Third in a series
How does a new millennium tourist plan a trip? Research indicates that today's travelers looking for places to visit base their destination decisions on promotions they have seen, personal experience, word of mouth from friends and associates and/or special package deals available at the time they wish to go.
According to the latest reports in trade magazines – and from travel agents – many travelers nowadays use the Internet for their initial exploration of areas that interest them. Then they telephone toll-free 800 numbers and/or use e-mail to make specific queries and book travel and accommodation reservations directly for themselves.
A decreasing number of tourists – largely those who want extra services or are not web savvy – still turn to travel agents for help in making their plans. They rely on the professionals to tell them about the best package deals combining airfares and hotel accommodations and sometimes land- or water-based activities. Agents keep up with what's new through information provided by wholesale tour operators and representatives of specific destinations at trade shows and other marketing outreach events and via print, audio-visual and – increasingly – Internet communication.
Falling through cyber space
How well is the U.S. Virgin Islands prepared to attract these new millennium tourists? Set up a search for information about the U.S. Virgin Islands online, and you will find quite an array of sites available. Unfortunately, many are not maintained, are woefully out of date and are primitive in design and limited in content.
The official government site, www.usvi.org, includes the governor's last State of the Territory address, the proposed Water and Power Authority sale agreement, the Five-Year Economic Recovery Strategy plan, information about an eclectic collection of hotels and villas, and several pages that have not been updated since 1998.
The University of the Virgin Islands has a very well-designed and extensive web site, www.uvi.edu, but it is not meant for tourists.
At www.usvi.net is the site established by COBEX early on in the development of Internet tourism promotion. This site is attractive and more complete but relies on advertising, and partner Dottie Sparks admits that COBEX "cannot afford to respond" to all the queries it generates, so its effectiveness is limited – and probably frustrating to the potential tourist.
There are real estate sites and retiree-oriented sites (in some cases one and the same) and sites put up by the publishers of slick local visitor guides, national travel-oriented magazines and thick Caribbean travel books in which the territory gets a chapter or two. A half-dozen more sites have outlines for potential content that apparently await paid advertising.
All of the local tourism-related advertisers on the Source newspapers link readers to their own web sites. For those using search engines, there are scores of V.I. hotel and business sites ranging from resorts, bed-and-breakfasts and private villas to restaurants, ferry schedules, tour packages, nature maps, marine and dive operations and visitor attractions, along with an empty St. John photo album.
Then there are pages of news and information from the National Weather Service, the National Park Service and the Office of Insular Affairs. And this is just the start. The more time you've got to search, the more you'll find – and the pickings get more extensive by the week.
The long and short of it: The potential V.I. visitor will find everything up there except a thorough and up-to-date tourism web site that links this fragmented, often incomplete conglomeration of private-sector and government sources together under an organized and easily accessed umbrella.
In this important way, the U.S. Virgin Islands tourism promotion has a major gap – the empty space through which would-be travelers to the Caribbean fall to other island destinations.
They've got our number – and use it
A big plus for attracting overnight visitors to the territory is the Tourism Department's toll-free telephone number, 800-372-8784 (372-USVI), which is cited in Tourism advertising and listed in the 800 directories. Operators in the Tourism offices on St. Thomas answer the number during the day. Several persons placing calls to the number for this series agreed that those answering the telephone do a knowledgeable, polite, charming and effective job of representing the territory.
From 5 to 9 p.m., Virgin Islands time, the incoming 800 calls are transferred to the Los Angeles Tourism office, where it is three or four hours earlier, depending on the time of year. Later at night and on weekends, the calls are switched to voice mail where callers can leave a message.
Ludwig Harrigan, the veteran manager of the Los Angeles office, says he has received more than 3,000 calls since the territory launched its first advertising campaign of 2000, a mainly television and radio outreach that began in late February and finished at the end of May. (A new campaign just started last week.) That would be an average of about 40 calls per business day.
Most hotels and many shops, charter companies and other tourist-related businesses in the Virgin Islands have 800 numbers that they advertise in travel materials and on the Internet. Local hospitality industry businesses report that more and more reservations and accommodations are being finalized either with 800 calls or via e-mail from individual travelers.
Getting the word out of the offices
The Tourism mainland offices represent the territory at local and regional travel trade shows, service the occasional walk-in customer, answer the telephone, and send materials to individuals and travel agents who call in requests. Those offices that have adequate staff are able to make calls on travel agents. Los Angeles, notably, takes considerable initiative in setting up trade show exhibits and networking with businesses about making commercials and movies and holding conferences and group meetings in the Virgin Islands, according to Harrigan.
Others of the six mainland offices do little of this type of outreach, either because they are understaffed or because the personnel on board are not trained.
On the "Leona" talk show Thursday on WVWI/Radio One, show host – and former longtime Tourism director – Leona Bryant stated, after an on-air conversation with Harrigan about this series of articles, "There has been a complete turnover of personnel in some offices recently. All the persons who had experience were removed, and with totally new employees there is nobody to teach the ropes."
While individual travel agents making requests will be sent promotional materials from the mainland offices, larger travel corporations get theirs by contacting the Tourism Department, which then has the materials dispatched from a warehouse in Miami, according to the Caribbean marketing staff at Liberty Travel in New York City. Rita Jones at Voyager Media, which publishes annual editions of the visitor guidebook "What to Do: St. Thomas and St. John," said that "brochures and booklets produced by private promoters, like the U.S.V.I. Travel Planner and V.I. Playground, are shipped directly to the travel agents and also to the offshore offices."
The missing link is money
Tourism Commissioner-designate Rafael Jackson told a Senate committee last month that he hoped to have the Tourism website online by October, but no contract had been let for the work. A request for proposals to design, put up and maintain the site was put out in the spring of 1999 when Clement "Cain" Magras was the acting Tourism commissioner, according to Dottie Sparks at COBEX.
Jackson told the lawmakers on May 22 that it'
;s his intention to get up a web site "that will put us ahead of the others." He has placed the cost of doing so at $1.5 million and has acknowledged that there is a problem in coming up with the money. At the same Senate committee hearing, Richard Doumeng, St. Thomas-St. John Hotel and Tourism Association president, expressed the view that sooner, even if lesser, would be better in terms of keeping up with other destinations, which are there competing for visitor dollars, pesos, pounds and krona.
Sparks, whose firm has submitted a bid to set up the site, confirms the $1.5 million cost. She said, "It takes a lot of money to get the content together, have that complex a web site designed, do the graphics, make the links, and then monitor it closely, answering all the responses and keeping it up to date."
Local web site designer Don Chandler disagrees. He said, "You could make a really complex website with multiple pages, links, graphics, replies and credit card use for about $50,000." But, he added, "This does not include gathering the content, most of which is readily available here on island. Then you would need to have the personnel to maintain it and reply to the responses."
The way to go to get them to come
There is little disagreement within the travel trade today that a well-designed and – equally important! – well-maintained Internet presence, an 800 number, carefully targeted advertising, and outreach by trained marketing experts add up to the way to get maximum positive impact for the money in the new millennium.
All of this could be accomplished – on a global level – without leasing office space in six mainland cities. As Doumeng stated at the May 22 Senate hearing, sales and marketing representatives for Tourism, like those in other fields, can work effectively out of their homes or their cars. Their "showroom" is of the virtual variety – or will be, when the department gets its official web site up and running.
The government now expends nearly $275,000 a year for mainland office rent in prime downtown business locations, plus the costs of maintenance and utilities. Storage facilities for printed matter and other materials could be leased in much lower rent areas. The balance could be used for more advertising – or go toward setting up the web site.
This does not necessarily mean putting government employees out of work, again as Doumeng noted. It would be advantageous to have the 800 number staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week, by knowledgeable, trained personnel.
It is critical that the Tourism web site, once up, have continual servicing and updating. These are jobs for local residents – persons who pay local taxes and know which side of the road Virgin Islanders drive on.
Next: Tourism and hospitality industry authorities respond
