VisitKC.com Ranked Sixth Best in North America

KCCVA's Web site starts year on high

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. October 14, 2008

KANSAS CITY, MO, February 6, 2006. The Kansas City Convention & Visitors Association's Web site, VisitKC.com, has been ranked the sixth best destination Web site in North America. VisitKC.com earned the ranking in a study by Destination Consultancy Group LLC and Purdue University, the nation's leader in hospitality and tourism management education. This ranking tops a number of successes the site has had throughout the past year.

The study, called WebEVAL, ranked 485 Destination Marketing Association International (DMAI) member Web sites and benchmarked 785 Convention and Visitors Bureau Web sites. The sites were measured on their technical perspective, customer perspective, marketing effectiveness and destination information. VisitKC.com ranked sixth in both lists.

This ranking finishes the second and final phase of the study. This same evaluation was previously conducted in April 2005. The evaluation recommended areas for improvement, which were integrated into the site. After the first evaluation, VisitKC.com ranked 26th.

This new ranking comes after a strong year for the Web site. VisitKC.com received a complete redesign in early 2005, and saw more than 850,000 unique visitors-a record-breaking number for the site. Average visit length increased to nearly 16 minutes, up by almost one minute from the previous year. And page views on VisitKC.com reached more than seven million-a 68 percent increase over 2004.

In addition, VisitKC.com was recently recognized as the "Best CVB Web Site" by Meetings MidAmerica in an article called "Planners' Best Bets." The magazine asked their readers-top national meeting planners-to choose their favorite facilities, service elements and activities available to the meeting planning industry throughout North America. The magazine published VisitKC.com's honor in its January/February 2006 issue. "A content-rich, compelling Web site is essential in the destination marketing arena," said Jill Raines, vice president of marketing and communications for the KCCVA. "Our goal is for VisitKC.com to make it easy for meeting planners and visitors to discover Kansas City."

VisitKC.com will continue to evolve throughout 2006 with major redevelopment to the Meeting Planner and Media Room sections of the site. An Extranet is also being developed to empower KCCVA members to update their company information and calendar of events. "As we've worked to provide world-class service to visitors and meeting planners, the KCCVA has become an industry leader in Web development," said Raines. "We look forward to maintaining this momentum with new features."

About the Kansas city Convention & Visitors Association - The Kansas City Convention & Visitors Association is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to enhance economic growth and quality of life for the region and its residents through marketing, sales and service for the convention and tourism industries. For more information about all there is to see and do in Kansas City, visit the organization's Web site at VisitKC.com.