This month GRCVB released our Official Media Kit for 2024-2025, a collection of Bureau-approved avenues to promote your business or organization to potential visitors.

While every hospitality partner in Wake County already receives free, year-round exposure from the CVB, including an always-present listing on visitRaleigh.com, we also offer supplemental channels outlined in the Media Kit to provide you with additional ways that you can get your attraction, restaurant, hotel, festival/event or service in front of visitors (or CVB clients) who are soon arriving or still planning a trip to Raleigh/Wake County.

We work to highlight partners on a rotating basis in visitRaleigh.com and Visitors Guide articles, other publication mentions or posts through our social media accounts, destination-themed advertisements, Visitor Information Center materials and through PR pitches/earned media.

We wrap all of GRCVB's officially approved advertising opportunities into one Official Media Kit so you will know which vendors have entered into working relationships with us and can easily compare the programs side-by-side. We realize you get offers from many different outlets to promote your business, but only paid promotions included in the kit are approved by GRCVB.

Here's some more information about opportunities noted in the Media Kit:

• Official Visitors Guide (OVG)
  • Ads in the OVG are managed through Compass Media, which specializes in visitor guide publications. The staff from Compass is also instrumental in developing the editorial content and design of the annual guide alongside CVB staff and partners.
  • The 2024 edition of the OVG was released in February and is in distribution, which means there are copies in visitor centers around the state, at RDU International Airport and at hotels/other front desks in Wake County. Our Destination Services team has also been sending copies as usual to prospective visitors who have requested visitor info.
  • Next year's guide is scheduled to be available in early Feb. 2025, which means the ad cycle is open now and will continue to be open through Sept. 2024. Our reps from Compass (John Balhouse or Casey Hough) will attend the 2024 Annual Meeting to answer questions about or accept reservations for this opportunity.
• Opportunities on visitRaleigh.com (and raleighsports.org):
  • Ads on visitRaleigh.com are managed through Destination Travel Network (DTN). DTN specializes in online ad sales for many destination marketing organizations (and can discuss paid placements outside of Raleigh, if desired). If you view pages 4‒8 of the Media Kit, you will see placement options on visitRaleigh.com, from homepage sponsor slots to run-of-site banners.
  • Partners can read the details in the kit and contact DTN director of sales Lia Wik for more info at any time.
• Meetings Watch quarterly blast:
  • If your business is interested in targeting the meeting-planning market, check page 9 for banner ad pricing in our Meetings Watch email blast, sent to more than 4,000 meeting professionals and event-planning clients each quarter.

While Wake County hotels know that nearly all of their guests arrive from out of town, we like to remind our restaurant business partners that county tourism tax data tell us that on any given day throughout the year, approximately 20% of restaurant clientele is visiting (as opposed to residing in) Wake County.

We hope you find these resources great methods to intentionally target advertising to the visitor channels around Raleigh and Wake County beyond garnering sales from the residential channel alone. Reach out to us to get started!