[F]or those in western states who think Vermont is a village in New Hampshire, help is on the way: The Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce has hired a global “destination branding” firm to develop a new image for the state’s largest city.
MMGY Global of Kansas City, Missouri, will get about $75,000 over four months to come up with ways of attracting more visitors for business and leisure.
Jeff Lawson, the chamber’s vice president of tourism and marketing, steered clear of describing what MMGY was hired to create. That’s up to them. But he was clear on what the branding is expected to accomplish.
“Ultimately, at the end of the day, everything we are talking about is about economic impact,” said Lawson, who is the head of Hello Burlington, the chamber’s new destination marketing organization. Asked what Vermonters might see as a result of the campaign, Lawson said the goal is higher tax revenues and then some intangibles.
“I think they’d see for the first time Burlington have a clear and coherent brand messaging,” he said.
Tourism is big business in Vermont, and particularly in Chittenden County, which regularly attracts conference-goers, University of Vermont parents, and others to its award-winning breweries, Church Street marketplace and the shores of Lake Champlain.
In 2017, tourism brought the state $2.8 billion, according to the state Agency of Commerce and Community Development. The agency said 13 million people visited Vermont in 2017.
Chittenden County is home to a quarter of Vermont’s population and a quarter of its private businesses. But tourism is spread more evenly throughout the state than many other industries, and Chittenden County only produces 17 percent of the state’s annual tourism revenue, according to Ken Jones, economic research analyst for the Agency of Commerce. Tourism generated $481 million in Chittenden County in 2017, Jones said.
Enhanced marketing in Burlington will affect tourism businesses all over Vermont, because Burlington is a gateway of sorts to the rest of the state, said Tim Piper, president of the Vermont Inn and Bed and Breakfast Association.
“It’s a good portal for big city people to try Vermont,” Piper said of Burlington.
But Piper added that there’s no point in marketing to visitors unless the infrastructure is available to ensure their success, and right now it’s not. He cited a lack of affordable housing and functional broadband in rural areas.
“Anything that creates a good image of Vermont is good for our members,” said Piper, whose organization has about 65 inns and B&Bs with up to 50 guest rooms.
But “they can spend all the money in the world talking about quality of life and that we’re a beautiful state, which we are, but it’s getting much, much harder to find housing for those middle management careers, those young professionals. Everybody recognizes the problem is there, but we’ve got to start hitting it head-on.”
Lawson is waiting to see the results of MMGY’s work before committing the Chamber to actions that will result from it. He did say the chamber will work in alignment with the state’s tourism and marketing efforts.
“It’s really not at all uncommon for individual cities to differentiate themselves as destinations within the context of their greater states,” he said. “That’s something we’ll be doing: To differentiate but not to alienate We see it as a complement more than anything.”
MMGY Global describes itself as a $55 million marketing, communications and technology company with 400 travel and tourism marketing specialists in 11 international markets.
Lawson said the Chamber “deliberated long and hard” before hiring MMGY instead of a local company.
“We wanted to find an agency that had deep subject matter expertise in destination branding,” he said. “Branding a city, state or place is very, very different from branding a product or service. There are so many experiential touchpoints that it’s almost unimaginable to calculate them … what your taxi ride was like, your conversation in the bar, service in the hotel. It’s a little complicated and it’s different.”
An outside firm is capable of true objectivity, he added.
“We wanted someone who could come in and look at Burlington from the eyes of a visitor, and didn’t have a preconceived notion of who we are and who we aren’t,” he said. When MMGY’s work is done, he said, the Chamber will hire a local firm to create materials such as logos and websites.
It’s too early to say where and how the new marketing will be deployed, Lawson said. Most of Vermont’s visitors now come from neighboring states, and he expects to start there and expand to cities like Denver, which recently became linked to Burlington with a direct flight.