As a valued partner, the Nevada Commission on Tourism wants to keep you abreast of our latest developments and accomplishments. We will be sending quarterly updates starting with Quarter 3 of FY09. You’ll hear from the departments of Marketing, Sales, Public Relations, and Nevada Magazine. Please read on to get the scoop.
 We are proud to announce that Nevada is the first state to market itself to travelers with a two-letter domain via mobile phones with the launch of NV.mobi. Representing the official state abbreviation, NV.mobi joins the already successful NVski.mobi and NVroads.mobi sites in extending our marketing initiatives to the mobile phone. NV.mobi enables users to access events, city overview pages, things to do, lodging, and weather. Mobile users can also request a Nevada Visitors Guide.
In recognition of our Internet strategies, Entrepreneur Magazine featured us in an article about search engine optimization. The article reported on our successes from revamping TravelNevada.com with more content oriented toward specific searches. For instance, with the help of MoreVisibility, we went from having 224 indexed web pages with 2,796 keywords, to more than 1,000 pages and 14,000 keywords. In December 2008, the Web site had 29,000 organic visits, compared to just 9,000 the year before. The return on investment has been significant at an estimated savings of nearly $19,000 based on what a paid keyword campaign would have cost to drive traffic to the Web site. We have also created Nevada pages on social media outlets to increase search engine rankings. Check us out on Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Twitter.
In addition, we just launched a Travel Deals landing page on TravelNevada.com to promote travel packages from various Nevada hotel properties, golf courses, spas, and attractions located throughout the state. The new page is the result of our spring/summer $2 million retail advertising campaign to entice consumers to book immediate trips to Nevada. The ads will drive consumers to the landing page where they can get all the package details and book their trips.
 This past quarter we have continued our efforts to promote Nevada as a destination by representing our great state at numerous consumer and industry shows and conferences. In addition to making thousands of new contacts, we distributed our statewide collateral at the following consumer-based shows:
- Prestige Travel Show/Las Vegas, NV
- 10-day Arizona Vacation and RV Show/Quartzsite, AZ
- LA Times Travel Show/Los Angeles, CA
- Sportsman's Expo/Salt Lake City, UT
As you know, we promote Nevada both domestically and internationally. On the domestic front, we attended the American Bus Association Marketplace held in Charlotte, N.C. targeting domestic tour operators. Our international outreach included promotion of Nevada travel and trip itineraries to international tour operators at FITUR (International Tourism Trade Fair), the second largest tourism show in Europe. We also participated in the Go-West Summit/Albuquerque, EXPO Vacaciones/Mexico City, Discover America ITB/Berlin, Discover America BIT/Milan, and the LVCVA sales mission to the United Kingdom and Mexico. We obtained many leads at these shows and shared them with our territory chairs to give to their members.
Beyond trade shows, we hosted the 19th Annual Rural Roundup in Fallon the first week of April, bringing together more than 220 rural area tourism leaders from all over the state to network and learn how to develop and grow their tourism base and local economies. Participants listened to keynote speaker Joseph Michelli, Ph.D., discuss how to create an experiential brand for consumers. Well-known television host and producer Sam Shad described how to attract visitors in a down economy and get them to spend money. There were also a number of breakout sessions designed to provide attendees with tools and ideas they can use to help draw tourists to their towns and attractions. The conference culminated with an awards dinner and scholarship award given to a high school senior who will be majoring in hospitality management. Next year’s event celebrates our 20th Anniversary of Rural Roundup and will be held the last week of March in Winnemucca.
 This past February, we hosted a familiarization tour for travel journalists from South Korea to take advantage of the newly expanded market. You’ll recall that in late 2008 South Korea joined the Visa Waiver program. Six young South Korean women, including five journalists and a PR representative, arrived Feb. 22 for a four-night visit to Reno, Lake Tahoe, Carson Valley, Carson City and Virginia City.
The travel writers kept their cameras and notebooks busy while visiting the region and the evidence of their enjoyment was heavily covered in six South Korean travel magazines: AB Road, A Rex, Join & Joy, The Beetle Map Travel, Tour de Monde and Traveller, and the newspaper The Korean Travel Information Times. The PR value of their stories in advertising equivalency totaled $206,683.
Fam tours are one of the best tools to draw visitors because the resulting stories and photos credibly convey the writer’s enthusiasm, which helps influence readers to visit.
Participation from partners like you made the tour possible. Without hosted rooms, meals, entertainment and other activities we could not afford to generate this valuable media coverage. A special thank you to Mary Reno at the Silver Legacy Resort Casino, Carol Pearson at the Grand Sierra Resort, Lindsey Grinage at Harrah‘s Reno Casino/Hotel, John Packer at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe Hotel Casino and Harveys Resort Casino, Kenna Adams at Circus Circus Reno, Austin Sass at Zephyr Cove Snowmobiling and the M.S. Dixie II, Russ Pecoraro and Aimi Xistra at Heavenly Mountain Resort, Susan Sutton, Patrick Gilmore and Cory Wood at the Virginia City Convention and Tourism Authority, Esther Isaac at the National Automobile Museum, Chip Bell of Bell Limo, and Dwight and Diana Borges, who offered Lake Tahoe sleigh rides that we couldn’t accept after the lake-level snow melted.
 In March, we launched our new Events & Shows module on nevadamagazine.com, a project that has been at the top of our list of goals for some time. The new module is separated into northern and southern Nevada, searchable by date and keyword, and also incorporates high-quality images to entice clicks. It will allow users to better plan their Nevada vacations.
Starting with the January/February 2009 issue, Nevada Magazine is now available electronically. Readers can enjoy three issues in their entirety on nevadamagazine.com by clicking on the “e-magazine” link.
Finally, we have increased reader participation with our Tour Around Nevada campaign and Best of Nevada survey, which can be mostly attributed to our e-newsletters and Web campaigns such as Facebook.
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