Traverse City Tourism

1. Marketing the destination Traverse City Tourism focuses the majority of its marketing efforts on the leisure travel market knowing that leisure also drives group demand. Target audiences vary depending on the time of year, theme, events, and attraction highlights. Throughout much of the year we target market segments that align with our values and show a propensity to convert. Frequent themes for promotion include: agriculture, culinary and wine / craft beverage offerings; outdoor recreation; events; golf; and sleeping bear dunes. Addition areas of focus include shopping, entertainment, casinos and more. Tct engages in collaborative marketing partnerships with regional partners to build awareness of common regional assets among targeted interest groups and collaborates with pure Michigan at a national and regional level to promote our region. Success is measured over the long-term impact on the destinations economy, as well as by evaluating near-term accomplishments reaching targeted audiences with our campaign. We use google analytics, smith travel research, airdna, and other research tools to track our marketing efforts and conversion. One of the best indicators of effectiveness is monitoring our monthly assessment collection to analyze year-over-year revenues. We actively review visitor numbers to the sleeping bear national lakeshore and tvc throughput. We also seek out anecdotal information from our members to help determine what they are observing and to corroborate the data with personal experiences and member data. 2. Promoting and supporting conferences, meeting and group travel, and international Traverse City Tourism has a sales and group services department that assists those planning a meeting or other group event in the area. Our primary goal is to proactively attract meetings and events that take place during off-peak times (need times), helping ensure greater industry sustainability by spreading out demand for hospitality businesses and staff resources. Target group markets include but are not limited to state, regional and national associations; corporate; smerf (social, military, education, religious and fraternal); sports; and group tours.

3. Destination development Traverse City Tourism supports efforts being put forth - including large- scale regional partnerships that are focused on the development of new or improved regional assets such as sports facilities and attractions. Further, it provides a range of supports for events and business models that can enhance our regional appeal and reputation and workforce-related initiatives that can bolster the future sustainability of the hospitality industry and ensure a strong local economy.