May 15 2008
Outer Banks Tourism
How vacationers are finding their information on the Outer Banks
In March, the Department of Travel & Tourism for Currituck County released a 13 month report on tourism in Currituck County. The 38 page report provides much insight into tourism in Currituck and the Outer Banks. The state of tourism in the Outer Banks directly affects the amount of vacation home rentals. The county has definitely improved its visibility in the last 13 months. The greatest strides have definitely been done through their improved use of Internet marketing.
Currituck Visitor Guide Request:
March of 2007 to March 2008 requests were up 10%
Currituck also now offers a trail guide. There was an additional 251 trail guides this year in March compared to none last year.
One request that fell off dramatically though was the request for Wedding Guides. Wedding guides request were off over 2,000 guides. One could make the argument that the economy is decreasing the number of destination weddings.
Visitor Information by State:
The top five states with potential vacationers requesting information.
- North Carolina
- Pennsylvania
- New York
- Florida
- New Jersey
A trend is definitely developing with the Outer Banks as a vacation destination for travelers from the Northeast. This seems to confirm a trend that the Outer Banks is becoming more of a destination. Vacationers are now coming from further away to enjoy the unspoiled beauty.
Currituck County on the Web:
There are a number of places Currituck County has ad’s placed in traditional print outlets. The list is quite extensive. Since the Internet is becoming more vital to advertising the Outer Banks as a destination, we will focus on their efforts in web advertising.
County Banner Ads:
The county is using a number of banner ads.
- Washington Post
- AARP online magazine
- VacationFun.com
- VirginiaBeach.com
- CoastalLiving.com
- ModernBride.com
- NaturalHistoryMag.com
- SouthernLivingVacations.com
- VisitSouth.com
- Preservationonline.org
Internet Directory Listings:
Directories provide two ways to help the counties websites. Visitors that find the county through the directory and increasing the county’s visibility on search engines. Since long term effective use of the Internet is crucial to promoting tourism and directories are much more effective long term than banner ads, all the directories are listed.
Currituck’s Directory Listings:
- Weddingchannel.com
- DirectoryOutdoor.com
- Directoryrecreation.com
- SafeABC.com
- Funrecreation.com
- DirectoryFriendly.com
- DirectoryFamily.com
- FamilyTarget.com
- DirectoryB2B.com
- Shopping5.com
- LookDirectory.com
- Outdoors-411.com
- JoeAnt.com
- Best of the Web
- AvivaDirectory.com
- Sevenseen.com
- uncoverthenet.com
- GoGuides.org
- Yahoo Directory
- GoOutside.com
- NCGuide
Articles on the Web:
Having articles written and distributed through article submission websites is a great way to introduce the Outer Banks in a non-traditional outlet. The second benefit of having articles on the web is the articles create backlinks improving the visibility of the County’s websites.
- ezinearticles.com
- Trifter.com
- Helium.com
- GoArticles.com
- amazings.com
- articlecity.com
- buzzle.com
- IdeaMarketers.com
The statistics show that every year more travelers learn about their next vacation through information found on the web. Currituck County appears to be making significant headway into Internet advertising. This is a great thing for vacation home owners. The more they are on the web, the more visitors are attracted to the area.
One of their top traffic generators is: www.visitcurrituck.com.
Significant stats from VisitCurrituck.com for March 2008:
- Average time on site increased to: 1 minute 36 seconds
- Unique Visitors: 9,454
- Overall Hits: 260,236
Disclaimer: Without researching the traffic of each website or directory used it is impossible to give a true gauge of how effective each website is or is not. It is going to be assumed that any advertising done on the Internet is productive and will assist in showcasing the Outer Banks.
