Close-to-Home Tourism Promotion Hits the Road

Truck Promotes Maryland Attractions

With $4-a-gallon gas prices and airline fuel surcharges casting a chill over summer travel plans, Maryland tourism promoters are setting their sights decidedly closer to home this season.

In April, state tourism officials launched a $2 million effort to persuade residents of its two largest urban centers, Washington and Baltimore, to vacation in their own back yard.

"Usually states don't spend a lot of time focused on their own residents, but I thought it was time," said Margot Amelia, executive director of the Maryland Office of Tourism.

"Sometimes you have to remind people. Our destinations have changed a lot in the last 15 years."

Tourism is an $11 billion industry in Maryland, and the state has long pitched itself aggressively as a beach-to-mountain destination. In recent years, those campaigns have cast a regional and national net in the search for tourists.

This year's narrowed focus is based on research showing that the vast majority of "visitors" to Maryland are, in fact, Marylanders or their closest neighbors. About one-quarter of tourists to Maryland come from the Washington area, including the District's Maryland and Virginia suburbs; 14 percent come from Baltimore. Ten percent come from Philadelphia, which is also a target market of the campaign.

Given the sluggish economy and eye-popping fuel prices, officials decided to make their pitch more local this time around. The state's "Pretty. Close." campaign uses print, broadcast and Internet ads to let locals know about such new attractions as the Gaylord National Resort at National Harbor in Prince George's County and the indoor whitewater of the Adventure Sports Center at Deep Creek Lake, and to spark memories of such venerable standbys as Ocean City and the many corners of the Chesapeake Bay.

Additionally, the small marketing zone allows for a more industrial medium for the state's message, a decorated truck that travels the interstates to the District, Baltimore and Philadelphia. The panel truck, a rolling billboard emblazoned with images of Edgar Allan Poe, a Preakness racehorse, a lighthouse and other Free State icons, will set up this summer at such crowd magnets as the African American Heritage Festival in Baltimore and Safeway's National Capital Barbecue Battle in downtown Washington. When fully deployed, the display includes a rock-climbing feature, kayak, mountain bike and Wii fishing and golf games.

"People love it," said tourism office spokeswoman Camila Clark. "It's allowed us to reach out to a lot of local consumers we hadn't reached before. It's getting a lot of attention."

Campaign planners even dropped former advertising buys in Richmond and in Harrisburg and Lancaster, Pa., redirecting those marketing dollars to the closer metropolitan areas that produce more visitors to Maryland's attractions.

The targets of the promotion, Wii games and all, are primarily women between the ages of 25 and 54, Clark said, because they tend to be the travel planners in the family.

Officials said it was too early to tell if the campaign has put Maryland on any additional holiday itineraries, but they are planning an analysis at year's end.

One thing not likely to appear in this Maryland tourism initiative is a commercial featuring the current governor. A series of lighthearted spots starring former governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) as the state's tourism pitchman touched off a controversy when Democrats accused him of using public ads to pump up his likability. (Ehrlich played a governor so eager to get tourists to Maryland that he offered to take over their household chores).

"I don't think you'll be seeing [Gov. Martin O'Malley] in any of these ads," Amelia said.