SNOW HILL – Worcester County officials opted not to grant a request this week that would have enabled Ocean City to remove the county’s website from some of its advertising.
A motion made by Worcester County Commissioner Joe Mitrecic to allow the Town of Ocean City to leave the county’s website, www.beachandbeyond.org, off advertising funded by a pass-through grant from the county did not receive a second at Tuesday’s meeting. Mitrecic said afterward he had argued for making the change because it limited the resort to using the $270,000 grant that’s passed through the county from the state on print advertising.
“We were hoping to take the restrictions off that,” Mitrecic said.
He said the $270,000 that came from the state for Ocean City advertising was restricted by Worcester County. The county requires that the advertising funded by the grant include the county’s website.
“The commissioners and county administration felt that because the money is coming from Worcester County our website should be on it so we would be able to capture some of those click-throughs as well,” said Lisa Challenger, tourism director for Worcester County. “I think the visitor likes having as much information as possible. The visitor does not recognize political boundaries.”
Mitrecic said the problem with including the county’s website was it limited the resort to print advertising. Mentioning the county’s website in a radio ad, for example, wouldn’t be effective.
“The tourism commission always felt it would get lost,” he said. “The Town of Ocean City ends up doing a lot more billboards than we would otherwise because we have to use that money for print.”
Ocean City Councilwoman and Tourism Commission Chair Mary Knight agreed that listing the town’s website and the county’s website was simply too much for radio.
“Print is the only way you can use the two taglines,” she said. “It’s frustrating.”
She added that the town’s website, ococean.com, included links to county information.
“Last July there were 980,000 individual sessions on ococean.com,” she said, adding that the website included information on areas throughout Worcester County. “We don’t differentiate. We show it as a whole area.”
Challenger maintained that Worcester County benefited from having its website shared by towns within the county. She said Worcester County’s other municipalities, which each received $4,500 in ad money, did the same thing.
“We do this with Berlin and it’s not a problem,” she said.
Commissioner Bud Church said not supporting Mitrecic’s motion was a tough decision for him. He said what decided the issue for him was the fact that on Ocean City’s billboards, the county’s website is listed in small type below Ocean City’s website.
“When I looked at the ads I didn’t think it was very significant,” he said. “I didn’t think it was worth the effort to remove it.”