The Nuts & Bolts of the West Virginia Tourism Office
1. THE NUTS & BOLTS OF THE TOURISM OFFICE:
RESOURCES, TOOLS & SERVICES
2. 2
ABOUT THE TOURISM OFFICE
• The WestVirginiaTourism Office is the destination marketing organization for
Almost Heaven, WestVirginia.
• As such, the office is responsible for managing the strategic marketing &
advertising strategy for the state.This strategy addresses several long-term goals:
• Position WestVirginia as a world-class travel & tourism destination
• Promote a positive brand image forWestVirginia to counter negative perceptions
• Maintain our strong repeat visitor base, while increasing the number of new visitors
• Increase the average length of stay and average spend per visitor
• Tourism Act of 2017 opened the door for more industry development, programs and
assistance opportunities.
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HOW WE’RE STRUCTURED TO SERVE OUR PARTNERS
Tourism Office
Public Relations
Media Relations
Industry Relations
Digital Marketing
Partner Programs
Cooperative
Advertising
Industry
Development
Film
Promotion
Visitor Services
Events &
Group Sales
Call
Center
Distribution &
Fulfillment
Welcome Centers
Administration
Budget & Finance
Purchasing
Grants & Credits
4. PARTNER PROGRAMS
Anna Plantz, Director,Anna.M.Plantz@wv.gov
Alex Dudich,CooperativeAdvertisingCoordinator,Alexandria.V.Dudich@wv.gov
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ADVERTISING ASSISTANCE
• Phasing out Matching Advertising
Partnership Program (MAPP)
• New co-op program leverages state
resources and brand identity to advertise
individual destinations, attractions and
events
• Offers a mix of regional and local advertising
opportunities
• A dollar for dollar match partnership that
offers a variety of investment tiers
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COOPERATIVE ADVERTISING PROGRAM UPDATES
• We have had great participation throughout the first year of the
program with more than 50 partners participating.
• The program was created using different components of what worked
best in other states.
• To continue the program’s success, we are in the process of tweaking
and adjusting elements for next year to customize to what works best
forWestVirginia.
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ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE
• TheTourism Office is committed to helping existing tourism businesses thrive in
WestVirginia and works closely with the WestVirginia Development Office to
recruit new tourism assets to the Mountain State.
• We have close partnerships with the Development Office, Small Business
Development Center, Economic Development Authority, Division of Highways
and other government organizations that can help address your development
needs. Sign-up form is available online.
8. FILM ASSISTANCE
8
• TheTourism Office has absorbed the
duties and responsibilities of the
WestVirginia Film Office.
• The team is actively supporting
potential projects through site
scouting assistance.
9. PUBLIC RELATIONS
Emily Hatfield, Director, Emily.N.Hatfield@wv.gov
Samantha Nygaard, ExternalCommunications Coordinator, Samantha.R.Nygaard@wv.gov
Candace Nelson, Digital MarketingCoordinator,Candace.R.Nelson@wv.gov
Jaden Hardesty, MarketingAssistant, Jaden.C.Hardesty@wv.gov
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BUSINESS & EVENT LISTINGS
• TheTourism Office allows industry partners to
create & manage their own business & event
listings at no cost on WVtourism.com.
• Listings feature important information about your
business and provide visitors with tangible
information to plan their stay.
• WVtourism.com is also home to a statewide
events calendar.
• Online registration is easy. Step-by-step
instructions are available at
www.wvtourism.com/partners.
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PHOTOGRAPHY ASSISTANCE
• The WestVirginiaTourism Office is happy to
provide photography assistance to industry
partners to help in promotion efforts. Sign-
up form available online.
• Need photos or b-roll?Tourism Office
photos and videos are available for free and
unrestricted use.
• All photos and video must be credited to the
WestVirginiaTourism Office.
13. ADDITIONAL PR ASSISTANCE
• Media requests & story ideas
• Blog posts to be featured on
website and social media
• Social media promotion
• Custom travel itineraries for trade
shows and promotion
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• Local event support
• Press tours
• Content for monthly travel
columns
• Research & reporting
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INDUSTRY COMMUNICATION
• TheTourism Office sends weekly industry newsletters that have important
information on industry trainings, co-op deadlines, upcoming events and much
more.
• Partners are encouraged to sign-up for the industry newsletter to stay up-to-
date on all things tourism inWestVirginia.
• New industry software in the works that will provide a better, more reliable way
of communication, as well as offer a new partner extranet.
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REGIONAL MEETINGS
• TheTourism Office hosts annual meetings
at each travel region inWestVirginia.These
meetings serve as an opportunity to share
Tourism Office updates and learn more
about local partner projects and needs.
• We will use these meetings as an
opportunity to meet new faces, share
updates on ongoing projects, learn what’s
working well and identify areas for growth
and improvement.
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INDUSTRY TRAININGS
• TheTourism Office also offers for monthly industry trainings.
Topics are announced quarterly and cover a range of information
from data and tracking to marketing trends to business
assistance and more.
• First quarter training slideshows are available on our website
and upcoming topics will be posted soon.
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GOVERNOR’S CONFERENCE ON TOURISM
• The Governor’s Conference onTourism is held annually and provides an
opportunity forWestVirginia tourism industry partners to come together
to find new ways to promoteWestVirginia as a world-class travel and
tourism destination
• Sessions provide partners with educational and training opportunities on
the latest travel trends and issues in the tourism industry, as well as
dedicated time to network and collaborate on ways to work together.
• www.WVtourism.com/govconference2018
18. VISITOR SERVICES
Sara Price, Director,Sara.N.Price@wv.gov
Alex Burdette,Call Center Specialist, Alex.C.Burdette@wv.gov
Sandy Smith, Call Center Specialist, Sandy.M.Smith@wv.gov
Christina Fowler, Promotions Coordinator,Christinia.A.Fowler@wv.gov
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MEETINGS, GROUP SALES & EVENTS
• TheTourism Office offers assistance to partners when planning large meetings
and/or hosting group tours.
• TheVisitor Services team attends trade shows and pitchesWestVirginia
destinations and partners to group tour operators – both domestic and
international.
• TheVisitor Services team also handles all of our local event requests for
collateral pieces and promotional material, such as travel guides, bags, stickers,
pens, pencils, etc.
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FULFILLMENT & DISTRIBUTION SERVICES
• The WestVirginiaTourism Office
operates eight Welcome Centers
across the state which serve more
than 3.5 million visitors each year.
• To ensure our partners are featured to
this significant audience, we offer
brochure distribution services.
• Simply mail your collateral to any
welcome center and on-site staff will
stock and distribute accordingly.
• Brochure distribution request form
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NAVIGATING WVTOURISM.COM FOR INDUSTRY PARTNERS
• There are two ways to visit our resources for industry partners page:
• 1.Visit the page directly at www.wvtourism.com/industry-information
• 2. Scroll to the bottom of any page on the our website and click “Industry Info”
• Tip: Add this page to your browser Bookmarks or Favorites for easy access!
22. QUESTIONS
Emily Hatfield, Director of Public Relations
Emily.N.Hatfield@wv.gov
Samantha Nygaard, External Communications
Coordinator
Samantha.R.Nygaard@wv.gov
Editor's Notes
Hello everyone – My name is Emily Hatfield, and I am the Director of Public Relations for the West Virginia Tourism Office. I’d like to first thank you all for joining us this morning and second, say that I’m incredibly excited to spend some time with you this morning to share with you more information about the wide array of partner services offered by the Tourism Office.
Before we dig into the details – I know we may have some new partners on today’s training, so I’d like to first start by defining the tourism office, our roles & responsibilities and team structure.
In a nutshell, the Tourism Office is the destination marketing organization for the state of West Virginia. In this role, we plan & administer the strategic marketing and advertising strategy for the state. This strategy is designed to address several goals.
Position West Virginia as a world-class travel & tourism destination
Promote a brand image for West Virginia that is positive and overcomes stereotypes and negative connotations that are decades-old
Maintain our strong repeat visitor base (at 86%), while working hard to directly increase the number of new visitors to West Virginia each year.
Increase the average length of stay in West Virginia and average spend per visitor per trip.
And the last bullet point on this slide, is probably the one everyone is most interested in this morning – our ability to provide industry development assistance to our partners. This is a relatively new focus for our office that came about in the Tourism Act of 2017. This critical piece of legislation not only changed our name from the West Virginia Division of Tourism to the West Virginia Tourism Office, but it also added a new pillar to our structure – industry development. As such, our roles & responsibilities as an office have adapted to fulfill both our equally important promotion & development roles.
We created this organizational chart to showcase how our office is structured and aligned to best serve our partners.
We’re broken down into four teams.
Administration (which is pretty much what it sounds like – handling all of our purchasing and procurement.)
Visitor Services – This team is led by our Director of Visitor Services, Sara Price. It includes the management and operations of our 1-800-CallWVA Call Center, as well as our 8 welcome centers across the state. This team is responsible for taking visitor calls, and the daily fulfillment and distribution of our state vacation guide, highway map and other, supplemental brochures. This is the team to contact regarding any of these collateral pieces, as well as promotional items, statewide & local events.
Partner Programs – Our partner programs team is led by our Director of Partner Programs – Anna Plantz. This team manages the day-to-day operations of our new Cooperative Advertising Program (which I will go into in more detail in just a moment) and is currently working on phasing out the old Matching Advertising Partnership Program (MAPP). They also handle film scouting requests.
Public Relations – And our last team is my team, the Public Relations team. My team is responsible for the daily marketing operations of the office, including management of our social media accounts, website, and blog content. We also handle all of the earned media and press coverage for the office and plan the annual Governor’s Conference on Tourism.
With our team structure in place & better defined, let’s dig a bit deeper into the specific services we offer our partners.
The first team I’d like to cover is our partner programs team. This team is designed & equipped to handle all of the major inter-agency government programs for tourism partners – starting with advertising assistance through our new cooperative advertising program.
For years, the Tourism Office operated the Matching Advertising Partnership Program, otherwise known as MAPP. This program was structured as a grant reimbursement program that proved to be quite onerous in paperwork and lacked the reporting and tracking necessary to keep up in today’s digital age. As such, the Tourism Act of 2017 paved the way for the creation of a new advertising assistance program for partners – the cooperative advertising program.
The cooperative advertising program is structured as a buy-in model and allows partners the first-ever opportunity to directly buy into the state’s overall brand and advertising strategy. We go out & purchase the media in bulk allowing us to get reduced rates due to the mass quantities being purchased. We then package up these opportunities for partners and make them available in our co-op portal. Partners can then register & sign-up as either individuals or multi-partner groups in the portal, log-in to view and assess available opportunities and ultimately request the opportunities that best suite their needs & markets. All of that at a dollar-for-dollar match. So if you spend $50,000, we’ll match it at $50,000 for a total in-market advertising buy of $100,000.
All partner ads share cohesive branding elements, which ultimately help to spread one consistent, positive and recognizable image for West Virginia in the marketplace – all the while driving specific traffic & interest for our participating partners.
For those of you who have participated in the program – or are currently participating – thank you for your partnership & support. It has been a great first year for the program – at more than 50 industry partners across the state participating at a variety of investment tiers.
In creating the program, we worked with industry leaders – including George Zimmerman of Pure Michigan – to create our parameters & guidelines to participation. With a year of work under our belt, we’re currently taking partner feedback and making a few tweaks to the program for next year. Like any program in it’s first year, there have been a few kinks and bumps along the way, but we’re excited to work with our partners to better refine the program to best meet West Virginia’s needs. I would encourage anyone who has thoughts or feedback so far to please send it our way so we can be sure we’re addressing all of our industry needs as we make these adaptations.
In addition to the creation of the new cooperative advertising program, the Tourism Act of 2017 also paved the way for our office to focus more closely on industry development in the travel & tourism space. As such, we are here to serve as the industry’s guide on potential development projects.
We work extremely closely with the team in the Development Office to help partners navigate the world of tax credits and project financing – including Tourism Development Act (TDA) and Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district projects.
We also have close working relationships with key contacts at many other very important state agency partners, including the Small Business Development Center, Economic Development Authority, Division of Highways, and many more.
If there’s one thing I know from working in state government it’s that there are a lot of agencies & programs for West Virginians; however, often times, it’s hard for folks to know which agency can best serve their needs and who at that agency is the best point of contact. That’s why we’re here – to help our tourism partners navigate all of the agencies and programs within state government.
Whether you are an existing business/partner looking to expand or a potential new development project, we are here to help connect you with the best points of contact at all of our fellow state agency groups and serve as a liaison for the project every step of the way.
There’s a form online – which I’ve linked to in this presentation – that allows you to submit development questions or project assistance requests. Simply fill out the form and our office will reach to you to connect, discuss and hopefully help your project move forward.
The Partner Programs team also helps potential film projects with location scouting services. We receive the requests and help funnel them down into the local communities by working through our great convention & visitors bureau partners.
The next team I’d like to cover is the Public Relations team. All of the programs and services offered by my team can be broken down into two main categories – the first is your standard PR/Marketing assistance and the second is Industry Communication assistance. Let’s dig into those a little deeper.
Kicking off in the stand marketing/pr assistance - the first, and probably most important, service we provide to partners is the ability to create and manage your own business and event listings. These listings provide a venue for partners to showcase their very best assets and offer the tangible information travelers need to plan – and ultimately – book their stay.
One common misconception we’ve found among partners is that the Tourism Office is responsible for these listings and the content on the pages. That couldn’t be further from the truth. You can create and control your own listing page, and in fact, we encourage it.
By creating an account on Wvtourism.com, you will then have access to create listings and events, as well as update existing listing page content, featured photos and relevant links to more information. I can’t stress enough how important it is to 1) have a business listing on our website and 2) make sure it is always up-to-date.
These listings are featured across multiple pages on our website, appear in visitor search results and are what allows us to feature you in our promotion. For example, in writing our blog post content that is shared on social media, we constantly promote partners, activities and events, and our content is that much stronger, if we can link to partner listings/events pages that contain more information for our readers.
Step-by-step instructions how to register an account, create and/or update a business listing or event can be found at wvtourism.com/partners.
We also provide partners with photography assistance throughout the year. We understand that many of our partners are operating on wide variety of advertising budgets and have varying resources available. As such, we want to ensure all of our partners have access to the high quality photos you need to not only promote your business, attraction or event, but also for us to promote you in the work we do here at the Tourism Office.
In a time when visual marketing is at an all-time high, quality photography is key to compete and stay relevant in the market place. We have a form available on our website for partners to request photography assistance, which I have linked in this presentation. Simply complete the form and give us as much detail as possible about what you’re looking for, and we will work with you on scheduling a photographer during the season of your choice. After we have the photos, our office will create a gallery of all the images collected and share them with you at no cost.
We also have a full gallery of generic West Virginia photos and b-roll, so if you ever need basic materials to get you started, definitely reach out and we’ll try and connect you with existing assets that we already have in our library.
Here’s a little screen cap of the photography assistance form – just to demonstrate how easy it is to request assistance.
In addition to business listings and photography, my team offers a wide array of additional PR services including:
Assistance with media requests – If you have received a request and need assistance with story ideas, photography or video, feel free to reach out to our office. We’re happy to help fulfill these requests.
Blog posts – We are actively looking for blog content, so if you have any thoughts, suggestions or would like to pitch us an idea, we always welcome those suggestions for content. As we craft blog posts, we make sure to tag and mention as many of our partners as possible, so let us know if there’s an upcoming event, new attraction or partners you’d like for us to help promote.
Social media promotion – the same goes for social media promotion. I always say, my team is happy to promote our partners, but in order for us to promote you, you have to help us by keeping us informed.
Custom travel itineraries for trade shows – Many of our partners attend travel & tourism trade shows for group sales and travel writers. We’re happy to help you develop content for collateral pieces to take to the shows with you to best demonstrate all there is to see and do in West Virginia.
Local event support – If you have an upcoming event in your area and would like promotion support, we can help by featuring the event on our statewide calendar and tying it to blog posts and social promotion. We’re also happy to send collateral, such as travel guides, for your event participants.
Press tours – We often bring in groups of journalists, travel writers and influencers to help cover West Virginia, and we love to bring our industry partners in on these efforts to ensure we are promoting your business, attraction and/or event in the best possible way.
Content for monthly travel columns – if you need help with content or story ideas for your website, blog, or any media request, let us know. We’re happy to help with this content.
Research & reporting - The Tourism Office conducts numerous research studies each year. The results of those studies are available to the partners at no cost.
The next pillar to our PR services includes positive and frequent communication with our industry partners.
We currently communicating to partners on a weekly basis via anindustry newsletter. I’ve included a link to sign-up for the newsletter in this presentation. The newsletter is the best way to get information and updates from our office at this point and time, and I would encourage all of you to sign-up to ensure you are receiving information on future industry trainings, Governor’s Conference on Tourism, co-op, upcoming meetings & events and much more.
I also am happy to share with you all that we are in the process of implementing new software specifically dedicated to our industry partners and industry communication. We know that so many are bogged down with email, have emails go to junk folders, etc., so we wanted a more reliable form of communication with you all. As such, we are currently implementing a software called Simpleview, which will provide more direct forms of communication, as well as offer a full extranet just for industry partners. On this extranet, you can view important updates, request information, receive leads from our office and much more.
We plan to roll out this software at our Governor’s Conference in September, so stay tuned for more information.
As part of our communication with you all, we also started hosting regional meetings as of January 2018. We have held two meetings to date – one in the Hatfield-McCoy Mountains and our second in the Metro Valley Region. These meetings serve as our opportunity to listen to you all, learn about important projects in your area and identify ways we can better support your efforts.
Our Tourism Commissioner – Chelsea Ruby – is currently out on maternity leave, which is stalling us a little bit on our travel plans and schedules, but rest assured, we will be traveling to each of our tourism regions soon.
Industry trainings – Like the regional meetings, we started hosting monthly industry trainings this year as well. We try to announce topics on a quarterly basis and cover with you all a wide array of presentations – from Google Analytics & Social Media to Earned Media and Digital Advertising trends.
Today’s training topic actually came from a request out of our last regional meeting with our Metro Valley partners. These trainings are for your benefit, so if there’s a particular topic you’re interested in learning more about, please feel free to share them with us and we will try and get a speaker lined up and a training scheduled.
Our next two trainings for June & July will be How to Pitch a Story with Don Smith at the West Virginia Press Association and a Business Fundamentals training with the Small Business Development Center. I will be releasing more details on each of those in the coming weeks and hope you all can join.
And last, but certainly not least, each year, our office holds the annual Governor’s Conference on Tourism in West Virginia. This conference is an opportunity to bring industry partners from across the state together to find new and innovative ways to promote West Virginia as a world-class travel and tourism destination.
This year’s conference is scheduled for September 17-20, 2018 at the Marriot at Waterfront Place in Morgantown, West Virginia. We are always looking for new folks to join us at these conferences, so please make sure to mark your calendar.
The agenda is usually packed full with speakers that cover industry trends in marketing, advertising, public relations, hospitality, customer service and much more. We also try and allow partners time to network and get to know one another and discuss best practices.
Information on this year’s Governor’s Conference is available at wvtourism.com/govconference2018.
Our final team that we’re going to explore is our visitor services team.
The Visitor Services team is responsible for assistance on large conferences, meetings, events & group sales. They often attend travel & trade shows specific to group tours to pitch West Virginia to national & international visitors. Any time our office receives a meeting, conference, or group tour request, we then funnel these out to partners for direct assistance and collaboration on the project. Likewise, if you have a major conference, meeting or event coming to your area, let us know. And we will work together to identify ways we can best support the project’s success.
The Visitor Services team also handles all of our local event requests for collateral pieces and promotional material, such as travel guides, bags, stickers, pens, pencils, etc.
So if you are in need of any of these promotional items for a particular event, please don’t hesitate to let us know.
The Tourism Office operates eight Welcome Centers across the state which serve more than 3.5 million visitors each year.
To ensure our partners are featured to this significant foot traffic, we offer brochure distribution services.
In the past, we used to allow partners to mail collateral pieces directly to our office; however, based on our new office location, we do not have the capacity to receive these types of shipments anymore. However, we are now allowing partners to directly mail material to our welcome centers in which on-site staff will stock and distribute accordingly. We do have a collateral approval process in place, so all requests to distribute pieces must be made and approved in advance of shipment. I have linked to the request form in this presentation.
I know I have shared a lot of information with you all today, but fortunately, everything we’ve covered is also available – 24/7 – online in our Industry Information section on our website – Wvtourism.com. You can access the industry page in the footer of our website, which I have included a screen cap here. It’s also available directly at the URL www.wvtourism.com/industry-information. This page is the hub of all information for our industry partners, so I encourage everyone to spend some time there, click around and see what all is available for you.
We have a wide range of partners who joined us today, so hope the content covered was helpful. For those of you who may have already known of the services and assistance provided by our office, I hope you will help us spread this information with partners in your local area. If you’re a CVB and you know of businesses in your area that can take advantage of our services, please connect them with us. We’re always happy to help and love meeting new partners.
I want to be respectful of everyone’s time this morning, so I’m going to take questions via email. If there’s anything you’d like to receive more information on or assistance with, please feel free to email myself or Samantha Nygaard, our external communications coordinator at anytime.
Today’s presentation will also be posted under on the Industry Trainings section of our website – available in the industry info page – later this afternoon.
Thanks again for your time this morning. I hope everyone has a wonderful rest of their week.
