A few months in to its first international marketing campaign, Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau officials got word a second chance to market the Queen City outside U.S. borders could be in their future.
This summer, Congress reauthorized the Travel Promotion, Enhancement and Modernization Act, which opens the door for the Springfield CVB to spend marketing dollars with Brand USA, a national public-private partnership the act created to subsidize state and municipal advertising campaigns targeting international travelers.
The Springfield CVB signed on with Brand USA in late 2013, and this year spent $15,000 of its roughly $1 million annual marketing budget with the agency. CVB Marketing Director Laura Whisler said the investment represents roughly $80,000 in advertising value.
“It allows states like Missouri, and cities like Springfield, to pay a small fee to be part of a much larger ad campaign that brings visitors to our area,” Whisler said.
Though the travel promotion act was enacted in 2010, Whisler said it wasn’t until last year that the upstart Brand USA began recruiting states and communities.
Dan Lennon, deputy director of strategic communications for the Missouri Division of Tourism, said Brand USA operates like a national CVB, and through its cooperative partnerships can help communities, states and private businesses stretch their marketing dollars. A key element is driving online traffic to its tourist site, DiscoverAmerica.com.
He said Brand USA’s annual budget exceeds $150 million and focuses on international travel.
“It is able to provide highly subsidized cooperative marketing programs and use its dollars to go out into the rest of the world in a way we couldn’t afford to do on our own,” Lennon said.
He said individual CVBs pay 25 percent of the total marketing plan – which in Springfield’s initial run was $15,000 – and the state of Missouri splits the rest of the cost with Brand USA. The total marketing outlay in the campaign was $60,000.
Brand USA is funded by international visitors and private contributions, according to TheBrandUSA.com. Half of its budget comes from the private sector through cash and in-kind contributions, and the rest – up to a maximum of $100 million – is funded by a fee assessed on visa-free international visitors screened by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Electronic System for Travel Authorization.
The Springfield CVB’s initial investment is funding production of three marketing videos, as well as a six-week newspaper and Web campaign across nearly a dozen publications in Canada, Lennon said. In addition, Brand USA produced a travel article – available in 10 languages – on
DiscoverAmerica.com.
“All of Brand USA’s advertising efforts are driving people to that website to get more information about the United States,” Whisler said. “Now Springfield, and other cities in Missouri, have a great presence on that website so that we can let people know about all the great attributes of our area and drive people here.”
Whisler said the CVB currently is researching its return on investment.
According to TheBrandUSA.com, a study conducted by Oxford Economics concluded Brand USA’s marketing efforts have generated 1.1 million incremental visitors to the United States who spent $3.4 billion and supported 53,000 new jobs.
While the CVB isn’t sure how many international visitors come to Springfield in a given year, Whisler said she knows Route 66 is a big draw. The downtown Route 66 information center – which has seen its foot traffic triple since it began promoting the Mother Road – draws folks from 10 to 15 countries each month, she said.
Jason Tenney, assistant general manager at the Best Western Route 66 Rail Haven Motel, said about a third of the property’s 92 rooms were occupied by international travelers Aug. 6–10. The groups were in town for the Assemblies of God Centennial celebration and the annual Birthplace of Route 66 Festival. Mark Forrester, director of communications and public relations for Assemblies of God’s General Council in Springfield, said the AG event brought to town roughly 2,000 international guests from 120 nations, and city organizers said nearly 4,000 people attended the Route 66 car show on Aug. 9.
While the recent activity is a large blip on the international radar screen, Tenney said it is not uncommon to have at least three to four groups of foreign tourists stay at the historic hotel each month.
“Believe it or not, international travelers are more excited about Route 66 than most of us who were born and raised here,” Tenney said. “It’s an icon to them.”
Most often he’s noticed groups of tourists from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Japan and Germany.
Lennon said the state Division of Tourism estimates Missouri attracts 350,000 to 375,000 international visitors a year. Canada is historically the No. 1 market for the Show-Me State – representing nearly 200,000 of the state’s annual international visitors – and this year Canadian travel is up 36 percent through mid-August. Lennon credits the marketing campaign targeting the neighbors to the north.
Other common visitors to the state include residents of Mexico, China, Japan and the United Kingdom, he said.
Lennon said the Division of Tourism has hosted two fan tours this year for travelers on Route 66 – one was for a group from India, and the other was for National Geographic. Both, he said, went through Springfield.
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