OCEAN CITY – A contract to have the same consultant who conducted the town’s overall strategic plan last year lead a similar five-year tourism initiative was approved this week following the city solicitor’s review.
On Tuesday afternoon, Tourism and Marketing Director Donna Abbott explained earlier this year, the Tourism Department reviewed eight proposals from firms seeking to prepare a tourism strategic plan for the town. The proposals presented a wide range of approaches and prices, ranging from $36,000 to $128,300. However, the proposals did not address the town’s needs specifically nor were the costs within the range anticipated.
“Last year the town initiated a community wide strategic plan, and as a result of that is today’s discussion on a Tourism Strategic Plan,” Abbott said.
The community at large contributed to the Town of Ocean City’s strategic planning efforts during a meeting that was held with stakeholders to gather their input of what goals and priorities should be put in place for Ocean City moving forward. Identifying Ocean City’s visitor demographic was one of the priorities and the concept of conducting a tourism strategic plan was brought before the Tourism Commission, which was in consensus to act on the effort.
The project overview stated, “The Town of Ocean City is soliciting proposals for a five-year strategic plan for tourism in interviewing key Ocean City tourism stakeholders, evaluating Ocean City tourism assets, and conducting a market analysis to incorporate into a strategic plan that will serve as blue print for Ocean City’s tourism marketing, identifying target markets and priorities for the next five years.”
The eight proposals received were not up to par for what the town was seeking.
“We did receive eight proposals that ranged in various prices and various approaches … one of them was just a marketing company. We are not soliciting proposals from a marketing company that have limited strategic planning experience,” Abbott said. “I do believe a couple of them were boilerplates. I made this assumption based on the fact that in some of them they had forgotten to take out the previous destination that they had submitted to … so I don’t think they took a great deal of time on some of these.”
After discussion with City Manager David Recor and a careful review of the proposals, the decision was made to seek a proposal from Lyle Sumek, who had done the community-wide strategic plan.
“He knows the people here, he is familiar with the Mayor and Council, and we want to bring him in to meet with the Tourism Commission, which represents the Mayor and Council, Chamber of Commerce, Hotel-Motel-Restaurant Association, Economic Development Committee, the Ocean City Development Corporation, and invite additional members of the business community to interview with him as well,” Abbott said.
Abbott added a visitor profile survey will be conducted, to find who Ocean City’s visitors are, where they are coming from, why they are coming and where they are staying.
“Take all that and bring it back to have the consultant come in and work with the commission to help make decisions that ultimately come before the Mayor and Council for our marketing plan,” Abbott said.
Abbott recommended formally rejecting the eight proposals received and accepting the project scope and contract with Sumek subject to review by City Solicitor Guy Ayres. The council voted unanimously to approve the recommendation.
The project will range between $18,000 and $22,500-plus travel expenses that is well below the $40,000 line item for marketing research in the fiscal year 2014 tourism budget. The plan is aimed to be completed in November.