Let’s talk tourism. Specifically the marketing of Chicago to tourists. We’ve actually been talking about the topic for years. And we’ve often been disappointed by Chicago’s and Illinois’s lackluster, if not downright laughable, efforts to market to — and lure in — more tourists.
Unfortunately, Chicago’s mayor — that would be the increasingly efficiency-focused Rahm Emanuel — has compelled us to revisit the topic again. The mayor has plans to merge Chicago’s absurd office of tourism with the bigger and better-funded Chicago Convention & Tourism Bureau and — with a wave of the wand — bring more foreign tourists to the city.
We’ve been mystified for years about what it is the CC&TB really does. For as long as we can remember, the bureau always said that despite the word “tourism” in its name, it existed primarily to pump up the city’s convention business.
Goal is to lure foreign visitors to Chicago
But as anyone who’s followed that effort already knows, it’s been a real struggle for Chicago to keep the major conventions it already has, let alone pull in new ones. Why? Because much smaller cities, such as Orlando and Las Vegas, have transformed themselves into hugely convention-friendly metropolises while Chicago was seemingly taking a siesta and its finances were falling apart.
Now, Emanuel wants the CC&TB to expand its primary focus and do more of what the city’s tourism office never seemed able to accomplish: namely turn Chicago into a dazzling tourist mecca, especially for tourists of the foreign variety.
Before addressing the viability of the mayor’s new game plan, we should note Emanuel made sure he got full credit for merging two ineffective tourism entities into one and putting the money to be saved into a bigger budget for advertising Chicago overseas.
Oh, if only it were so easy.
Beefing up the marketing and advertising of a product can make that product more attractive. But first the marketer must be clear about what the product is and how it stacks up against the competition.
And since practically forever, here is where the rub has come for Chicago as a tourist destination. It’s a rub the powers-that-be in this burg have never fully been able to face. That would certainly include Emanuel’s predecessor – some guy, we recall, named Daley.
Chicago lacks touristy attractions of competitive cities
The rub, in essence, is that Chicago will never be able to compete effectively against really hot tourist-oriented cities such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Orlando, Miami Beach and Washington, D.C. Our city simply doesn’t have enough hugely touristy things in our arsenal to generate the kind of foreign tourist traffic (not to be confused with conventioneers, please) Emanuel wants to wave his wand and get.
That’s the cold, hard truth. Period.
We maybe had one last shot a few years ago to substantively change that brutal truth. That would have been the city’s attempt to land the 2016 Summer Olympics. Oh what we could possibly have done with that opportunity.
But what happened?
The city and even the President of the United States were humiliated on the world stage because no one seemed to know there was a massive anti-American sentiment within the International Olympic Committee. Not only was the Olympic push an embarrassment, but it caused more than $70 million in Olympic pitch-related expenditures to go the drain — money that might have been used for some more productive efforts to boost tourism.
“Second to None” is new tourism tag
But Emanuel believes he can use a couple of million more marketing dollars to get those foreign tourists to Chicago. Downtown Partners/Chicago — an ad shop that has been nothing short of heroic in its efforts to help market the city — has already finished a couple of spots that incorporate the city’s new tourism tag line “Second to None.”
At least one of the new spots has a nice sense of energy about it— which never hurts. But it looks to have been done on a tight budget. More problematic is the lack of anything concrete in the commercial to promote the city to foreign tourists.
While the music and the ad copy have more of a sports vibe, the imagery in the spot seems to rather generically suggest the city has some shopping and dining options. But that’s about the most a viewer might take away.
By contrast, Los Angeles has had the movie industry (to say nothing of great weather!) and New York has had its Broadway theater brand, among many other very specific enticements, to sell to foreigners.
Chicago, it seems, can only proclaim its rather vague “second to none” sales slogan. Which, from our vantage point, won’t be nearly enough to close the deal with foreign tourists.
The Mart ends its international art fair
And if Emanuel and his tourism minions won’t take our word for it, he might consider the disturbing news that just broke Wednesday not far from City Hall. We refer to the Merchandise Mart’s decision to pull the plug on its big international art fair after spending years and big bucks trying to develop it.
Mart execs candidly admitted they tried, but simply couldn’t pull in the major art dealers and, more importantly, the big-spending art collectors from around the world in the same numbers that they are drawn to art fairs in New York, Los Angeles and Miami Beach.
And let’s not forget one other important factor that may hinder Chicago’s tourism efforts at least for the foreseeable future.
International airfares have skyrocketed in recent years as carriers have cut capacity and added on fuel and other surcharges.
That alone, along with the constant threat of terrorism, have no doubt forced many would-be foreign visitors to think carefully about where they will spend their tourism dollars if they do make that big trip to the United States.
Yes, there’s no escaping the hard, cold truth about foreign tourists and Chicago.
No matter how smart the Chicago Convention & Tourism Bureau is about spending more marketing money, Chicago will always have a tough time competing against a number of American cities with much bigger and better-branded attractions than we have here in Chicago.
Contact Lewis Lazare at LewisL3@aol.com.
