NYC & Company Announces Refreshed Tourism Campaign

WHY IT RATES: The refreshed campaign focuses on digital assets such as social media and video. —Janeen Christoff, TravelPulse Senior Writer

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NYC & Company, New York City’s official destination marketing organization, today unveiled its refreshed digital-first global tourism campaign “Famous Original New York City.” The $15 million (USD) campaign intends to reach travelers around the world, celebrating the personal ways NYC can be experienced. Original in-house creative—along with supporting video, photo galleries, editorial and social content—is pegged to distinct newly curated travel “affinities”: Secret NYC, Glamorous NYC and Classic NYC.

“Our refreshed campaign ‘Famous Original New York City’—with its affirming tagline ‘Welcomes You. Always.’—is designed to reinforce New York City’s fundamental values of diversity and inclusion and its world-class welcoming spirit,” said NYC & Company president and CEO Fred Dixon.” Utilizing our new digital tools and affinity-driven content, we invite global visitors to discover their ‘Famous Original New York City’ now.”

Digital, in-kind and partner media contribute to an approximate campaign value of $15 million, with promotions running globally across 17 countries through summer 2019. Out-of-home advertisements will appear domestically in New York City, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and San Juan. Internationally, the campaign will appear in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain, Sweden and United Kingdom and first-time markets Colombia, India and Peru.

In partnership with Facebook and Instagram, the campaign will utilize content marketing that has been developed to attract audience members with specific interests and behaviors. Artificial intelligence will target social media users with an intent to travel, ultimately encouraging visits to the campaign landing page, where dynamically generated content—pegged to the travel affinity of interest—will live, along with market-specific travel offers.

New this year are tools that will allow NYCgo.com visitors to immediately book or favorite Classic, Glamorous or Secret elements, including attractions, museums, restaurants, shopping, tours and editorial packages. Users who have favorited items can then build custom itineraries based on personal, saved interests through the travel-planning tool Utrip. Additional travel affinities will be introduced throughout the campaign’s duration.

Additional strategic collaborations with partners including Aeromexico (Mexico), British Airways (UK), Copa Airlines (Chile), Porter Airlines (Canada), TUI (Germany) and TripAdvisor are live, with further partnerships to follow. Through these partners, various travel packages will be offered throughout the duration of the campaign, many including flight and/or hotel deals.

In addition, NYC & Company holds several tourism alliances domestically and internationally. These strategic city-to-city partnerships spotlight New York City via in-kind media in Toronto, Canada; Madrid, Spain; and Tokyo, Japan. Through a first-ever city-to-island partnership announced last month, NYC & Company is also promoting “Famous Original New York City” in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

“The newest iteration of the “Famous Original New York City” campaign pushes the boundaries of digital marketing and is our answer to the challenge of how to present a destination that is many different things to many different people,” said NYC & Company senior vice president, marketing, Nancy Mammana.

Live today is the nycgo.com/famousoriginalnyc landing page, home to the dynamic campaign content in English, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish.

Tourism works for New York City: in 2017, New York City’s travel and tourism sector saw a record-breaking year, with 62.8 million visitors, $44 billion in direct visitor spending and $66 billion in total economic impact, representing the largest tourism economy in the United States. The industry also sustained a record 391,000 jobs for working New Yorkers in all sectors of the economy. Since 2009, the industry’s contribution to city tax revenues has increased by 70 percent to $4.4 billion. Since 2008, 42 percent of new hotels have been built in the boroughs beyond Manhattan. The City enjoys the highest hotel occupancy rate nationwide at 87.6 percent, while simultaneously maintaining the most active hotel development pipeline in the nation, with an additional 17,700 rooms to be added to the inventory by 2021. The visitor forecast for year-end 2018 is 65.2 million visitors, comprising 51.6 million domestic and 13.5 million international visitors.

SOURCE: NYC & Company press release.