Yes, these are exceedingly tough times for the consumer and our travel business. But it’s also a time to strengthen your program by focusing on this important marketing axiom: It is during turbulent economic downturns that DMOs have the very best opportunity for increasing destination market share.

Market share doesn’t shift during good times when the total “economic pie” traditionally grows and most destinations prosper. Instead, it can increase during times of economic downturn—with lower ADR, less hotel room nights sold and corresponding reductions in the bed tax and destination marketing budgets.

That is when some CVBs may pull back—and when some savvy competitors can catch a new paradigm—increasing either their budget or their programming: to produce an increased share of voice and customer awareness, and resulting market share in relationship to the competition.

No one ever said this is an easy task. Yet some CVBs are already making it happen, even as you read this newsletter. They have partnered with their communities to increase their share of hotel transient taxes to plough back into marketing programming. Others are also revisiting their marketing plans to increase staff activity and performance results.

In my fall ‘08 newsletter, I provided an action plan to produce new funding (see archived newsletters at: MMTourismMarketing.com). In this issue, we’ll now review some strategic opportunities for staff performance enhancement—particularly for convention and meeting development, although these methods are also applicable for leisure group tourism development.

Staff Training

Performance enhancement begins with a savvy, professionally trained staff, skilled in techniques of research, planning, customer prospecting and the closing of business.

Attending educational forums is a good first step, but a greater need is for new customized staff sales training that focuses on overcoming customer objections in relationship to the destination and its unique requirements. These sessions should also involve your primary community constituents including hotel and center sales staff.

The team sell concept, which can involve broad based partnership efforts with hotels, convention center and others, certainly trumps individual CVB staff efforts.

They can enhance your reputation for customer commitment and assure stronger booking efforts—particularly when partners can confirm date and rate availability on the spot during joint sales calls.

Here’s where the real difference can occur in producing more business.  

If you can produce more marketing activity, you will in turn correspondingly generate more marketing productivity.

Think of it as “pouring” more activity into a big metaphorical marketing funnel, so to speak. This activity should include:

In response, the funnel should then ultimately produce, over time, more bookings, room nights, visitor receipts, community tax revenue and ultimately jobs generated by meeting/convention spending.

Obviously, the process is not that simplistic. At the very least, it requires a new perspective for increasing activity that does not minimize the current conversion rate of sales activity to achieved booked productivity.

Extending customer reach and frequency of message can best be achieved by focusing on the following:

Maximizing the team-sell approach—can you effectively increase your presence in the marketplace through this important, ongoing initiative?

Increased sales calls—finally, and most importantly, are you reaching the optimum number of potential clients through an effective program of sales calls? For example, if it were feasible for your staff to increase the total number of productive sales calls by 20%, it would not be unusual for you to actually deliver a corresponding 20% increase in total annual bookings—and that would bring about a dramatic increase in business for your community.

In summary, spending financial and manpower resources smarter will always have corresponding results, and these concepts mentioned are just a good beginning for your thoughtful considerations. 

The concept of building market share is a strategic issue, one requiring full staff deliberation and input.