by Max Marbut
Staff Writer
Effective today, it’s easier for people who want to come to Jacksonville to work, play or even check in to some of the country’s leading health care facilities to make arrangements for travel and accommodations.
Visit Jacksonville, the marketing organization contracted by the Duval County Tourist Development to promote the growth of business and leisure travel in Northeast Florida, has added the Advanced Reservation Systems (ARES) travel booking engine to its Web site, www.visitJacksonville.com. It’s part of an organization-wide effort to respond to the economy and continue to bring more visitors of all types – and their dollars – to Jacksonville.
“Our contract with Travelocity expired March 31 (yesterday) and it really wasn’t meeting our needs,” said Lyndsay Rossman, director of corporate communications for Visit Jacksonville. “ARES links hotels, venues and attractions with real-time prices and availability. For the consumer, it makes it possible for them to develop their own travel packages. It also makes our Web site a one-stop resource for meeting planners.”
Visit Jacksonville also made a major change in its organizational structure last month. Two new travel industry veterans joined the staff as part of a consolidation of the sales and marketing effort.
Chris Brackens, former director of marketing for the Don CeSar Beach Resort in St. Petersburg, was named vice president of sales and marketing, which had been handled by two positions prior to the reorganization. He served for 13 years as director of sales and marketing at Sawgrass Golf Resort before he went to the Gulf Coast.
Visit Jacksonville’s new Director of Sales is Kim Ritten, who most recently was director of development and community relations at her alma mater, Stephens College in Columbia, Mo. Ritten also has a Jacksonville connection, having at one time been director of event management and then director of sales and marketing at the Jacksonville Marriott.
“Given the current economic climate, the need for alignment in marketing and sales efforts is essential to maximizing effective results of increased overnight stays and visitor demand,” said John Reyes, Visit Jacksonville president and CEO.
Rossman said tourism as an industry is down “across the board worldwide” and attributed much of the local effect to what she referred to as “the AIG effect.”
That was brought into focus, she added, when President Barack Obama commented at a press conference that companies that have received economic stimulus funds from the government “shouldn’t be going to Las Vegas.”
Actually, the opposite is true, said Rossman.
“Tourism is an economic stimulator,” she said. “Companies don’t want to have meetings because they’re afraid of the public backlash, but people in the tourism industry are losing their jobs. That has effects all the way to the grocery store.”
To soften the impact on the local business travel industry, the new sales and marketing team at Visit Jacksonville has adopted the mantra of “more aggressive and more creative.”
Bracken said the travel industry hasn’t come to a complete stop but, “We have to focus on markets that are still working like the multicultural, religious and hobbyist markets.”
Next summer, a religious organization will arrive in Jacksonville for its annual convention, a group Ritten said will generate 9,500 room nights.
“That part of the market has remained strong because people are looking for hope and fellowship,” she added. “And Jacksonville is a good value.”
Another group Visit Jacksonville is courting is a national convention of quilters.
“The hobby market can fill up the convention center. A group like that could mean 500 room nights on a weekend at business hotels,” said Ritten, to which Bracken added, “We’ll take that.”
Another example is an agreement with SMG, the company that manages all City-owned sports and entertainment facilities. During the July to December “Value Season” any group that books at least 1,500 room nights can use the exhibition hall at the Osborn Center free of charge. That makes Jacksonville better-positioned when competing with other cities for convention and meeting business.
“There’s still money to be made on food and beverages as well as if the group needs to book meeting rooms. Everybody wins,” said Rossman.
Open wide and say ‘aaah’
In November 2007, Visit Jacksonville debuted a marketing campaign designed to take advantage of one of the city’s most unique resources, the health care market. Partnered with 11 local medical services providers, the plan was to brand Jacksonville as “America’s Health Center”
At the unveiling, Mayor John Peyton commented, “We know it’s smart to focus on things that have been successful in Jacksonville. Health sciences is one of these fields. One thing we know is people want to live longer and feel better and Jacksonville has an amazing concentration of health care facilities.”
The first phase of the campaign was to market Jacksonville to medical convention groups. Prior to “America’s Health Center,” 10, 261 room nights had been booked by those groups in the previous five years combined, resulting in a total economic impact of $5.2 million.
Based on the marketing campaign’s first-year results, it has been a measurable success.
“After just one year we have booked 6,500 room nights with a total impact of $3.2 million,” said Rossman. “That’s an increase of more than 300 percent.”
One advantage of Jacksonville’s unique health care provider inventory is that in many cases, patients aren’t incapacitated. An example is cancer treatment at the University of Florida Proton Therapy Institute.
“Many of our facilities treat people who aren’t sick in the traditional sense. They can have proton beam therapy in the morning and play golf or go the beach that afternoon,” said Rossman.
The next phase of the initiative will focus on two areas: patients and their families who come here for extended medical treatment and business travelers who are here to conduct business with local medical products and services companies.
“There’s no way we could have predicted what the economy would be like today when we started the ‘America’s Health Center’ campaign, but it has turned out to be the best decision we could have made,” said Rossman.
Visit Jacksonville’s medical partners
• Baptist Health
• Brooks Rehabilitation
• CyberKnife Cancer Center at Memorial Hospital
• Mayo Clinic
• Nemours Children’s Clinic
• Shands Jacksonville Medical Center
• St. Luke’s Hospital
• St. Vincent’s Medical Center
• The Bariatric Center at Memorial Hospital
• University of Florida Proton Therapy Institute
• Wolfson Children’s Hospital
Photo by Max Marbut
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