“It puts the state back where it should be,´ said Reid, who opened an office in Fort Collins because it’s his hometown. “When the budget was lower, Colorado really fell behind. We were under-spending states like Texas and Utah.”

The budget increase came from legislation that gives the Colorado Tourism Office additional gaming revenue. The $19.3 million budget is now written into statute, which means it’s set and won’t be up for reconsideration year after year, said Kim McNulty, director of the Colorado Tourism Office.

Improving state stats

Consider the following statistics about Colorado tourism, gathered by Toronto-based Longwoods International:

n In 2005, a record 25.9 million business and leisure travelers stayed overnight in Colorado.

n Last year U.S. overnight visitors spent $8.2 billion in the state, a 15 percent increase from the last figures gathered in 2003.

n Colorado ranks 18th among the 50 states as a destination for leisure travel.

n Colorado was the 12th most popular state for an outdoors vacation in 2005.

MMG Worldwide seeks to improve all of these numbers with its $10 million contract from the state. The firm’s goal is to draw 30 million visitors to the state next year. A new domestic and international marketing campaign will be publicly launched by March 1, Reid said.

The company’s eight-person office in Fort Collins already is MMG’s headquarters for the work it does for Vail Resorts. The office will do project management for the new marketing strategies for the entire state, Reid said.

A small percentage of the new print and broadcast advertising will be done within the state. But Colorado residents probably won’t see the vast majority of ads because they will run in other regions, including northern and southern California, the Chicago area, Miami, New York and Boston. New York is one market the state couldn’t afford to advertise in when the tourism office had only a $5.6 million budget, McNulty said.

In years past the state has marketed to the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Mexico, and next year it will add Japan and Canada.

About 30 percent of the MMG’s budget will go to marketing on the Internet to appeal to the growing number of travelers using the Web. Previously about 10 percent of the state’s tourism budget was spent on Internet marketing.

An estimated 85 percent of travelers use the Internet to research vacations, and about 50 percent book their travel online, Reid said.

MMG Worldwide’s ideas for Internet marketing were a big reason the state decided to hire the company, McNulty said.

“Their online ideas were very strategic and very innovative,” she said. “That’s important with more and more people turning to the Internet for travel.”

Public relations targets

MMG Worldwide will also step up the state’s public relations efforts. That means targeting travel magazines, specifically, to write about Colorado as a vacation destination, Reid said, and not just the mountains.

“The mountains are an icon in Colorado, but they aren’t the only part of the state worth visiting,” he said.

MMG Worldwide plans to draw attention to Mesa Verde, cities such as Fort Collins, Boulder and Colorado Springs and heritage sites in the state’s counties and small towns, which highlight Colorado’s history and culture.

Many people connect Colorado with world-class skiing, but only one-third of the tourism office’s budget will go to promote fall and winter. The remainder will focus on spring and summer, McNulty said.

That breakdown reflects the number of visitors to Colorado each year – about two-thirds come in the spring and summer, and about one-third come in the fall and winter, she said.

In addition to the advertising and public-relations blitz, the Colorado Tourism Office will expand its existing programs. These include the nine Colorado visitors centers and a research program that gathers data about people who visit the state.

Ultimately, both the tourism office and MMG Worldwide want to capitalize on the fact that Colorado ranks fifth among states Americans would “really enjoy visiting,” according to surveys.

While wishes don’t always turn into action, Colorado has some advantages over Hawaii, Florida, Alaska and California, the states that rank higher on that list. Colorado is centrally located in the nation, and vacations here are generally more affordable.

“We want to bridge the gap between the dreamers and doers,” McNulty said.

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