Dallas loves its Cowboys, but it also has a soft spot for the city where Doc Holliday was laid to rest.
The Glenwood Springs Tourism Promotion Board knows it, and through a concentrated marketing blitz, hopes to direct passengers de-boarding planes arriving daily from Dallas into the Aspen, Vail/Eagle, and Grand Junction airports to then make their way to the city once known as Defiance.
“The Dallas market, in our analytics, provides the highest amount of sessions to our website outside of the state,” Lisa Langer, director of tourism promotion for the city, said in an interview.
According to Langer, the Tourism Promotion Board looked into the Houston market as Houstonians were also frequenting the city-owned visitglenwood.com. But, because of the limited $200,000 budget for the digital advertising campaign, the board believed Glenwood Springs would get more bang for its buck by investing it all in Dallas as opposed to trying to spread it out over two major cities.
“This way we will have six to eight weeks in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and it is not like Houston is not going to see part of that,” Langer noted.
According to correspondence between the Tourism Board and City Council, over 70 percent of the 2018 visits from the Lone Star State to visitglenwood.com were from the Dallas-Fort Worth area, to the tune of roughly 50,000 sessions and counting. Over 35,000 were new users too.
With area hotels constantly illuminating their no-vacancy signs during the weekends and summer season, the Dallas campaign will aim to usher in travelers during the shoulder seasons by beginning the marketing campaign in mid-August and running it through November.
“Because our summer season is so strong, with our marketing efforts, we try to make sure that we are pushing people more to the shoulder seasons so that we can be more of a year-round destination,” Langer emphasized. “We are a year-round destination. It is just that our summer is our peak.”
Additionally, the target age for the Dallas campaign will hone in on the 25-54 age group, and from all walks of life.
Langer said the coordinated marketing effort, in Dallas specifically, should not go away after one year either. That was a sentiment echoed by City Councilor Rick Voorhees.
“Marketing campaigns don’t turn on a dime. They take time to develop,” Voorhees said. “The increase in visitors since the Great Recession is tribute, in part, to [Tourism Board’s] work and the partnerships they’ve created with the city and organizations inside and outside of Colorado.”
With Glenwood being home to renowned rivers and the world’s largest hot springs mineral pool, Langer and Voorhees agreed that the brand of water, wellness and well-being works wonders for Glenwood tourism. However, when it comes to luring in international visitors, another marketing front particularly takes off.
“Say, for instance Germany — Germans love the Western culture, the Western history,” Langer explained. “And the Japanese love that. They love cowboy hats and cowboy boots and the thought of the Old West.”
Whether marketing to Dallas, Frankfurt or Tokyo, Langer hopes to continue to push Glenwood as a year-round, international travel destination.
“The genuine article of Glenwood Springs is really a great selling point. It is not a manufactured resort town,” Langer explained.
Voorhees, who serves as the council liaison to the Tourism Board, said Langer has been pivotal in marketing Glenwood internationally.
“You hear many different languages spoken around town lately, and that’s music to the ears,” Voorhees added.