Keeping up with the GPCVB!

Hey Everyone, I hope you all had a wonderful weekend and Valentines Day! I sure did :) Well things at the CVB have been a little busy the past week. I have been working on a lot of projects involving the new Spring Stimulus and have been getting a lot of data complied in a condenced form for the website. One of the big projects that the Marketing Department has been working on is to really bring revenue into the Great Phoenix Area and keeping the businesses alive.

With the harsh economic times we are facing, there has been a lot of downfall in the tourism area including the restaurant business and the accomadation/lodging industry. People aren't spending money the way that they use to so what the CVB is doing is they are compiling information of discounts that the local resorts and restaurants are offering and putting them on the website for its viewers. Definitley check it out, there are a lot of great deals out there (http://www.visitphoenix.com/springstimulus/) . This is a great chance to go try out a new restaurant or even get a weekend break from your everyday life and stay at a resort that you normally would never stay at. Just a few ideas.

Other then that, I have jsut been staying busy with updating the website's calendar section, adding new photos to the online photo tour, and doing research on the GPCVB's competition. These are all part of my everyday tasks here. It's suprising that this week will mark my half way week with the CVB for the purpose of the internship. Very exciting.

I hope you all are enjoying yourselves and learning a lot.

Keep in touch!

Nikki

New Experiences....

After a third of my internship is done, I have found that this week was probably one of the busiest weeks that I have had so far. I worked a lot with different hotels, restaurants, attractions and many other places to try and get photos for the new Greater Phoenix CVB website that will be launched in the summer. One thing about marketing is that in order to use photos from other companies, you need to make sure that you have the rights to use them. Some people may not know that you just cant go to a website and cut and paste from one to another. There is such thing as photo protection. So what I did was contact a list of CVB members to see if they wanted to participate in our new website construction by submitting some of their photos at no charge to them of course. This was basically just a ‘free per say’ way to advertise through us. I found that a lot of the companies were more then willing to participate because the economy is so bad right now that any extra advertising they could squeeze in would be a benefit to them.

Other than that, I also had my first press release meeting. Three of us from the Marketing Department and 3 people from the advertising agency that the CVB use met at a large print factor to approve the letterhead that was being made for the CVB. At first I was like, okay, we are going to walk into a room and look at the letterhead. How hard is that? Well that was not the case at all. We actually went into the back where all the printing is taking place in a large warehouse and actually watched them mix colors to make the perfect color for our letterhead. It definitely took like and precision to make it perfect. That was a great experience for me because it really gave me a good understanding as to what really goes on behind the scenes.

I hope everyone has a great weekend with all the events that are going on in town involving the NBA All-Star Game and of course, Valentines Day! :)

Keep In Touch!

Nikki

P.S. If you want to check out some of the events that are going on in town this weekend come look at the CVB’s event calendar. (Something that I have been working on over the past weeks is to keep up-to-date events on the calendar). So check it out. http://www.visitphoenix.com/calendar/

Research is everything...

Well it has been a complete month now at the Great Phoenix CVB and it’s hard to believe that I am starting my 5th week. So last week was kind of a slow week in the Marketing department. There really were not that many projects to work on so I did a lot of research on the CVB’s competition which was perfect because the assignment that was due on Sunday was all about competition. That is really something that I have learned about marketing, it’s not all about making an advertisement look pretty in order to sell a product (even though that has a lot to do with it), but you also have to do a ton of research to see what others are doing so you can be one step ahead of them so your product it more marketable. Other than that, nothing new and exciting has happened.

In the past week, I have also found myself undergoing additional research that doesn’t involve the Greater Phoenix CVB. Instead involving my future. With this internship just flying by, I have started research future jobs that are of interest to me. Even though I have just started, I have already come to the realization that I would love a job in the marketing field especially in the Tourism industry. With the contacts I have made in the marketing departments at local resorts here in the Greater Phoenix Area, I am doing research and putting my resume and contact information out there.

Keep in touch,

Nikki