Web campaign steers tourists to Salt Lake

With fears about the fate of the Outdoor Retailer trade show out of the way, the Salt Lake Convention and Visitors Bureau will square its shoulders and focus on what's next.

At the bureau's 2004 President's Forum, held Thursday at the Salt Palace Convention Center, Dianne Binger unveiled the organization's marketing plan for the coming year and outlined some of its strategies for bringing business and leisure travelers to Utah.

What's next, according to Binger, the bureau's president and chief executive, is a multifaceted campaign to capitalize on two of Salt Lake's biggest assets: its proximity to the "great outdoors" and its renowned family history resources.

Today the bureau will launch an Internet marketing campaign in partnership with the travel Web site Travelocity. The "one of a kind" program, developed for the bureau's Ski Salt Lake initiative, will direct Travelocity customers to the Ski Salt Lake Web site, where they can book real-time ski packages, including airfare, car rental, hotel and ski passes. The partnership also will give Ski Salt Lake $400,000 of in-kind advertising on the Web site.

The Ski Salt Lake program allows visitors to ski all four Salt Lake County ski resorts — Alta, Brighton, Snowbird and Solitude — on one "joint lift ticket."

"The program will put Ski Salt Lake on the top shelf of U.S. ski destinations — right where it belongs," Binger said. "We will benefit from the millions of Web hits Travelocity receives every month and drive additional business to Salt Lake."

During the 2003-2004 ski season, more than 46,000 Ski Salt Lake Super Passes were packaged with hotel rooms and sold to out-of-state skiers, a 53 percent increase over the previous year. The bureau's goal for the the 2004-2005 season is 68,000, Binger said.

But the program will have to do more with less in 2005, according to the bureau report. Funded in part by the state transient room tax, the total budget for the Ski Salt Lake program was $734,750 in 2004. In 2005, the program was allocated $676,350.

The bureau also will target the family history market in 2005. Marketing Salt Lake as the "Genealogy Capital of the World," Binger said it will advertise via targeted mailings and trade shows.

According to its report, the bureau added 3,000 genealogical societies to its database, which now contains 4,500 entries.