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Board backs tourism bureau for four years

ALLOWS SONOMA COUNTY TO FOCUS ON LONG-TERM, EXTEND MARKETING, TECH

SONOMA COUNTY – The Board of Supervisors has approved the first multi-year funding contract with the Sonoma County Tourism Bureau, giving the group the ability to complete longer-term strategic planning including recent international and tech marketing campaigns.

The four-year contract renews funding from the county’s transient occupancy taxes and business improvement area dollars, which in the past was dispensed on a yearly basis.

“The board put a huge vote of confidence in us with this multi-year contract and it’s a really important milestone for us,” said Ken Fischang, president and chief executive officer of the bureau. “Our industry is really a long-term investment; the true effects of a good organization are a year to two years from the present date, so this will allow a lot more freedom to plan.”

The bureau recently kicked off several new marketing campaigns, including targeted international marketing. Press releases are translated into seven different languages and they are in the process of creating “microsites” in German. Eventually officials plan to have the sites translated in Spanish, French, Japanese, Chinese and Korean.

A cell phone-formatted version of the site was also recently launched. The condensed site at www.mobile.sonomacounty

.com gives visitors the ability to scan content faster as well as book hotel rooms online from their phone. Mr. Fischang said the bureau is concurrently working on a social network marketing strategy from a beta-site called www.inside-sonoma.com.

“Oftentimes when destination marketing organizations or other companies sell their product by talking about how wonderful they are, it’s just not the same as other people saying it,” he said. “Our concept with Inside Sonoma is to collect stuff people made – videos, photos, blogs – and add easy links to social functions like Facebook and MySpace, so they can send a video to a friend to show them what they did in Sonoma County.”

The site also features bureau-created videos and content as well as links to Tripadvisor reviews and a Sonoma County Twitter stream. Current content includes a video of one man’s quest to taste the county’s beer and another on the local creation of a huge bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich. The videos are also accessible on a Sonoma County channel on YouTube.

Another bureau marketing campaign that offered incentives of up to $4,000 in hotel upgrades to meetings has already tallied up $50,000 and is preparing a third mailing.

The mailers that will be sent to meeting planners this winter depict incentive-upgraded offerings including back massages, spa treatments or fine dining meals.

The incentives are broken into tiers and distributed according to room nights booked, starting with a minimum of 50. The group plans to renew the project next year.

“The beauty of the program is the economic impact goes straight back to the hotel,” Mr. Fischang said.