Utah RFP On Advertising Effectiveness and ROI Research
The Utah Office of Tourism (Office) is seeking the professional services of a research firm to work as a collaborative partner in acquiring advertising effectiveness research that will assist the Office in marketing and promoting responsible travel to Utah in regional, national and international markets, with consideration to in-state promotion, as appropriate. The purpose of this request for proposal is to enter into a contract with a qualified firm to provide research data and analysis illustrating the effectiveness of Utah Office of Tourism advertising campaigns.
The Utah Office of Tourism primarily promotes Utah as a vacation destination to out-of-state travelers, generating state and local tax revenues that strengthen Utah’s economy. Recent in-state promotion has helped Utah’s economy throughout the pandemic, and has also generated interest in sustainable and responsible tourism, and pride of place.
Background
The Utah Office of Tourism is the state agency responsible for branding and marketing Utah to a variety of audiences including: potential visitors, the travel trade industry, and where appropriate to business, film, media, and brand development opportunities. The Office also works with local communities to identify visitor economy initiatives aligned with their identities, abilities and desires. In addition, the Office works with stakeholders to guide responsible travel initiatives supporting a long term local and statewide perpetual tourism economy.
Marketing the brand, as well as communicating Utah’s various natural venues, visitation options, cultural and heritage attractions, and overall destination quality are central to UOT’s mission. It is important that this marketing effectiveness is tracked – to assess what is working, what is not and to find ways to increase efficiency over time. The Office sets out to promote the advantages of visiting Utah and to create advertising that effectively motivates visitation, generating travel interest and expenditures that would not occur otherwise.
Specifically, the Office classifies most marketing opportunities into the following categories:
1.Southern Utah+ Campaign: tactics used to promote national and state parks, water activities, outdoor adventure, cultural attractions, and nearly all activities performed in Southern Utah in all seasons.
2. Ski+ Campaign: tactics are mainly used to promote snow activities associated in and around one of Utah’s 15 ski resorts – including skiing, snowboarding, tubing, snowshoeing, snowmobiling, or other peripheral winter adventure activities.
3. Northern Utah+ Campaign: tactics promote state parks, national places, water activities, outdoor adventure, cultural attractions, culinary experiences, and any and all activities performed in Northern Utah during any season, but exclude Ski+ campaign specific initiatives (winter and non-winter resort based activities).
4. Co-op Opportunities: tactics used to develop and showcase the Utah brand including co-op partnerships that reinforce the brand and target visitors.
5. Most UOT international marketing efforts are directed at tour operators and travel agents and are measured differently. There may be occasions when the research firm would be asked to help measure international efforts, but this would likely occur on a case-by-case basis.
To accomplish its mission, the UOT has identified key objectives:
1. Prioritize quality visitation, not simply quantity of visitors (increase trip spend, length of stay, Utah’s visitor share of focused global markets)
2. Distribute visitation (by hour of day, day of week, seasonally, areas interested in increasing visitation, etc.)
3. Continue powerful branding (increase brand awareness, consideration and intent to visit; improve positive social sentiment)
4. Enable community-led destination readiness (increase positive stakeholder and resident sentiment; increase visitor satisfaction)
Key marketing strategies used to fulfill these objectives include:
1. Continued promotion of the Utah Life Elevated® brand.
2. Marketing to the domestic consumer and trade markets.
3. Marketing to the international consumer and trade markets.
We believe the following marketing tactics will be the most effective in addressing our objectives and supporting our campaigns:
● Consumer marketing via connected and addressable television, digital banner and pre-roll, native, out-of-home, and social media including promoted ads and posts by ambassadors/influencers.
● Traditional trade marketing, with an emphasis in digital, print and promotion.
● Public Relations designed to produce stories, reports, and earned media about any of the State’s natural, man made, and/or other tourism offerings.
Closes: 12/15/2021 4:00 PM MST
