Atlantic City gambles on tourism marketing

Atlantic City gambles on tourism marketing

Atlantic City unveiled a $20 million marketing campaign Thursday aimed at luring non-gamblers to the seaside gaming mecca.

Responding to a steady decline in the number of people who visit Atlantic City and to greater competition from surrounding states that have recently enacted legislation allowing full gaming, the resort community is blitzing New York and other nearby metropolitan areas from Boston to Washington with advertising. Starting on April 16, the ads will appear in print, outdoor, radio and television. They were created by Euro RSCG New York.

The campaign, “Do Anything. Do Everything,” is the first initiative of the year-old Atlantic City Alliance, a nonprofit formed by the eight casino operators in Atlantic City. The organization has a $30 million annual budget for the next five years.

“The casino operators understand that it is not just about growing the gaming customer, that they have to have the leisure traveler as well,” said Liza Cartmell, who joined Atlantic City Alliance as president last September.

Atlantic City lost 6 million visitors from 2006 to 2010, attracting fewer than 30 million people last year. The decline will only get worse as more nearby states pass gambling legislation allowing full table gaming. In two years, New York is expected to pass such legislation.

The idea behind the campaign is to attract a new kind of visitor to Atlantic City, playing up its other attributes including fine dining restaurants, luxury hotels, its famous boardwalk and beach. Currently, the average visitor to Atlantic City stays just 16 hours.

“Our goal is to get them to stay at least 24 hours,” said Ms. Cartmell, who was most recently head of Aramark's sports and entertainment division. “We have to reposition Atlantic City as a tourism destination.”

Atlantic City Alliance is the first organization of its kind in Atlantic City, which also has a visitor's bureau which focuses primarily on drawing meetings and conventions to the area.

The nonprofit is modeling its efforts on Las Vegas, where 40% of the revenues Sin City generates come from gaming-related expenditures. By contrast, 60% of Atlantic City's revenues come from gaming.

Its $30 million budget should be an enormous boost. To put it in context, the state of New Jersey has just $11 million to spend on tourism promotion, while New York City's budget is just over $36 million.

In a statement, Gov. Chris Christie said, “Transforming Atlantic City's gaming and tourism economy and developing it into a world-class destination and resort is a vital commitment of this administration. With this newly integrated tourism campaign, there is finally a concerted effort to properly fund Atlantic City marketing initiatives to attract visitors to the region, a need that has gone unmet for far too long.”

Last year, the New Jersey state legislature paved the way for Atlantic City to be designated a tourism district, charging the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority with marketing it.

Atlantic City leads the rest of the state in tourist spending. Visitors to Atlantic County last year spent $10.6 billion.

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