TUCSON, Ariz. (January 2009) — After months of collaboration and hard work, simpleview and the National Tour Association (NTA) are pleased to announce the launch of the NTA’s new website at www.ntaonline.com. Upon commissioning the site, the NTA had the goal of creating a relevant and useful member tool, and the end result is an intuitive user‐friendly site that features custom navigation, sleek design, Web 2.0 technology and best‐of‐breed functionality. “The NTA is a wonderful organization with dedicated members, and we are glad that we could create the website that they envisioned; one that could best serve their members,” said simpleview President Rich Reasons. Site navigation is made simple through the use of dropdown boxes that include thumbnail images and brief descriptions to direct visitors throughout the site with fewer clicks of the mouse. To make member connection easy, simpleview created a comprehensive search function that allows for both suppliers/destinations and tour operators. Each member can now create more comprehensive member profiles where they can upload relevant information and pictures. There is also an attractive front page “member’s corner,” where one can read member testimonials or view member profiles or pictures. Further comprehensive member features include a members’ resource section, an industry relations section and an education/CTP section. In addition to the member features, the website features a media center where the NTA can post press releases and media mentions, and an informative traveler section where those interested in tour operator services can learn more about the industry and its offerings. About simpleview simpleview provides forward‐thinking destination marketing organizations and member‐based associations with best‐of‐breed tools, technologies and interactive marketing services to build and maintain meaningful relationships with their members, customers, strategic partners, and industry stakeholders. Their unique approach combines fully integrated solutions including vibrant website design and development, powerful customer relationship management tools, compelling e‐marketing strategies, and advanced reporting and analytics. The end result; dramatic increases in productivity, sales, online exposure, market effectiveness and reliable metrics and reporting to forecast sales, measure success, and quantify economic impact. simpleview is a privately held and independently funded Arizona‐based S‐Corp serving more than 125 Destination Marketing Organizations and Associations throughout North America, and was recognized as 2008’s second‐fastest‐ growing, privately‐held travel sector company by Inc. Magazine in their Inc. 5000 business ranking issue. For more information, visit www.simpleviewinc.com. About National Tour Association The National Tour Association is the preferred association in the tourism industry for packaged travel professionals. NTA's diverse membership and progressive nature make it an industry leader as the place to do business. NTA consistently seeks innovations for the services and business tools it provides to members, and the leadership keeps its fingers on the pulse of the ever‐changing world. In turn, NTA members are some of the most creative in the dynamic travel industry. NTA membership represents 36 countries, and tour and travel packagers of all types, including a group, independent, student, and more. To learn more, please visit http://www.ntaonline.com.

 TUCSON, Ariz. (February 2009) — simpleview has made room in the display case for their newest award--a HSMAI Silver Adrian Award--which they won for designing and implementing the Visit Jacksonville website found at www.visitjacksonville.com. The Adrian Awards Competition is widely considered the largest and most prestigious travel marketing competition globally, and simpleview representatives picked up the award at HSMAI’s January 26th gala in New York City.

Specializing in creating best-of-breed technology solutions and interactive marketing services for the DMO and CVB marketplace (DMOs and CVBs are official destination marketing organizations who represent the travel and tourism interests of cities, counties, regions and states), simpleview believes the award is representative of the quality of work and commitment to customer service that they pride themselves on.

“We are extremely proud to win this award, but we are even happier that the product that this award was won for has translated into great success for our client,” said simpleview President Rich Reasons.

A website that is not only visually striking, but functional, visitjacksonville.com features applications and tools valuable to visitors, meeting planners, travel professionals and the media. From video, photo tours and blogs to suggested itineraries, destination highlights and a calendar of events, the website blends Web 2.0 elements with comprehensive information that Visit Jacksonville provides to a variety of audiences.

“The HSMAI Adrian Awards are a great honor and deemed one of the best recognitions within our industry,” said John Reyes, Visit Jacksonville president & CEO.  “Our team has worked hard this past year to create innovative initiatives and overhaul our Web site to increase awareness and visitor demand of Jacksonville as a leisure and business destination.”

About simpleview
simpleview provides forward-thinking destination marketing organizations and member-based associations with best-of-breed tools, technologies and interactive marketing services to build and maintain meaningful relationships with their members, customers, strategic partners, and industry stakeholders.  Their unique approach combines fully integrated solutions including vibrant website design and development, powerful customer relationship management tools, compelling e-marketing strategies, and advanced reporting and analytics. The end result; dramatic increases in productivity, sales, online exposure, market effectiveness and reliable metrics and reporting to forecast sales, measure success, and quantify economic impact.  simpleview is a privately held and independently funded Arizona-based S-Corp serving more than 125 Destination Marketing Organizations and Associations throughout North America. For more information, visit www.simpleviewinc.com. 

About Visit Jacksonville
Visit Jacksonville, formerly the Jacksonville & the Beaches Convention and Visitors Bureau, is the marketing organization contracted by the Duval County Tourist Development Council (TDC) to champion the growth of business and leisure tourism in Northeast Florida.  Along with its nearly 400 tourism partners, Visit Jacksonville stimulates economic impact, quality of life and recognition for the Northeast Florida region.  For a closer look at all there is to see and do in Jacksonville, go to www.VisitJacksonville.com.

Attachment: simpleview--HSMAI award--FINAL.pdf

TUCSON, Ariz. (January 2009) — Not only competing, but succeeding in today’s economic conditions, simpleview added forty new clients or business initiatives in 2008. Specializing in creating best-of-breed technology solutions and interactive marketing services for the DMO and CVB marketplace (DMOs and CVBs are official destination marketing organizations who represent the travel and tourism interests of cities, counties, regions and states), simpleview was also recognized as 2008’s second-fastest- growing, privately-held travel sector company in by Inc. Magazine in their Inc. 5000 business ranking issue. “Although there are tough economic conditions around us, we have continued to forge ahead due to the quality and value of our solutions,” said simpleview President Rich Reasons. “Our products were developed in conjunction with the DMO marketplace and more clients are finding that in this economy, when showing relevance and quantifiable data to stakeholders is more important than ever, the simpleview choice is easy.” In addition to adding new destination marketing clients like the Napa Valley, CA, Salt Lake City, UT, Fort Worth, TX, Boston, MA, New York City, NY, and Wilmington, DE, simpleview has also expanded existing relationships with the Mississippi Gulf Coast, MS, Tampa Bay, FL, Wichita, KS, Jacksonville, FL, Lane County, OR, and the Pocono Mountains Vacation Bureau in Pennsylvania. With over 125 clients, simpleview credits their growth to their experience, products and customer service. The company is led by industry veterans that leverage their collective knowledge gained through 17 years of experience working with more than 125 DMOs. Realizing that the value of simpleview is not just technology and experience, but business results; they are also committed to precedent-setting personalized service, which has led to a 99% customer retention rate. About simpleview simpleview provides forward-thinking destination marketing organizations and member-based associations with best-of-breed tools, technologies and interactive marketing services to build and maintain meaningful relationships with their members, customers, strategic partners, and industry stakeholders. Their unique approach combines fully integrated solutions including vibrant website design and development, powerful customer relationship management tools, compelling e-marketing strategies, and advanced reporting and analytics. The end result; dramatic increases in productivity, sales, online exposure, market effectiveness and reliable metrics and reporting to forecast sales, measure success, and quantify economic impact. simpleview is a privately held and independently funded Arizona-based S-Corp serving more than 125 Destination Marketing Organizations and Associations throughout North America. For more information, visit www.simpleviewinc.com.

Selling and Marketing Your Destination in a Down Economy A recently released Travel Industry Association (TIA) report confirms what we already suspected; travel is down and the decline through 2009 is expected to continue with a projected 1.3% drop in leisure travelers and a 2.9% drop in business travelers. PKF Hospitality Research is forecasting a 7.8% drop in U.S. hotel RevPAR for 2009. With the downturn, you have to work harder to attract visitors in an increasingly competitive marketplace. How can you better sell and market your destination in a down economy? A few strategies to look into are: 1. Build Value: To attract visitors to your destination, you and your partners need to be the one giving them the most bang for their buck. It isn’t just about cutting costs, but stretching the dollars they DO spend to the maximum. Put together packages from multiple partners that target specific audiences like families, sports fans, foodies and couples. For example, if you have a great dining scene, put together dining packages that give visitors access to preferred reservations, valet parking and discount dining. 2. Maximize CRM Solutions: How do you know what kind of promotions to develop? Today’s best-of-breed CRMs provide a variety of functions, but one of the most important is their ability to allow you to mine your comprehensive demographic information. In a down economy, targeting your prospects and customers with laser focus is crucial. By using your CRM to mine data, you can design smart marketing initiatives like e-mail promotions, micro sites and landing pages catering to the specific preferences, lifestyles or business interests of high value prospects. 3. Focus Regionally: Airline ticket prices, surcharges and fuel prices have forced both meetings and conventions and individual travelers to look at options closer to home. Research high value prospects that are within 300-500 miles of your destination. Reach out to these targets and tout not only your destination’s best features, but your close proximity. Pairing a regional focus along with valuable offerings makes for a combination that is hard for many people to resist. We Can’t Go on Meeting Like This In destinations across the nation, business meetings, and the number of people attending them, are decreasing. While many big business and association conferences are still taking place, they are often scaled back versions and many companies are restricting their employees’ travel budgets. Smaller businesses and associations that are really feeling the pinch of the economy are canceling their meetings outright. But, there are a number of associations that are still actively seeking meeting venues. Find opportunities in the medical, military, religious and biotechnology industries, which seem to be best weathering this economic storm. In order to attract these businesses: 1. Position and Commit Yourself: In order to be supremely effective, commit yourself to an industry or two that you really want to target. First, determine what are realistic targets. For example, if you have an army base or strong military history, go after military meetings. Jacksonville, Florida and its Visit Jacksonville organization realized its healthcare prowess and launched a medical tourism campaign designed to brand Jacksonville as “America’s Health Center.” Not only did they establish a place on the web and create appropriate marketing materials, they highlighted their destination’s relevant features to high value prospects. 2. Tout Your Relevance: If you are going after, for example, medical meetings, be sure to compile all the reasons why your destination is ideal. Highlight your hospitals, doctors and facilities as well as locations, laboratories, research centers and universities that would appeal other medical industry professionals. Do some research to see if there is anything unique or groundbreaking in the medical field that is happening in your destination. 3. Build Value: Creating value in today’s world is essential. Meeting planners are faced with shrinking budgets and are looking to do more with less. Pair up with partners who are also looking to increase business and create promotions, packages and offerings that help to create value specifically for meeting planners. How to Get the Most Out of Your Online Advertising Dollar According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers, online advertising surged 15.8% to become an $11.5 billion market in the U.S. in the first half of 2008. Why? Because of the staggering amount of people online. An estimate from internetworldstats.com says that usage of the Internet has grown 305% since 2000 and that currently 1.4 billion people are using the Internet worldwide. While you undoubtedly have an online presence, you may be looking to implement or expand online advertising yourself. So how can you be sure that you are getting the most out of your online advertising dollar? 1. Vertical Networking: Today’s market segments are fragmented and can be hard to reach. One way to circumvent this is to join a vertical ad network focused on your industry. These ad networks will take your power of dollar and combine it with others to make a splash where you may not be able to otherwise. 2. Know and Monitor Your Metrics: With online advertising, we get better metrics than any other form of advertising, but what do they mean? There are so many alphabet soups like PPC, CPM, PPL, and PPS that it is hard to account for them all. Is there one metric that you should focus on primarily? Unfortunately not, because it should be aligned to the goals of that specific advertising campaign. In one instance you may be looking to create all new prospect leads, while in others you are seeking return visits from existing customers or driving downloads of a particular ‘passport savings’ promotion. Ensure the metric you choose is aligned with the goal you are setting out to accomplish, and continually gauge the status of your results and tweak the campaign accordingly. 3. Be Ready to Engage and React: If you know your metrics, you will be able to see if a campaign is or isn’t working, and perhaps deduce what is going wrong. Either way, you have to be ready to react to advertising campaigns that aren’t working or that are losing steam. The best way to ensure consistent and effective advertising campaigns the first time around is to make them engaging. An online user who is engaged with your advertisement or promotion is more likely to further research and engage with your destination as a whole. Creating a Yearlong Promotional Calendar When it comes to promotions, one surefire way to guarantee failure is by not properly planning. Creating a yearlong promotional calendar will allow you to not only properly plan promotions and the events that may be associated with them, but also the marketing strategy and materials to drive their success. 1. Dates: Pick out the dates of seasonal, destination specific, holiday and other important events. Does your area have an annual professional golf tournament? Wine festival? Are you known for breathtaking scenery during the change of seasons? Is there a natural time of year when people seek your destination for skiing or poolside vacations? Look first for naturally occurring events in your area and put these events on the calendar. Now, start thinking about the tougher seasons, where visits are down to your area. Can you identify opportunities to offer your area as a destination to travelers with a special promotion? Mark these opportunities on the calendar as well. Finally, what about meeting planners and incentive travel? Balance your leisure travel promotions with ones directed to meeting planners to ensure a healthier mix and determine when that outreach should occur. 2. Overall Budget: After you have all of your events listed in calendar format, assess your budget to determine how much is in your entire promotions pot. 3. Scope of Promotion: With your events and budget in front of you, you can come to the most important step: determining how large and how much effort and money you can and want to focus on each promotion. Strike a balance between promoting your destination’s larger promotions and events while still having some leftover dollars to keep a continuous presence in the market during smaller holidays or shoulder seasons. 4. Timing/Planning: With your dates, scope and budget in mind, now it is time to put down on paper how far ahead you will have to plan your promotion to make it effective. Are you buying advertising? If so, how far out do you need to get them material? If you are implementing a unique online promotion for the first time, be sure to look far ahead so that your online marketing and design company has time to create and design the promotion you want to implement. Of course if you are having an event, there is a host of planning to go into that alone. In the last \ we talked about the value of recycling promotions to make the marketing process easier and build on the momentum. The next time you sit down to create the calendar, you can review what went well last year, and what can be improved upon or altered. Yes, a promotion can be daunting, but if you have everything written down on your calendar (you also have to refer to it!) a year in advance, you will be better able to prepare, plan and execute your promotions. This will lead to more fluid promotions, more publicity opportunities and greater success. Say What? Jacksonville Is the Talk of the Town with Jax-Libs Promotion Breaking through the clutter to grab your customers’ attention is increasingly difficult. Not only can truly unique promotions drive and engage people with your website (and destination), but they are a great opportunity for national media attention, awards and overall industry recognition. One recent promotion, Visit Jacksonville’s “Jax-Libs,” promotion achieved all of that and more. Jax-Libs, a form of the popular Mad-Libs game featuring Jacksonville themes like "A Day at the Beach" and "Relaxing by the Ocean," was launched as part of Visit Jacksonville’s “Escape to Jacksonville” tourism initiative. People who played the game were signed up for a monthly Jacksonville vacation prize package. During its four month run, the game’s success was tremendous. It received coverage in numerous local and regional media outlets and most importantly drove 40% of the visitjacksonville.com traffic. That’s right; 40 percent of the entire website traffic came as a result of the Jax-Libs promotion. As each person who played the game needed to sign up with an e-mail address and other information, Visit Jacksonville also exponentially increased their marketing database and specifically their e-mail marketing list. They’ll be reaping the rewards of this promotion for years to come. Proliferating Preferences--The What, How and Why In the recent DMAI Futures Study, one of the eight super-trends noted for the industry is “Proliferating Preferences.” The notion is that travel customers will respond most favorably to combinations of travel products and packages that are suited to their individual preferences. With such a variety of prospect interests and influencing factors, how do DMOs capture this vital information and create tailor-made communications? Today’s best-of-breed CRM solutions are one of the foundational pieces to address this challenge. Business intelligence gleaned from capturing, appending and enhancing data, associated with careful ‘cluster’ analysis, enables DMOs to create laser-targeted messages and content. Further developing these promotional concepts and supporting content allows DMOs to effectively capture a prospect’s attention by providing them with enticing and relevant offers. For example, you can start by creating a distribution list that targets leisure travelers interested in golf that make $200,000+/ year, live within 250 miles of your destination, and have the propensity to travel in the Spring or Fall.With such specific filtering capabilities at your fingertips, you can develop cooperative golf packages that bundle higher-end golf and accommodations that target drive markets in the Spring and Fall--ideal offerings which speaks directly to their preferences and individual lifestyles. Industry Insider Extra: simpleview President Rich Reasons in DMNews DMNews, a direct marketing publication, asked simpleview President Rich Reasons to give insight into how DMOs can use CRM applications effectively. Read the article. View Newsletter

Organization: Greater Ft. Lauderdale Convention & Visitors Bureau Objectives: The Greater Ft. Lauderdale Convention and Visitors Bureau (GFLCVB) initially began their partnership with simpleview in 2001 looking to transition from an "electronic brochure website" to an interactive website that they could maintain and update in-house. They also wanted a customer relationship management (CRM) solution to replace ACT!, preferably with tools that appealed more specifically to DMOs. And more recently, the Ft. Lauderdale bureau looked to simpleview's interactive marketing services team to insure their online marketing efforts were being maximized and accurately tracked. The simpleview Choice and Solutions: simpleview content management solutions (simpleview CMS) has transformed many "electronic brochure" websites into vibrant and dynamic online experiences. Its flexibility, scalability and overall ease-of-use allows users to update information, made it an ideal choice for GFLCVB. The fact that it was specifically designed for the DMO market with powerful bolt-on applications was another key consideration. More importantly, as simpleview CMS is built around and seamlessly integrated with simpleview CRM, the choice was easy to make. With this powerful combination, the GFLCVB can now capture and intelligently organize information from a variety of sources, identify top prospects and business opportunities, effortlessly create reports and sales forecasts, and easily update the website with fresh content to accommodate tailored e-mail promotions and other marketing initiatives. With all of this valuable data at their fingertips and the tremendous returns that interactive marketing campaigns can deliver, the GFLCVB turned to simpleview for their integrated marketing services (simpleview IMS). From strategic planning to creative services, campaign creation and execution, simpleview IMS will drive interested visitors to the GFLCVB website and destination. simpleview IMS also provides superior analytics to track key performance indicators linked to every online marketing campaign. Results: Since implementing simpleview's solutions, the GFLCVB has experienced tremendous spikes in productivity, accountability and cost savings. simpleview CMS has allowed their employees to easily make web changes on the fly, saving time and money while sparing them major headaches. simpleview CRM, integrated with the simpleview CMS, has given staff the ability to track all leads, use databases to implement marketing campaigns, monitor online marketing initiatives, and reclaim valuable time previously wasted on building custom reports.