WCVB increases web traffic

The Whitefish Convention and Visitor

Bureau’s marketing efforts were hitting on all cylinders last year,

bureau officials told the Whitefish City Council last week.

Among the highlights were a 34 percent

increase in website traffic, a 42 percent increase in Amtrak

coach-seat revenue from a joint effort to bring passengers to

Whitefish, and one of the busiest winters ever for bringing travel

writers to the resort town.

The tourism group — a self-supporting

committee of the city of Whitefish — presented its marketing plan

for the coming fiscal year and extolled some very positive results

from the past year’s effort while asking the council to approve the

$60,000 portion of the bureau budget that’s generated from state

bed-tax collections. That part of the budget requires City Council

approval because it involves public money; the council unanimously

approved it.

A pending house bill in the Montana

Legislature would divert 10 percent of the state’s bed tax revenue

to the general fund, and if that passes Whitefish’s bed tax

allocation would drop to $54,000 for the coming year, bureau

director Jan Metzmaker said.

The Whitefish bureau’s base budget is

$280,000, most of which comes from a 1 percent tourism promotion

assessment on lodging, rental cars and restaurant purchases.

Whitefish retail businesses don’t charge the 1 percent assessment

because they pay flat fees for membership, based on whether they’re

a small, medium or large business.

The bureau saw a 17 percent increase in

collections from the 1 percent assessment last year, a positive

indicator the economy is turning around, Metzmaker said. Resort tax

revenue is up 11.6 percent over last year.

The Whitefish bureau broke away from

the Flathead Convention and Visitor Bureau in 1998 to pool its own

bed-tax dollars and concentrate on Whitefish marketing. That move

largely has paid off for Whitefish in the form of increased

resort-tax collections and dozens of promotional articles about

Whitefish published nationwide each year. Its annual bed-tax

collections also have increased considerably since 1998.

Nick Polumbus, chairman of the board

for the Whitefish Convention and Visitor Bureau, told the council

the bureau’s website traffic is rapidly increasing, with a 42

percent increase in page views over last year.

“There are 173 people who can update

the site, so we’re getting new content three to four times a day,”

Polumbus said. “We’re working on a [Whitefish] travel app so you

can use it from a Smartphone.”

The partnership with Amtrak continues

to be a good deal for Whitefish, he said.

“It’s been a huge success,” he said

about the Amtrak partnership. “We have really good stuff happening

in the Seattle market.”

Brian Schott, who along with Lisa Jones

handles targeted travel publicity for the bureau, said 180

journalists visited Whitefish during one of the busiest winters

ever for hosting travel writers. The result was a wide swath of

articles featuring Whitefish and Whitefish Mountain Resort in

publications ranging from Power Hound skiing magazine to the

Oregonian newspaper.

The Whitefish bureau participates in

many of the state tourism bureau’s cooperative marketing campaigns,

such as the wildly successful bus wrap advertisements in Chicago

featuring panoramic view of Montana.

Whitefish continues to deal with a

number of market challenges, though, including the long, drawn-out

recovery of the U.S. economy. Visitation patterns to Whitefish

continue to be highly seasonal, with peak demand during July and

August.

The bureau’s 2012 marketing plan lists

limited transportation infrastructure and lack of competitive

pricing for air access and limited airline seats as additional

challenges.

But based on data from the U.S. Travel

Association, “there are some reasons to be optimistic that

non-resident visitor numbers will increase in 2012,” the marketing

plan states. Consumer confidence is up but below normal. Recovery

is under way but will be slow.

Another wild card in the marketing

equation likely will be rising gas prices, which have the potential

to curb long-distance road trips this summer.