By now, we're hoping all of our hospitality partners in Wake County are aware of our Destination Brand Promise:

Visitors to Raleigh will depart feeling enriched by what they have experienced in this Southern capital city, thanks to Raleigh's smart and passionate residents who are shaping the growth of the historic city's emerging creative businesses, innovative festivals and food establishments, passionate music and sports scenes and modern cultural experiences.

But how can individual attractions or retailers put this brand concept into practice?

Visitor participation and spending with your industry vary widely by type of attraction (excluding shopping, which is known to capture 43% of Wake County day-trippers' total trip spending, for instance). However, activities and attractions overall are often the most important satisfiers for visitors on their trips; in many cases, attraction mix is the main reason for a trip, and attraction experiences provided are the trip's most memorable and ones visitors most associate with their memories of an entire destination.

Your industry plays a critical role in fulfilling the destination's brand promise to our 15+ million annual visitors. It is important to note that the average visitor circulates through many activities on a single trip and usually has not focused his/her trip solely on your event/attraction; it is also important to make yourself a valued member of the network of area attractions, so that each visitor will sense that our hospitality is seamless, that our players are collaborative and interconnected and that the destination brand coheres.

Top considerations for getting started:

• Examine the addresses associated with customer/patron purchases or sign-ups at your attraction/store; determine how many of your customers/patrons are out-of-county visitors and how much of your staff time should be devoted to visitor/customer service. Some area attractions have been surprised to learn that 70% of their patronage comes from visitors and have adjusted their marketing strategies accordingly.
• Study your own unique selling proposition (USP) to customers/patrons, and contemplate your attraction's positioning strategy in the greater context of Raleigh, N.C. Is yours compelling and competitive with the hundreds of other attractions in our destination? How unique is your attraction/retail experience within the county, region, state, Southeast and U.S.? Does GRCVB know about your uniqueness in order to use it as a trip motivator?
• Review the destination's new target audiences found in the Raleigh, N.C., Marketing Blueprint. Compare and contrast these to the types of customers/patrons that you want to attract and retain. Are there additional ways you want to cooperatively advertise alongside GRCVB to reach these qualified audiences?
• Consider how your attraction/store's strategy for customer experience (the emotions you evoke, the memories you instill) does or doesn't mesh well with the destination brand promise above and brand elements found in the Raleigh, N.C., Destination Brand Strategy Manual. Can you implement theme lines or additional experience offerings to better deliver the promise? Should your staff participate in CVB-offered tours and trainings to learn to relate the destination brand firsthand? Are your front lines "area aware"?