Galveston Island Convention and Visitors Bureau 2017-2018 Marketing Plan

Editor's Note: I conducted this project for my Tourism Marketing course. The idea was to focus on how to create a marketing plan for any tourism destination. Other images were added to this piece but did not show up.

Executive Summary

Galveston Island Convention and Visitor’s Bureau serves the Galveston community by working with partnerships and local businesses to successfully position the town as a tourism destination. The Galveston Island Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) saw a record high in the hotel revenue, occupancy rates and average daily rates during the 2016-2017 fiscal year (Exhibit 1).

For the upcoming 2017-2018 fiscal year, the CVB is looking into redesigning their Charles Dicken’s Evening on the Strand website and the Galveston Island Convention Center website. Other plans of improvements include increasing group sales and establish an innovative social media presence that promotes Galveston’s uniqueness. In order to meet these goals, we’ll look into hiring a social media coordinator and a graphic design specialist. We’re hoping develop a strong, collective promotional strategy that coincides to the brand personality. The promotion will be directed towards our target market which consists of families with young children, cruise line passengers, group business markets and winter Texans. The expected results by Spring of 2017 is the official hire of our needed team members and the start of our promotional plan which should be completed by April. By Summer, we’ll have a set schedule for our physical and virtual promotions just in time for our big event: the Fourth of July. For physical, we’ll focus on billboards in the Houston area and newspaper advertisements. Virtually, we’ll focus on promoting Galveston through Facebook, Youtube, Pinterest and Twitter (Exhibit 2). Then, Fall of 2017 will focus on providing support for small business; initially using up to 60% of the marketing funds to promote these slower season from fall to winter. In Winter, we’ll promote our Charles Dickens Evening on the Strand event through a local television commercial (with our own film crew) and finish the year off strong by January 2018.

Business Overview

Mission Statement

The focus of the Galveston Island Convention and Visitor’s Bureau is to advance the economic liveliness of tourism through the promotion of meetings, leisure travel and special events.

Company Goals and Objectives

The objective of the Galveston Island Convention and Visitor’s Bureau is to work with the community to further succeed as a tourist and meeting destination while maintaining a balance of quality life for residents. The success rate by bringing visitors to Galveston affects funding for beaches, art, museums, and historic properties. The Galveston Island Convention and Visitor’s Bureau is the official marketing organization to promote Galveston.

The primary goals for the 2017-2018 year include:

• Increase visitation through Galveston Island’s brand awareness

• Deploy marketing funds and public relation efforts to continue positive momentum of Galveston’s tourism performance

• Galveston tourism is competitive and sustainable

• Maintain relationships with hospitality and business’s in Galveston through reliable marketing programs

• Encourage product and infrastructure development that uphold to the CVB mission and brand image

Brand Information

The advantages of Galveston Island are its consistent tropical atmosphere, diversity, accessibility and (the most common attraction) the beach. Established in 1839, the island is named after the Spanish colonial governor and general, Bernardo de Gálvez but was founded by Michel Menard and Samuel Williams (Galveston, Texas History & Heritage). Started as the largest port west of the Mississippi River, Galveston Island has a booming tourism industry that continues to evolve.

The island’s highlights involved the acceptance of two American Marketing Association Crystal awards for the Winter Wonderland Island marketing campaign and a second year running PRSA Excalibur Award for Mardi Gras Public Relation Outreach. The CVB also had a chance this past year to partner with University of Florida to train nature tourism guides. Cruise updates: Disney Cruise Lines will return in October 2017 with the Disney Fantasy and plan on sailing through January 2018. Carnival Cruise Lines will be sailing the Carnival Liberty and Carnival Breeze year-round starting in Spring 2017. The CVB team consists of many Galveston life-long residents: Kelly de Shaun and Meg Winchester are the current directors of the Galveston CVB.

Brand Personality

One word to properly identify the brand personality of Galveston Island is sophistication. At the very root of the destination is storytelling. The island has a history of telling stories whether it’s telling the fateful tale of lost souls during the ghost tours or describing the history as the community renovated itself after every disaster. Galveston has a lot of charm that’s been reinforced over the decades through patience and nobility. A lot of other coastal towns are about excitement or ruggedness but Galveston strays away from the party scene to greet a sophisticated, more cultured crowd looking for a break from the mainland.

Product Overview

Product Levels

The core idea behind Galveston is to enrich visitors with a cultural, relaxed experience of a coastal town that always has something going on. Their motto alone is “It’s Island Time” which hints at fun activities throughout the island. The facilitated factors include visitor centers, local restaurants of various cuisine, hotels, shopping, sightseeing (on land or water) and involvement with the outdoors. The supporting products of Galveston are extras that add value to the core products and offer advantages in comparison to competition. These supporting products are the cruises offered at the port, historic buildings with history which offers a more unique experience, and multiple special events throughout the year. The augmented product of Galveston is truly within the atmosphere and interaction. The town colors compliment the historic buildings and the polite customer to employee interaction gives the town a sense of southern welcome.

Product Mix

There are several different mixes when it comes to the products and services provided in Galveston Island. For starters, there’s the food and drink products which can be bars and clubs or restaurants of various cuisine (cheap eats, mediterranean, asian, barbecue and more). Then, there’s shopping. Galveston isn’t like any other coastal town; they have more than gift shops and tourist apparel. Their product depth includes antique shops, specialty, books, surf and beach, home decor and art galleries. From the purchase of art comes to the art and culture product category. Galveston makes sure to provide a welcoming culture that best illustrates their town. In this category, they have art walks, live music events, festivals, and historical tours. The history of Galveston Island is the town base so when it comes to attractions, they make sure to include museums, historic districts and Moody Gardens. However, if someone prefers more sightseeing, there are boat tours, walking or riding tours, cruising, and birdwatching throughout the year.

Life Cycle Phase

The life cycle phase of Galveston Island has gone through a lot of re-growing phases after several destructive hurricanes throughout history (Galveston, Texas History & Heritage) and an oil spill in 2014 (Harman, 2014). Over the past 178 years, Galveston has gone through many phases in the life cycle but rather than being graphed as a line graph, Galveston represents a unique circle that constantly moves. Just as their brand is identified as sophisticated, so is the process of their life cycle. When Galveston is hit with a disaster, they encounter a decline phase first before quickly progressing into product development and introduction. The island re-encountered growth over the last decade and has now settled on the phase of maturity (although, they’re still cleaning up bits of the 2014 oil spill (Harman, 2014)).

Environmental Analysis

Micro Environmental Factors

The micro environmental factors include location, suppliers, customers and marketing intermediaries. The suppliers of Galveston are fishermen, cruise lines and a medical establishment. Galveston Island used to be the top trade port west of the Mississippi until the 1900 Great Storm caused the town to halt all trade until it was rebuilt. Galveston has developed many trade competitors including Houston, South Padre Island and New Orleans. The facility designed for travel to and from Galveston don’t cease at the port either. The public can enter or trade through the freeway or bridge that connects the island to the mainland and the other transportation of visitors and supplies are railroad tracks. The Galveston CVB and tourism department represent the marketing intermediaries that draw in the public and suppliers. Micro environmental consists of the factors Galveston work with from the inside out.

Macro Environmental Factors

Macro environmental factors are forces that Galveston has to work with such as political, economic, cultural, demographic, natural and technological. What’s great about Galveston is how they strongly embrace cultural diversity. However, just with any other tourism destination, it’s weakest area is technology. Galveston enjoys person-to-person engagement but transferring the southern hospitality of the island to a virtual page can be difficult to grasp which is why Galveston has mostly relied on positive word of mouth to draw in business (Cherian, 2017). The CVB has to be aware of the economic factors that are happening; for instance, the changing consumer spending patterns and changes in income for residents and state. Galveston can also be gravely impacted by Texas’s political environment like taxes (which is a limitation for families considering the move to Galveston) and changing government agency enforcement. Natural forces have already effected the area through hurricanes and oil spills. The demographic environment can also cause the Galveston CVB to change its structure through changing age groups, the changing American family and geographic shifts. The population growth has been down by 15.26 % since 2000 and the crime rate has gone up (Galveston, Texas Consensus, 2014). The Galveston, Texas consensus also notes that most of the population is between the ages of 45 to 54 years old. This means that Galveston may either need to appeal to more families with children or shift their tourism focus to retirees.

Research Plan

To understand what needs to change in Galveston’s Convention and Visitors Bureau, research will have to be conducted to meet customer expectations and build customer satisfaction. The first step is to conduct exploratory researcher by defining a problem. For instance, the customer can be dissatisfied with historic tours or hospitality and in order to fix the problem, the CVB needs that information. The ideal approach to the exploratory research is to see if there’s secondary data on hand; preferably something along the lines of satisfaction cards from hotels. However, if unavailable, primary data can be put into place by collecting the data on hand.

The best research approach is to conduct surveys because it involves a quick, direct response from the customer without public pressure (if not enough participate in the survey, then the second plan would be to conduct interviews at restaurants, hotel lobbies or shortly after historic tours). To design the survey, the CVB has decided to take an indirect approach of asking questions. These questions will be printed on an index card with the Galveston logo which will then be set on desks in hotel rooms, at the convention center, or within the visitors center. The first two questions on the survey will feature a Likert scale from one to seven asking: “How satisfied were you with your stay?” and “How would you rate your Galveston experience”. Below that, two more free response questions will be set up. They will feature the questions: “What kind of people would go to Galveston?” and “In what areas can Galveston improve?”. On the very bottom, the card will say: “Thank you for filling out the survey! If you would like to share any more of your experience, please go to (website offering link to fill out a virtual version of the survey with an added question stating: “Anything more you’d like to add?”). The gathered information from the indirect survey will give the Galveston CVB a chance to figure out what could be improved for customer satisfaction and to future exceed customer expectation.

Target Market

The Galveston Island CVB’s target market consists of leisure and tourists. They currently target families with young children looking for a friendly vacation or reoccurring visitors. The tourist category also applies to cruise passengers looking for an overnight stay in the Galveston Island area before or after boarding their cruise and group business markets. Galveston is keen about appealing to the leisure individuals but understand the structure of professional groups. The CVB’s future target market are Baby Boomers considering a timeshare opportunity for the winter and nature or historical tourist.

Sustainable Initiatives

Galveston Island has been environmentally conscious since the first half of the twentieth century. Shortly after the Great Storm of 1900, a group of women banded together to plant many oak trees to replace those that were destroyed during the storm. They would later be known as the Women’s Health Protective Association but have since changed their name to Galveston Civic League. They continue to offer voluntary assistance after disasters (Kenamore, 2010). If the oak trees were destroyed in any other storm, local artists found good use for them by sculpting them into art for the walk tours. The Galveston Civic League and their tree sculptures are strong examples of sustainability initiatives seen in Galveston Island.

Service Quality

Texas is known to be a big state and very hospitable. Galveston has taken their service quality to be bigger than the state of Texas by measuring customer satisfaction by meeting customer expectation. It involves the customer to customer and customer to employee interaction as defined in the augmented product of the product mix. Many of the businesses are run by life-long Galveston residents; which adds to a higher rate of employee retention compared to competition. Having the same employees that add to the charm of Galveston and building an island that lives by southern hospitality is what leads to great customer retention. The high percentage of customer retention is clear evidence of great service quality.

Budget

The objective task was to keep the marketing plan affordable yet progressive. By utilizing the objective task, the budget pulled back more from printing but added to online advertising which puts Galveston in the direction of sustainability. The objective from the beginning was to increase online advertising though social media by hiring a social media coordinator and graphic designer. Then, the next objective was to reach the largest target market.

Integrated Marketing Communication

Galveston’s Convention and Visitors Bureau focuses on three components of promotion strategies: Public relations, social media and advertising. The objectives of IMC include establishing positive exposure of Galveston, increase convention and market offerings and provide information outside of peak season to generate more business. Overall, the message should be cohesive execution of a slice-of-life and deliver the charming personality of Galveston.

The objective of public relations is to improve and maintain relationships with key grassroots, consumer and trade. It’s an underutilized strategy of promotion. Public relations is supposed to be very believable and dramatize Galveston while establishing positive exposure and create direct contact with the target market. The tactics used for public relations will include story pitches, media missions, consumer and trade events and press tours.

Social media and mobile marketing both represent the means of “conversational marketing”. A social media platform can include special-interest blogs, review sites like Yelp, podcasts and other various platforms. The most popular sites are content-sharing like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Youtube. Galveston happens to have podcasts currently fitting the locals and those who want to subscribe to the island’s news. Social media is effective in reaching Galveston’s target market by creating an online presence to be known by both individuals and group businesses. With the help of a social media coordinator and a film crew (run by Film Liaison and Galveston local, Brya Kunz) Galveston’s CVB can produce Youtube videos to promote events, projects set up by the town, as well as advertise the sophisticated charm of the island that can be seen on both their website and their YouTube page. Pinterest is a free website that often promotes travel destinations. It’s the third most popular platform and drives more traffic to homepage (Econsultancy, 2013). Facebook is the top platform that utilized writing, video and photography to create a social-based platform. As it is, 76% of internet users are women while 66% of internet users are male and most of them fall within the ages of 18 to 49 (Vermeren, 2015). Facebook is ideal to promote every aspect of Galveston to a larger crowd; especially families with young children whom are likely to be in the Facebook-active age range. Facebook also has a decent size of Baby Boomer users who use the social media to keep in touch with family and friends. Finally, Twitter could be used by CVB to create short announcements or post photos of attractions and events happening in Galveston. Social media and mobile marketing are ideal ways to reach out to the target audience and for the target audience to continue the connection to other individuals or group. While visitors share their Galveston experience, they’re helping in promoting the island to others.

Although advertising is expensive, the message can be repeated multiple times which allows a reach to many buyers. Galveston CVB will focus on using innovative, creative advertising that creates a “call to action”. The purpose of advertising is to build brand awareness and promote the island as a year-round destination for meeting professionals and the leisure market. The tactics used will consist of developing a stronger online presence while tracking click-thru rates (CTR) and arrivals, baseline plan that focuses on key seasons, generate key and content to reach all targets during planning phase. The integrated marketing communication has been separated by season:

Spring 2017

First and foremost, Galveston will need to hire a social media coordinator and graphic designer before March. The new team members will be a part of constructing the promotional plan and execute a clear, collective message. The advertisement department will focus on print and online advertisements for spring special events (Flower festival, Mardi Gras, the garden tours and Rosenburg’s library reading) as well as creating content to attract Group/Meeting markets. The CVB will also look into the construction of radio, print, online and billboards promoting summer vacation (especially for those living in the Houston area). The social media will be creating website material and developing Group/Meeting outreach programs. Social media will also be in charge of uploading “Summer Fun” videos promoting Galveston from the film department onto Youtube and other video-social media platforms. From there the rest of the season should promote the nature and outdoor activities, special events and the upcoming summer. The public relations teams will also be promoting a summer travel campaign and a Beach Education campaign.

Summer

July to September happens to be the busiest season of the year. The social media and advertisements will be in full swing as Houston and other tourists visit the area. The advertisement department will put out a pulse print and online advertisement for Group/Meeting markets. Both social media and advertising will be pushing for more summer ads through online, print, radio and billboards throughout the three months. Again, social media will also add a tag for Galveston called “#LoveGalveston” that visitors and businesses can use. The public relations department will be busy on the side as they build the Wedding Media Tour and Texas Media Mission and Showcase for fall and holiday focus. All three departments will have a big hand in producing material for the big summer event: Galveston’s Fourth of July. The film crew will be producing more 30-second material that social media will be posting prior to the date. The public relations department will be busy on the side as they build the Wedding Media Tour and Texas Media Mission and Showcase for fall and holiday focus.

Fall

From late September to early December, it will be Galveston’s slow season. This will be the time to prep for winter and holiday events. Advertisements will be implementing a “Winter Wonder Island” ad plan as they work on print and online ads for autumn special events. They’ll also work on promoting print and online ads for the Winter Texans market and continue working with the Group/Meetings market. Social media will work with the film crew again to create short clips for the winter holidays as they begin working on the Charles Dickens Evening on the Strand website. They’ll have a side responsibility of promoting local businesses to increase visitor traffic and posting for the fall events. The public relations will generate campaigns for the fall festival and the “Haunted Galveston” media outreach. They’ll begin working with the advertising department on the “Winter Wonder Island” campaign and the Dicken’s Evening on the Strand material. Social media and Public relations will also be working hand-in-hand on their Holiday Blogger tour.

Winter 2017-2018

December to February, Galveston will be hitting the high season again. Advertisements will be promoting print and online ads for Mardi Gras and Galveston’s Restaurant Week and launch a 2018 Island Visitor Guide. They’ll also continue to promote Galveston to the Group/Meeting market on a consistent basis with the help of social media. Social media will be posting their focus on winter special events, Dickens Evening, Mardi Gras, food scene, and generating photo contests for the holidays. They’ll also be working with the film department to create more video ideas for the 2018-2019 fiscal year. With a televised promoting broadcast promoting Dickens Evening on the Strand, the public relations committee will be pushing a PR campaign for the event as well as Mardi Gras. They’ll create an outreach for the Galveston Restaurant Week, for Spring Festivals and Spring Break and a Food Writer campaign. The idea is to finish off strong and learn where to improve for the next fiscal year.

References

Cherian, C., personal communication, February 18, 2017.

Econsultancy, D. M. (2013, February 21). Stats: Who uses Pinterest and why is it important for marketers? Retrieved from https://econsultancy.com/blog/62189-stats-who-uses-pinterest-and-why-is-it-important-for-marketers/

Galveston, Texas Consensus. (2014). Retrieved from http://www.usa.com/galveston-tx.htm

Galveston, Texas History & Heritage. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.galveston.com/history/

Harman, G. (2014, April 07). Assessing the Damage from the Galveston Bay Oil Spill. Retrieved from https://www.texasobserver.org/assessing-the-damage-from-the-galveston-bay-oil- spill/

Kenamore, J. A. (2010, June 15). WOMEN'S HEALTH PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION. Retrieved from https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/saw01

Smith, M. (2016). 2015-2016 Marketing Plan (pp. 1-54, Publication No. 49). Galveston Island, TX:

Galveston Island Convention and Visitor's Bureau. Retrieved from http:// www.galvestonparkboard.org/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/49

Vermeren, I. (2015, January 28). Men vs. Women: Who Is More Active on Social Media? Retrieved from https://www.brandwatch.com/blog/men-vs-women-active-social-media/