Untapped market
PANAMA CITY BEACH - Though Panama City Beach remains a destination of choice for residents in the Southeast United States, local tourism industry leaders have learned a small but rapidly growing marketing opportunity exists in Europe and Russia.
And though the local community remains divided over college Spring Break, officials now know collegeage young adults coming here each spring are more likely than any other group to be repeat visitors in future years.
Furthermore, success in expanding Beach tourism in the future will stem almost exclusively from Internetbased advertising rather than any other form of print or broadcast media because more than 92 percent of young adults use the Web for travel arrangements.
Those are just three of the revelations the Bay County Tourist Development Council learned Tuesday when it heard an initial report from a Tampa-based market research firm after six months of in-depth surveys of Beach visitors.
The presentation by consultant Dr. Walter Klages marked the first time in memory the Bay County tourist industry received a clear and detailed picture of the tens of thousands of visitors who come to the Beach on vacation each month, TDC President Dan Rowe said Friday.
"This is a wonderful tool to help us understand our visitors' perception of Panama City Beach," he said.
The new statistical profile of Beach tourism had its genesis in the political upheaval last year that prompted the Bay County Commission to replace the old TDC board with new members. During a workshop on marketing strategy last July, the new directors learned the existing program to calculate rental unit occupancy rates was obsolete and ineffective. Worse, they said, there was no mechanism in place to measure detailed profiles of those who visit here.
Newly appointed TDC director Gayle Oberst said at the time she was "flabbergasted" the council was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on marketing while knowing little about its audience. In response, the TDC in August approved a $65,000 contract with The Klages Group of Tampa to conduct in-depth interviews with visitors at the Beach and analyze the results for significant trends.
TDC directors heard the results from the initial six-month survey period at their meeting last week. In his presentation, Dr. Walter Klages analyzed the findings from 981 indepth interviews with vacationers at the Beach during the past two quarters. The findings included:
The Beach remains predominantly a "drive" market, with 77.7 percent of visitors between October and December coming by car and only 20.2 percent arriving by airplane. For spring breakers, the numbers were even higher, with 90.5 percent driving and only 6.8 percent flying.
Given the rapid turnover in college students, Klages said it was not surprising to learn 51.4 percent of spring breakers reported it was their first time visiting the Beach. That contrasts sharply with winter visitors between October and December, of whom only 37 percent said it was their first visit.
Klages tacitly acknowledged the long-running debate over whether Spring Break tarnishes the Beach's reputation among other demographic groups.
"I know there are social issues, but spring breakers are an important segment," Klages told the TDC. This is an opportunity to form a "heritage market" of returning visitors, he said.
Rowe said Friday the concept is something the council should study.
"Converting them (spring breakers) into long-time visitors is a good thing; you expand the pool of future visitors," he said.
Another surprise came from a careful analysis of March visitors that divided them into spring breakers and other tourists not involved in the annual mid-term celebration.
Klages asked survey respondents to identify their "party composition" while vacationing. For March visitors, 62.2 percent said they came with a "group of friends," while just less than 30 percent said they came with family members.
"There clearly was a family component (to Beach tourism) in the latter part of March," Klages said.
Rowe agreed.
"That was a surprise," he said of the figure for March family visitation. "That's higher than I thought it should be."
The Beach generally received high marks from all visitors on their level of satisfaction with visiting here. Nearly 88 percent of winter visitors between October and December described themselves as satisfied or very satisfied. This dropped slightly to 81.4 percent for visitors here between January and March. However, the breakout for March visitors showed spring breakers registering the highest satisfaction rate at 91.9 percent, while 79.9 percent of non-breaker tourists said the same.
A vital topic for TDC marketing efforts was whether visitors would recommend the Beach as a destination for family members and friends. For winter tourists, 78.3 percent said yes. College spring breakers, on the other hand, were even more positive, with 83.8 percent saying they would recommend the Beach. However, 38.3 percent of non-Break visitors in March said they would not recommend the Beach to family or friends as a destination.
Klages' survey confirmed the primary market for the Beach remains the Southeast and Midwest, with 31.3 percent and 29.4 percent of total visitation coming from those two areas respectively. However, Canada, with 6.2 percent of overall visitors, and Europe, with 3.3 percent, portend a potential future marketing target, particularly if the Canadian dollar and euro remain strong against the U.S. dollar, Klages said. The European respondents not only were from Western Europe and Scandinavia, but also Eastern Europe and Russia.
Rowe said as the surveys continue, the TDC will enjoy an increasingly comprehensive picture of the tourists who come here. By assessing their experiences, positive and negative, in depth, the council will be able to formulate more effective marketing and advertising campaigns that play on the Beach's strengths.
TDC Chairman Andy Phillips last week voiced relief the council had such a measuring capability in hand.
"It is so refreshing to sit at a board meeting and see these statistics that we haven't seen for many years," he said.