Administration & Marketing Technology


Administration


Overall management

  • Delivered a final 10-year Destination Strategic Plan (DSP) with Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) for Wake County. The results identified actions that destination partners can take, in conjunction with the Greater Raleigh Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB), to impact overnight visitation along three visitor channels: meetings and conventions, sporting events and leisure visitation.
  • This plan, which is organized according to eight priorities, now serves as a blueprint for the area's destination development, with Wake County government, the 12 municipalities, the CVB and many destination partners having collective and individual roles.
  • The Blue Ribbon Task Force, made up of local private sector leaders, was developed to assist with the advocacy and implementation of the DSP. This group is meeting quarterly and assisting the CVB with opportunities related to interlocal funding, destination development and community engagement.
  • The CVB hired a director of destination development who leads the implementation of assigned (DSP) priorities within Events, Key Attractors, Destination Development and Quality of Place.
  • DSP priorities have been divided into sub-priorities and assigned to CVB department directors for implementation, tracking and follow-through. The staff has worked to build a fully-automated tracking process for monthly review and report-out to the Administrative Department and the Board of Directors.
  • The CVB received a clean audit for fiscal year 2018-2019.
     

Community relations

  • Hosted the second annual Wake County Hospitality Job Fair in partnership with the Raleigh Convention Center, Capital Area Workforce Development and the N.C. Restaurant and Lodging Association.
  • Developed an esports strategy as recommended in the DSP, which included a partnership with Big Block/Subnation—a creative services company, IP accelerator and consulting company specializing in esports—the development of the Greater Raleigh Esports Local Organizing Committee and booked our first major esports competition with UbiSoft/ESL at the Raleigh Convention Center.
  • Hosted a successful Hotel Development Summit in partnership with JLL with representatives attending from nine of Wake County's municipalities.
  • Worked closely with the Hospitality Tax Review Committee as well as the City of Raleigh and Wake County staff to ensure that there is common measurement when evaluating future projects using Interlocal Funds. Had input and guidance for the County and City Managers' Interlocal review process and community request-for-information process.
  • Hosted six municipal meetings and made six municipal presentations to town councils and chambers of commerce.
  • Created and implemented a comprehensive community engagement plan.
     

Awards received

  • The Bureau was voted a 2018 Stella Award bronze winner in Meetings & Conventions and Successful Meetings magazines. Meeting planners voted the CVB as one of the top three bureaus in the Southeast.
  • Won two awards from the Destination Marketing Association of N.C. Special Interest Group of the N.C. Travel 
    Industry Association: Platinum in the Community Stakeholders category for the revamped Tourism Talk “umbrella” of tactics for local community engagement; and Gold in the Meetings and Conventions category for four packaged tradeshow themes.
  • The Greater Raleigh Sports Alliance was a 2019 Reader’s Choice Award winner voted on by the readers of SportsEvents Magazine.
  • Received a Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International Silver Adrian Award for its newly-redesigned visitRaleigh.com, launched Dec. 2018. Out of more than 1,100 entries submitted, visitRaleigh.com was judged to be exceptional by experts in hospitality, travel, tourism and media.
  • Won the Best Booth Awards at the Association Executives of N.C. Annual Showcase and Exhibits for the "Raleigh Cares" theme and activation with the Raleigh Rescue Mission.
  • Received a Gold 2019 Hermes Creative Award for the redesigned website, which was judged by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals.
  • Received the Award of Excellence from the meeting planner readers of Corporate & Incentive Travel magazine, who voted for the CVBs that best served their corporate meetings during the past year.

 

Marketing Technology


Three million-plus website sessions and six million-plus pageviews on visitRaleigh.com

Having successfully-launched a new website platform and content management system (CMS) for visitRaleigh.com last fiscal year, this fiscal year—with an increased focus on rich content and insider articles—website traffic has grown, paired with seamless integrations with Yelp, OpenTable and TripAdvisor for an enhanced user experience. Thanks to high-ranking destination content on organic searches and a constantly-changing user-generated content experience, visitRaleigh.com website traffic hit a new high of more than three million sessions and more than six million pageviews, with an average session duration of 00:02:38.
 

AudioEye—providing accessibility technology on visitRaleigh.com

Started the process to make our website more accessible. We partnered with AudioEye to help provide an always-on approach to the changing needs of accessibility technologies via the web. The AudioEye solution will improve the usability of visitRaleigh.com, providing everyone with an optimal, customizable and fully-inclusive digital experience. This technology helps ensure that the CVB's website is optimized to provide an accessible user experience conforming to WCAG 2.0 Level AA.
 

Public relations reporting technology

Worked in conjunction with the Public Relations (PR) and International Tourism Department in deploying Cision Impact, the industry’s first technology to measure the impact of earned media and marketing programs by better understanding how they're influencing buyer behavior. This will accurately measure PR’s impact on revenue, validate the reach of CVB content and leverage engagement data on how, when and where content is viewed. This allows PR to arrive at true ROI metrics by adding conversion data to reporting, such as on-site purchase or leads generated.
 

Updates to business intelligence dashboards

Continued to enhance the reporting capabilities within our business intelligence solution. Several new dashboard metrics provide staff with a departmental breakdown of metrics by region and municipality to monitor and make informed decisions on email, web and social media trends or the prospective economic impacts from arriving groups.
 

Integrated app data controlled and validated via Partner Information eXchange Login (PIXL)

Partnered with a new app provider that directly integrates with our Simpleview customer relationship management platform. This enabled the CVB to work with a number of information sources for group app deployment. The Information Technology (IT) Department was able to successfully deploy an automated workflow process for partners to enter and manage data via PIXL. For example, managed data for the International Bluegrass Music Association's World of Bluegrass event and PNC presents Wide Open Bluegrass with data sources consisting of the conference schedule, vendors, deals and events.
 

Housing technology updated platform—Meetingmax

Deployed and trained on several housing system improvements affecting the Sales, Convention Services and Sports Marketing Departments. These improvements were related to interface face-lift, navigational updates and major core system improvements via the integrated housing solution for conventions, meetings and events utilizing two or more hotels. A key benefit is better control of hotel inventories. Planners, hotels and housing staff see inventory statuses and can make quick changes to better meet attendee needs while maximizing room blocks.