Professionally staffed visitors’ bureaus helped revitalize cities like Annapolis and Harrisburg — could it work in our area as well?
By: Sue Repko
Your college roommate and her family history buffs surprise you with the news that they’ll be in town for the holidays. But you’ve already got plans with your own extended family in Pennsylvania. How can your friends entertain themselves?
You try your local visitors’ center and find the perfect solution a central Jersey Holidays & History Package. It includes a visit to the Barracks Museum in Trenton and the re-enactment of George Washington’s historic crossing of the Delaware River. They’ll spend the night at the Trenton Marriott at Lafayette Yard and brunch in their highly regarded Archives restaurant. From there, they’ll head to Princeton Battlefield State Park and then make their way to the Princeton Historical Society, pick up a few walking maps, and tour the town and campus. Later, they’ll check into the Nassau Inn, founded in 1756, and dine at any one of Princeton’s fine restaurants.
If you’re tempted to skip out on your own family, don’t burn your bridges just yet because this sort of getaway package doesn’t actually exist.
But if the efforts of a group of concerned citizens and business leaders pay off, there will be historic tours and much more available to visitors to the region through the newly incorporated Capital Region Convention and Visitors Bureau, an outgrowth of the Greater Mercer County Chamber of Commerce and Princeton Regional Chamber of Commerce’s joint tourism committee.
The organization’s founders are currently assembling a board of directors and hope to retain an executive director by the end of the year.
"This has been talked about for a long time," said Dr. George A. Pruitt, president of Thomas Edison State College and one of the three original incorporators of the bureau, along with Carol Beske, president of ACT Engineers and former chair of the Mercer Chamber, and Dr. Beverly Richardson, provost at Mercer County Community College’s James Kerney Campus.
"I’ve been in the area for over twenty years," said Dr. Pruitt. "As a history buff, I’ve been frustrated by the lack of coordination of our tourist assets, particularly our historical ones. Other areas have had to create attractions to bring in visitors. We’ve already got them. We just need to promote them."
Overcoming bad turnpike jokes
"New Jersey as a whole with its history, natural resources, mountains and oceans has undersold itself as a true destination for tourists," said Maureen Smith, curator of the Historical Society of Princeton. "It takes a financial investment. You put in a little bit of money and you’ll get a whole lot back. Our guest book illustrates that people from scores of nations visit Princeton. That’s what we’re getting with very little effort."
Statistics bear out Ms. Smith’s observations.
New Jersey ranked seventh in tourism dollars spent by visitors even though the state ranked 23rd in state spending on tourism promotion, according to a national study done by the Travel Industry Association of America in 2001-2002.
Many business and political leaders view a coordination of all the attractions in the area as important as adequate funding. "We need a coordinated effort and the resources to link our history, buildings and architecture with other good things that we have like Princeton Battlefield and Washington Crossing State Park," said Trenton Mayor Doug Palmer.
Dr. Pruitt and the fledgling board of the Capital Region Convention and Visitors Bureau are up to that challenge. "We need to bring all the stakeholders to the same table," he said. "I’m more optimistic than I’ve been in a long time."
Learning from other capital cities
Several years ago, Dr. Pruitt and Dr. Richardson approached state officials in Trenton and received a grant to study how cities similar to Trenton in size and cultural assets draw tourism dollars into their economies. The team consisted of regional political and business leaders who visited towns like Richmond, Va., Savannah, Ga., Annapolis, Md., and Providence, R.I., which all had a convention and visitors’ bureau in place.
According to Dr. Pruitt, the study concluded that successful convention and visitors’ bureaus (CVBs) operate at a regional level rather than in just one locale; rely on some degree of public funding but are controlled and operated by the private sector; and are backed by the local chambers of commerce and the businesses that benefit from tourism, such as hotels, restaurants, entertainment venues and cultural institutions.
The move by the Greater Mercer County Chamber to incorporate a separate entity is similar to what has been done by these other capital city CVBs. Rose Mape, vice president of sales and marketing for the Hershey-Capital Region Visitors Bureau in Pennsylvania, said that the mission of the bureau is to identify the region’s assets. "Each part of a region needs to ask, ‘What’s our mission? What are our strengths?’ They need to know what their place is in the larger picture. I think that’s the biggest challenge."
While the mission of most chambers of commerce is to promote the economic well-being of an area’s businesses, CVBs take it one huge step further by actively soliciting tourism dollars. They are marketing organizations staffed by sales professionals who actively promote an area’s attractions, put together ad campaigns, seasonal and thematic travel packages, and attend trade shows to woo meeting planners for associations and professional organizations.
A reverberating theme among CVB employees is to "put heads in the beds." All their efforts go toward filling their members’ hotel beds and, consequently, their restaurants, theaters, shops, museums and stadiums. At the trade shows, competition is fierce among cities and regions for the substantial tourism dollars that come from meeting- and convention-goers. A single chamber of commerce would be hard-pressed to compete against the well-funded teams of marketing professionals that make up many regional CVBs.
Funding comes from various sources
CVBs are funded by a combination of membership dues, dedicated hotel taxes and state tourism grants. Membership dues structures vary along with the benefits, which might include listings in visitors’ and dining guides or brochure distribution at visitors’ centers.
The Hershey-Capital Region Visitors Bureau in Pennsylvania serves the state capital of Harrisburg and five counties. Participating hotels pay $10 per room per year to the bureau, while bed and breakfasts, theaters and restaurants pay a flat rate of $200 per year. About $175,000 of their $2 million operating budget comes from member dues. "One of our goals is to do away with membership fees in the next two years," said Ms. Mape. "But first we have to figure out how to replace those funds."
The member dues for the Annapolis & Anne Arundel County Conference and Visitors Bureau also vary according to the size and type of business, but don’t exceed $400 annually, according to Connie Del Signore, president. "We’re always re-evaluating whether to keep membership dues or switch to a pay-to-play system," she said. "Many businesses are cutting back on expenses and asking, ‘What do I get for my dues?’ With a pay-to-play system, they would pay for a specific program or benefit that the CVB would provide."
Need for a dedicated hotel tax
According to Ms. Del Signore, 75 percent of the Annapolis-Anne Arundel County CVB’s $1.3 million budget comes from one-half of 1 percent of the hotel tax. Most of the hotels are in Anne Arundel County, not in Annapolis proper. This is analogous to the Mercer County region, where most of the hotels are on the Route 1 corridor, not within the capital city limits. The Lafayette Marriott in Trenton opened in 2002 after many years in which the city was the only state capital in the nation without a hotel.
There would appear to be some funding hope on the horizon with the passage of a hotel tax by the New Jersey Legislature in July of this year. From Aug. 1, 2003 until June 30, 2004, the state is imposing a 7 percent tax on all hotel, motel and similar rentals. After July 1, 2004, the fee is reduced to 5 percent. This is on top of the existing 6 percent sales tax. As part of this bill, most New Jersey municipalities may impose a municipal tax up to 1 percent during the initial year and up to 3 percent after July 1, 2004.
Receipts from the state tax will be allocated among the State Council on the Arts; New Jersey Historical Commission; New Jersey Commerce & Economic Growth Commission; and the New Jersey Cultural Trust, thus supporting tourism in a trickle-down effect.
For now it seems that many municipalities in the region, such as Plainsboro, Princeton Borough, Trenton and West Windsor, are directing their own hotel tax receipts to their general funds. According to West Windsor Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh, the receipts will go to the general fund "to provide better public services like recreation which will benefit not only hotels, but also residents."
However, the failure to channel this new revenue back to its source in the form of tourism promotional efforts, as occurs in many other areas of the country, is a sore spot with hoteliers around the state. "Nobody likes to have taxes added to what you’re already doing. It gives you less of a competitive edge," said Doug Smolinski, general manager of Doral Forrestal in Plainsboro. "Certainly it would have been more palatable if the majority of the funds were going to increase business, but that’s not the case. It’s a tough economy and hard to argue against the state and municipal use of the funds."
State support for tourism is key
According to the 2002-2003 survey of the Travel Industry Association of America, Pennsylvania ranked third in the nation in tourism spending with a planned budget of $35 million. By contrast, New Jersey’s travel and tourism budget for fiscal year 2004 is set at $9 million, much of which is used for advertising in neighboring states to draw visitors to all parts of the state, but especially to the shore region, which brings in the most tourism dollars.
Ms. Del Signore, formerly of the Reading and Berks County Pennsylvania Visitors Bureau, described a coordinated and persistent effort on the part of Pennsylvania’s CVBs to get government support for tourism during her years in the state. "We worked closely with county commissioners, legislators and Governor (Tom) Ridge. He increased matching funds for tourism every year and we had support in the General Assembly. We were able to successfully educate politicians on the impact of what a CVB does in terms of return on money spent."
"There’s definitely a multiplier effect," said Mr. Smolinski, who has worked in a number of places around the country and seen the economic impact of CVBs. "When people come to conventions, they spend money in restaurants, shops, even on taxi cabs. It flows into all kinds of businesses."
Trenton Mayor Doug Palmer envisions an active CVB as one key to greater economic revitalization, but with only one hotel in the city, the estimated $160,000 revenue from the hotel tax is not nearly sufficient to fund a CVB. "There has to be a substantial amount of money that goes into tourism marketing," said Mayor Palmer. "We’re looking for the state to do much more for its capital city."
A dedicated hotel tax would make at least a portion of the Capital Region CVB budget self-sustaining. The more "heads in the beds," the greater the amount of available funding, and the more their constituent businesses thrive. And a thriving tourist economy means more jobs. "We see a CVB acting as an economic engine for more jobs," said Mayor Palmer. "This is virtually an untapped market. We’ve got so much history, yet we’re the best-kept secret."
Dr. Pruitt expects the board members of the Capital Region CVB, along with the executive director, to decide on the best funding mechanism for the CVB. It will be up to them to bring together its constituents to lobby for those funds, whether it be at the state level or for a dedicated hotel tax at the municipal level.
Rampaging tourists?
What might a successful CVB do for Mercer County? Will there be dozens of shuttles running between Route 1 hotels and the Sovereign Bank Arena? Hotels springing up along Trenton’s new light rail line? Hordes of tourists trooping along Nassau Street, making every day as crowded as Princeton University’s Reunions weekend?
The new board of the Capital Region Convention and Visitors Bureau has much to do before the region would ever experience that level of tourism. But in the current economy, local businesses would be in favor of efforts to boost revenues. Beth Perrino, president of Princeton Borough Merchants said, "We would welcome the opportunity to participate on the CVB and promote Princeton as a destination to shop, dine, attend cultural events and do business."
"The question is: will there be a healthy, purposeful, planned economy?" asked Dr. Pruitt. "The key to the economy of this region is a healthy and viable Trenton. Where it’s been done right, a CVB has enhanced the quality of life."