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Tusayan Chamber revs up marketing initiative with new plan

The Tusayan Chamber of Commerce created a new marketing plan to bring more tourism dollars to the gateway community just outside Grand Canyon National Park. (Photo/Town of Tusayan)

The Tusayan Chamber of Commerce created a new marketing plan to bring more tourism dollars to the gateway community just outside Grand Canyon National Park. (Photo/Town of Tusayan)

TUSAYAN, Ariz. — The Tusayan Chamber of Commerce has unveiled its new marketing plan to bring tourism revenue into Grand Canyon National Park gateway communities.

Its two key components are a digital visitor guide to supplement online marketing and networking cities throughout the region.

“This place (was) booming with the European market,” said Tusayan Chamber of Commerce President Stoney Ward. “But the pandemic had everyone step back and reorganize how they’re marketing. The old school system was visitors came in paid and we said ‘Thank you, we’ll see the next person now.’ Now it’s about creating relationships with the guest. That’s why we put our focus into YouTube, sending out articles and telling stories because in the next few years, if you don’t get into video you’re going to miss the boat.”

While the Grand Canyon attracted over 4.5 million visitors in 2021, that’s down from pre-pandemic visitation of 6.3 million in 2018, according to the park. However, 4.5 million visitors still translates to $710 million spent in gateway communities with 34 percent of that spent on lodging, 18 percent on recreation and 16 percent at local restaurants, according to a NPS report from last year.

“One of our goals is longer stays,” Ward said, “Normally the hotels are only getting one night visitors and if we can educate people to stay longer here or in the surrounding areas it will be a win-win no matter what because they’ll be so close.”

It’s an economic issue that’s projected to get worse because fewer people are predicted to stay overnight in lodges at the park in coming years, with a nearly one percent annual reduction through 2025, according to a 2019 Missouri State University study on dark sky tourism on the Colorado Plateau.

While the park naturally brings visitors to the area, the problem is that most people are just in and out, Ward said.

Educating people on the services available in Tusayan is the chamber’s focus, which could be accomplished by the Tusayan Chamber of Commerce’s new digital visitor guide.

Ward said the project received about $150,000 to create the brochure and general seed money from a matching fund grant through the Arizona Tourism Board.

Digital Visitor Guide

Going forward, the digital visitor guide is how the chamber will educate visitors and it will be expanded for future marketing initiatives. Now available for download at www.grandcanyoncvb.org, it has the look of traditional tour books but with hyperlinks to regional attractions and embedded videos to augment the reading.

“The brochure’s concept is that we wanted to show that we’re synergizing with all the surrounding areas,” Ward said. “We’re focusing on working with Williams, Sedona, Flagstaff, Lake Powell … and everything is driven by the analytics. It’s guiding us so that we do the right job.”

Shifting services and content

See Chamber, Page 2B

From page 1B

online is occurring throughout the chamber; they’re pushing for new members with applications and payments available online. As well as physically remodeling their office in Tusayan and opening a new information center at Raptor Ranch in Valle.

The chamber remodeled its Tusayan office with an emphasis on signage promoting the QR code to the digital visitor guide; it’s an example of how everything the chamber is doing “relates and combines together.” It emphasizes Ward’s plan of how takes people around seven impressions to make a purchase, however the user data and geotracking by the guide is another driver in its promotion.

The chamber’s Tusayan office is laid out to promote Northern Arizona attractions to increase overnight stays with the other half of the office for its Passport to Savings program and sweepstakes with a monitor in the middle for videos— however the installation isn’t anticipated to be completed until the end of the month according to Ward.

For the chamber a major component of the analytics is a focus on video to promote itself and its partner GrandCanyon.com.

“At ‘Arrival’ in October, a travel conference I’ve attended,” said Karlyn Bunting founder of GrandCanyon.com at the January Tusayan Chamber of Commerce meeting. “Google announced that in two years, the search experience will be a visual experience. We need to be working on both video and on image. …. but there’s also this other challenge YouTube requires consistency.“

That’s why you can see the duo of Bunting on Wardweekly on their YouTube channel @GrandCanyonTravelNews where the pair cover everything from regional travel updates to announcing sweepstakes.

Since January of 2022 the chamber has been with Tempe based public relations firm Off Madison Ave to test paid search with the goal of “promoting the discovery of the businesses and Tusayan events,” said Off Madison Ave’s Media Director Keri Bieber. Then to optimize their media plan based on search results.

Paid search generated 601,000 impressions during 2022 with a click through rate of 16.5 percent which is about four times the industry average according to Bieber. 2023 marketing will expand to social media site advertising on a budget of around $37,750 according to Ward.

This spring will have the digital visitor guide translated into different languages and advertising to international visitors on social media because in typical years they make up around a third of GCNP visitation. The chamber has lost around 80 to 90 percent of international visitors because of the pandemic according to Ward, who noted the positive developments of returning Chinese and German auctioneers.

“What’s exciting is that Arizona Tourism loves our concept,” Ward said. “Tusayan businesses are liking the digital format because they can update it and video allows them to tell the story about their business. Also no other communities are doing anything like this and we’ve been invited by the governor’s office to share what we’re doing and how to unite people together.”


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