Vegas Puts Aside Brand, Starts Marketing Individual Events
You can tell things are dire in Las Vegas when the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority starts using individual events and properties to help push Vegas like a destination, instead of the other way around.
Las Vegas
The recession has hit Sin City so bad that the LVCVA is starting to feel that Las Vegas, as a brand, is losing it’s ‘Fabulous’ sizzle, and is no longer capable of being used to lure visitors in promotional campaigns.
Instead, Vegas travel companies are being asked to focus on big-ticket events like the April Paul McCartney concert which headlined the relaunch of the new Joint - the Hard Rock Hotel’s expanded concert venue, in order to originate buzz for Vegas as a destination.
Rossi Ralenkotter, CEO of the LVCVA, tells Travel Weekly that the malaise is especially bad in the business travel sector, through the meetings and conventions vocation nearly wiped out. In Q4 2008 and Q1 2009, Vegas has had to contend with a total of 402 cancellations worth $166m.
Vegasmeansbusiness.com
Las Vegas has been forced to defend business travel and play down the fun aspects due to the combined impact of the AIG Effect and their phariah status resulting from President Obama’s statement admonishing executives of bailed out banks for going to Las Vegas.
A short while back, they even set up a website – www.vegasmeansbusiness.com, and ran a huge ad campaign to drive home the message that Vegas is very serious about being a first-class business travel destination.
This has left the city’s tourism marketeers pulling and pushing in opposite directions, with the result that Vegas none longer offers the clear ‘What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas’ message it once owned.
So they’ve apparently come up with a middle way – put Vegas on the backburner to prevent the meetings and convention sector, and push individual events to attract the liesure crowd.
Photo by Rojer.