Mr. Dauner

Sales & Marketing

On Cultural Tourism: How Embracing an Important Market Segment Can Sell More Room Nights

By Bob Dauner, Vice President, Sales & Business Development, BeDynamic, Inc

As a hospitality industry professional, you recognize the importance of actively engaging your guests, learning more about what brings them to town and what they are doing in your city once they've checked in. Beyond business travel and family vacations, you've probably noticed that an increasing number of your guests are special interest travelers in pursuit of cultural attractions such as the arts, heritage, and other cultural activities. These individuals - known as "cultural travelers" - collectively make up the rapidly growing and lucrative market segment of cultural tourism.

Cultural tourism is an emerging market that has appeared on the radar screens, and marketing plans, of travel industry suppliers in recent years. The cultural tourism segment is comprised of a select group of travelers who either plan a trip to attend a cultural activity or who actively participate in cultural activities while on a trip, even if they are traveling for other reasons.

Cultural attractions educate, elevate and entertain travelers worldwide. The majority of Americans who take domestic trips say they include cultural, arts, heritage or historic activities on their itineraries. In fact, according to research conducted by the Travel Industry Association of America (TIA), 81% of U.S. adults who took at least one trip of 50 miles or more - one way - away from home included at least one such activity or event while traveling. This represents 118.1 million adult historic/cultural travelers. More than half of these travelers, approximately 61 million, reported that attending a cultural event of activity was the reason for taking the trip.

Characteristics of the cultural tourist

TIA identifies the cultural tourist as a traveler who loves history and culture and tends to spend more and stay longer than the average tourist. Their research defined some key characteristics that distinguish cultural tourists from other travelers:

More importantly, TIA also found that, in comparison to the average U.S. traveler, cultural tourists:

While this is all fascinating data, what does it mean for the hotel industry? Quite simply it means great economic opportunity as many travelers initiate or extend their trips specifically to participate in cultural events and activities. With 40% of travelers adding extra time to their trips to attend an event, you could be capturing some of these 47 million incremental room nights!

But, how does a hotelier tap into that potential? First, it is critical to create working partnerships between the commercial, cultural, and public sectors. The benefits of increased cultural tourism accrue to all sectors. Partnerships can help expand hotel revenues, further the mission of cultural and non-profit arts organizations, and offer sustainable economic development opportunities for the full range of a community's travel-related businesses. Then, it is critical to leverage the strengths and resources of those partnerships to aggressively market the local arts, history and cultural assets that distinguish your destination and attract the cultural tourist.

A successful example of an arts and business collaboration is the Seattle Convention & Visitors Bureau (SCVB). A non-profit economic development agency, SCVB is responsible for marketing the Seattle area as a destination for conventions, tour groups, and individual travelers. The bureau's goal is to enhance the economic prosperity of the greater Puget Sound region and assist members in marketing their programs and events to visitors.

To accomplish its objectives, SCVB actively markets Seattle's arts and culture scene via hotels, travel agents, tour operators, meeting planners, and visitors. Key to this effort is a unique partnership with BeDynamic, a content management company that provides the rich content and technology-based tools for capturing and promoting Seattle's extensive arts, culture and entertainment landscape. Using SCVB's Web site as a centralized source to promote information to individual travelers, and by publishing a monthly "Fresh Sheet," a subscription-based resource for hotels, travel agents, tour operators and more, BeDynamic is helping SCVB provide Puget Sound-area businesses with more accurate and complete access to information about the cultural events in the region. This destination leadership engages a solid partnership between organizations needing to promote their events and travel industry suppliers and the hotels whose guests need to know what is happening in the Seattle area.

"Too many times, you visit an online events calendar that has static, outdated information," said Tracey Wickersham, SCVB's cultural tourism director. "Our partnership with BeDynamic is essential in helping us to not only raise the visibility of regional events, but to maintain the accuracy and timeliness of the information we provide. The online calendar of events is one of the major reasons visitors come to our Web site."

To keep content fresh and current, BeDynamic coordinates with hundreds of local organizations to update SCVB's online calendar, meaning site visitors always have access to the latest and greatest information. The calendar includes specific event information with details such as date, price, times, helpful hints and links to sponsoring organizations' Web sites. BeDynamic has created a database to proactively deliver electronic content on more than 6,000 regional, metropolitan, and neighborhood events from over 400 contributing venues on a regular basis. According to Wickersham, "Outsourcing is critical for us to achieve this level of service delivery given our available staff resources."

"Providing a high level of quality information helps hotels better service guests, which is a good investment for businesses, as it gives visitors more reasons to choose your city," said Wickersham. "Using this information to reach the cultural tourism market can be key in building the incremental business that can impact the bottom line. Our partnership with BeDynamic, combined with their community resources and collaborative work, supports SCVB's mission to achieve economic prosperity for the Seattle region, which is a win-win for everyone."

To increase your hotel revenues, plan to leverage your destination cultural attractions and capitalize upon your assets in the cultural tourism market. Seek out strategic partnerships that can help you tap into this growing market to increase your bottom line.

Bob Dauner is Vice President, Sales at BeDynamic, Inc., a content management solution provider for the destination sales and marketing industry. He has more than 20 years of experience with Hyatt Hotels & Resorts and Starwood/Westin Hotels & Resorts in a broad range of sales and marketing positions in on-property, regional, national and global levels. He has led teams in the destination sales and marketing industry, and provided thought leadership, practice direction and key account sales management in the Customer Relationship Management consulting practice of Cambridge Technology Partners. Mr. Dauner can be contacted at 408-358-8603 or bobd@bedynamic.com Extended Bio...

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