The Sun Valley Marketing Alliance is operating on a marketing budget that is the resort area’s lowest in 15 years, organization President Arlene Schieven said in a meeting Wednesday.
“The biggest issue we have this year is that we’re facing a 17 percent decrease in our budget, and that puts us at the lowest budget level in 15 years for external marketing,” Schieven said. “That resulted in some really hard choices for us in the coming year.”
Schieven also said that the addition of direct flights to and from San Francisco to Friedman Memorial Airport this winter forced the Marketing Alliance to remove Boise from the target market list to put more funds towards San Francisco. The decreased budget also means the organization does not currently have any paid media advertising money budgeted for next summer, Schieven said. As a result, Schieven stressed the importance of a proposed 1 percent local option tax to support commercial service.
“We don’t have any money for paid media advertising next summer.”
Arlene Schieven
SVMA president
“We don’t have any money for paid media advertising next summer, so the hope is that the LOT will pass and we’ll have more time to put money into our budget for next summer,” she said. “We’re going to have to be fiscally conservative and responsible.”
The organization’s total budget for the 2013-14 fiscal year is $980,000.
However, the meeting was not all bad news, as Schieven noted a 39 percent increase in annual vacation “roost” revenue—money garnered from third-party website bookings—jumping from $125,000 to $174,000. The website visitsunvalley.com experienced a 20 percent increase in page visits, with 222,539 visits from Oct. 1, 2012, to Sept. 30, 2013, up from 185,183 during the period of Oct. 1, 2011, to Sept. 30, 2012.
Schieven also noted a significant increase in Alaska/Horizon Air passengers flying in during the 2012-2013 winter season from both Seattle and Los Angeles. There was an overall 20 percent increase in enplanements last winter when compared to the previous season. Conversely, Alaska Air passenger numbers were down 9 percent during the summer, likely due in part to the impacts of the Beaver Creek Fire in August.
Greg Randolph, director of public relations and social media, talked about Visit Sun Valley’s improved social-media presence. The number of Twitter followers increased 36 percent to 3,600, he said, while the Facebook page saw a 31 percent rise to 51,750 likes. During his comments, Randolph was adamant of the Facebook page’s importance to entice new visitors.
“The Facebook page is our face for Sun Valley,” Randolph said. “It’s where you want people to experience, live, aspire and be inspired. We don’t want sales pitches and deals. We want to mix up the content. We want to use it to drive traffic to our website, and it’s been really successful.”
Randolph also unveiled the organization’s new winter ad campaign, titled, “Your lazy parts will hate us.” The campaign will be emphasizing the opportunities skiers and snowboarders have to enjoy shorter wait times and smaller crowds than other resort towns. One poster for the campaigns says, “Come ski more vert before lunch than most people pack into their entire vacation.”
“The Facebook page is our face for Sun Valley.”
Greg Randolph
Director of public relations and social media
Randolph also shared the publications the Marketing Alliance plans to advertise in. The print publications include LA Weekly, San Francisco Weekly and the Ski Journal. Additionally, the organization plans to run ads on 14 different websites, including snocountry.com, orbitz.com, cheaptickets.com, fasterskier.com and skitrax.com. The media plan also calls for advertising with Milennial Media and pandora.com.
“We want to increase visits this winter while raising awareness of Sun Valley,” Randolph said. “We split our efforts into brand awareness with tactical awareness advertising.”
Schieven said the organization has created a new orientation program for new members in order to enable newcomers to become more involved right away. Currently, the organization has 304 members.
Board of directors co-chair Marty Albertson echoed Schieven’s statements encouraging Ketchum voters to pass the LOT increase.
“The single greatest commonality between everyone here is that we all love living here,” Albertson said. “There is an overwhelming frustration grounded in what we have to do to make this community better, and we need to pass the LOT for jobs and our tourism base. We are a tourist-based economy, so we have to invest in that.”
Eric Avissar: eavissar@mtexpress.com
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