OCEAN CITY — Driving visitors to the town-sponsored tourism website in an ever-increasing world of other options was the subject of debate at this week’s Tourism Commission meeting.
During the Monday meeting, members debated the overall health of the Convention and Visitors Bureau, which, among other things, maintains the town-sponsored website ococean.com. The website is a clearinghouse of sorts for everything related to the resort, from hotel bookings and exploring Ocean City activities to dining options and seasonal deals.
Local businesses advertise and buy into the website, which provides one-stop information on group bookings, conventions and marketing and the like and, for the most part, it has been successful in driving visitors to the site. However, in a growing climate of national and multi-national booking sites such as Expedia and booking.com, for example, the town’s site has faced increased competition. A quick search for Ocean City lodging bookings this week revealed ococean.com appeared 13th on the list, for example.
During the tourism commission meeting on Monday, members debated whether the CVB and ococeancom needed revamping in the face of increased competition with other booking sites. CVB Destination Marketing Director Norma Dobrowolski said the organization has a healthy relationship with the Ocean City Hotel-Motel-Restaurant Association (HMRA) and the Chamber of Commerce, but the ococean.com site needs some changes to remain competitive.
“We have a great alliance with the HMRA and the Chamber,” she said. “It’s evolved into a powerful tool and it’s the identity of Ocean City. Ococean.com needs to be renovated. It’s time for that again. We need a revenue stream.”
Tourism and Business Development Director Tom Perlozzo said the ococean.com site does get a lot of traffic, but it provides more information about the resort than just booking arrangements.
“We want to drive people to the site and get them to stay on the site,” he said. “By getting them to book a room first, we can keep them on ococean. We’re trying to provide an environment for businesses to do well. Once we get that room booked, they can stay and look at everything else on the site. Visitors can find everything they need and make their booking quickly.”
The number of local businesses subscribing to the ococean.com site has waned somewhat in recent years, largely because of the pandemic. For example, the number of members has dropped from around 320 pre-pandemic to about 290 now, but that was attributed to businesses in a tough environment finding other ways to spend their resources, according to Perlozzo.
“We’ve all kind of struggled,” he said. “We’ve spent millions driving people to ococean and we did a good job with it. It used to be seven to eight minutes on the site, but now it’s more like a minute. That’s not a good sign.”
Perlozzo said it was time to consider how to make the CVB and the ococean.com site even a better bargain for the business community.
“How do we become a better partner?,” he said. “How can our partners spend more money on marketing? It’s going to require a separate system. We need to recruit meetings and conventions. We need to recruit sports tournaments. We need to do anything it takes to keep that ball rolling. You can see how large this can get.”
Perlozzo laid out a plan where CVB members could pay a per-room booked fee which would be reinvested in driving more people to the site. It was pointed out many local businesses pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to national and multi-national sites such as booking.com, for example.
“We’re proposing a $20 per room fee,” he said. “We’re recommending a per room fee for our partners. We have to have our partners understand we’re going to reinvest the money. I think it’s fair.”
Mayor Rick Meehan pointed out by investing in the town-sponsored site, local businesses could getter a bigger bang for their buck and keep the money in the town as opposed to the national booking sites.
“What you’re suggesting would be a savings to our partners in the long run,” he said. “It saves them money and we need the hotels to understand that and buy into this.”
Councilman and commission member John Gehrig said many resort businesses would prefer to invest their marketing dollars in a local organization.
“Would the hotels want to book with a multi-national company like booking.com that isn’t going to reinvest anything in Ocean City?” he said. “They would rather spend with ococean.com as a partner that’s going to reinvest in the town.”
Meehan said getting people to change their booking habits would not come easily.
“The goal is to increase the number of bookings through ococean.com,” he said. “It’s going to take some time to move people to our site.”
