SALT LAKE CITY – As urban tourism and the convention market slowly return to pre-pandemic levels, Salt Lake County’s tourism officials want travelers to know that it is more than an urban and outdoor destination.
Yes, the county throws off everything you might have thought you knew about Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County. With a new branding campaign launched Thursday with the tagline “West of Conventional”, district officials want you to see it as a place where differences mix.
Building on the dynamics of nature alongside urban life, the new “intersection” brand focuses on other differences: It is a “meeting point” where history and new developments meet and “traditional perspectives are mixed with progressive ideals”.
“We’re different. We’re a side-by-side city,” said Kaitlin Eskelson, president and CEO of Visit Salt Lake, a private, nonprofit that promotes tourism in Salt Lake County. “We have the city and the mountains. Some of our slogans are a little bit of ‘holy ground’, a little bit of ‘breaking new ground’. Things that shouldn’t go together are miraculously happening here in Salt Lake. And that’s so different than what our competitors have to offer. “
The county and Visit Salt Lake partnered with Wisconsin-based marketing agency BVK to create a new brand centered around the bonds found in Salt Lake City. Stephanie Barkow, senior vice president of Insights and Planning for the agency, said the goal of the project is to find something that offers travelers what they want in a travel destination, but also represents what Salt Lake City and Salt Lake represent County have to offer offer.
They conducted a “comprehensive competitive communications test” of other cities in and near the Intermountain West, such as Albuquerque, NM; Boise, Idaho; Denver; Portland, Oregon; Reno-Tahoe, Nevada; and Tucson, Arizona, which Salt Lake City competes with when it comes to attracting convention and leisure travelers. This audit checked what other markets had and how those markets advertised themselves so they could find a brand that was different from the competition.
Barkow said there was “a lot of overlap” when it came to the “recreation meets urban lifestyle” messages from different cities.
“We knew we had to find something that was nuanced, that was different, and that really helped hold on to Salt Lake,” she said.
To get there, researchers from the BVK had to take a few steps. They interviewed residents from all possible backgrounds and found that, of course, residents appreciate the region’s beauty; But they also quickly expressed their appreciation for how “open-minded and integrative and lively and cosmopolitan and future-oriented” the area is, said Barkow. Your interlocutors saw it as a place where people come together despite different origins.
Inspired by what they heard from local residents, the BVK market analysts then started a so-called Traveler Perception Study. They interviewed nearly 1,000 regional and distant travelers from equally diverse backgrounds to see if outsiders understood that Salt Lake was what the Salt Lakers viewed their community as being.
Salt Lake is so much more modern and fresher, more open-minded and livelier than you think. It is a place that allows openness and unconventional thinking for a better way.
–Stephanie Barkow, Senior Vice President of Insights and Planning at BVK
Researchers found that outsiders think the Salt Lake area is beautiful and is home to many outdoor activities. They also consider it a safe place and a great place to raise a family. However, the interviewed outsiders did not notice other details of which the residents are particularly proud.
“They didn’t see the vibrancy (Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County), the rich cultural scene, the arts scene, the entertainment,” Barkow said. “So they decided to go to other places that had all of these things … because they thought they would have a richer experience in those destinations.”
From there, they took over the other parts of the traveler survey: what the outsiders are looking for when they travel somewhere. They found that Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County have what travelers want, but the perception of it falls short of reality.
“Salt Lake is so much more modern and fresher, more open-minded and livelier than people think,” she added. “It is a place that enables openness and unconventional thinking for a better way. It is a place that is diverse and fresh. “
A new tourism brand concept was born.
Along with the new branding, Salt Lake County officials and Visit Salt Lake on Thursday unveiled a new logo that features a salt crystal design. It represents the many facets of Salt Lake County that align with the new branding approach. Salt Lake County officials said they believe this is a branding campaign wide enough to fit various tourism sectors in the area.
Thursday’s announcement comes at a crucial time for city tourism. The COVID-19 pandemic has decimated the tourism industry around the world, including Utah. While tourism in rural parts of the state – especially near national parks – has already recovered and even prospered, Tourism in urban Utah is slowly picking up speed again.
The exact economic damage to Salt Lake County’s tourism from the pandemic is still being calculated, but estimates put it at least hundreds of millions of dollars. The loss of conventions in 2020 alone resulted in an estimated $ 357 million loss for the county. Delays in Salt Lake County’s tourism industry also mean delays for the state as a whole, as the county generated more than a third of the state’s total tourism spending in 2019 when tourism made the state $ 10 billion.
But Eskelson and Salt Lake County officials believe last year’s experience had a silver lining. Visit Salt Lake had time to review the Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County’s tourism brand and see how it could be improved. They wanted something “big and bold” for recreation from leisure and business travel, which is expected to be the case by this summer as more people have received the COVID-19 vaccine and fewer restrictions are associated with the coronavirus.
Salt Lake County’s Deputy Mayor Erin Litvack said they decided to launch the new brand on Thursday to help the region gain market share as the travel industry recovers. The new brand will be immediately promoted locally, regionally and nationally through primarily digital and social media, according to Eskelson.
The county also plans to unveil 10 new murals across the county and deploy a mobile salt grotto at various conventions to promote the new brand throughout the summer.
“This brand is a key element in our recovery,” said Litvack. “It feels a bit like a rebirth – if you will – our industry. The new visitor management is just around the corner and we will secure our place in it. It’s the perfect opportunity to improve our game in terms of attracting visitors. “
×
:strip_exif(true):strip_icc(true):no_upscale(true):quality(65):fill(FFF)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gmg/ZGHKPDYCHVGOFFEJWEMXFNRLWA.jpg "Might marks first month since pandemic Orange County didn’t must dip into tourism tax reserves"){kind=small}
