BY CATHLEEN McCARTHY

A unique collaborative

education-based tourism

marketing program brings

colleges and cities together

to attract prospective

students and parents to

the schools and to the

hotels and attractions

within their localities.

When Todd Hoffmancame up with the ideaof tapping into col-lege-related tourism adecade ago in his

hometown, Boston, the city’s hotels werestruggling through a recession. Lookingback, he is surprised nobody thought ofit before.

With some of the most famous col-leges in the world—including Harvardand MIT—Boston is the ultimate collegetown. The city claims a $300 millionimpact each year from college-related vis-its. Graduations alone are worth about$80 million in tourism for the city, cam-pus visits about $90 million. “That’s a lotof money,” Hoffman points out, “and theprimary beneficiary is the hotels.”

Representing three hotels in 1994,Hoffman put together a mock-up of a vis-

itors guide aimed at prospective collegestudents and their parents and brought itto area colleges. Eight colleges agreed tohelp fund his proposal, a collaborativemarketing effort involving a Web site(www.campusvisit.com) and print cam-paign with brochures and a magazinemailed annually to high school juniors,marketing Boston to college visitors.

“Partner colleges” agreed to pay anannual membership fee for a listing onthe Web site, inclusion in the annualmagazine and printed materials and useof the Boston-based travel desk whichhelps college visitors make travel arrange-ments, often at discount. Approvedhotels were asked to act as “ambassadors”to the city, offering special treatment anddiscounts to Campus Visit guests. Amtrakkicked in with half-price fares and U.S.Airways offered a five percent discount.

40 HSMAI MARKETING REVIEW • WINTER 2002/2003

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Campus Visit Inc. was born.It was easy to promote Boston as a net-

work of college-related opportunities.There are, after all, “50 great collegeswithin 50 square miles,” as the Web siteboasts. “Anyone who grew up in Bostonknows colleges are an industry there,” hesays. “In Detroit, you have cars, inNashville, music. In Boston, when wewere talking about opportunities for get-ting new people into hotels, it was theuntapped market of college visitors thatcame to mind.”

Campus Visit’s home-based program,which now has 16 member colleges, setthe standard for the programs it estab-lished in Philadelphia in 2000 andPittsburgh in 2001, and is creating forBaltimore. Hoffman expects to publishmore than a million copies of Campus Visit

magazine in 2003, to help 17-year-olds

plan their visits—and to sell them onhow cool each of these cities are.

A perception-reality gapIt was not Boston, however, butPhiladelphia, a far-less recognized collegecity, that brought Campus Visit—and theconcept of collaborative education-basedtourism marketing—into the nationalspotlight. A 1999 study revealed that met-ropolitan Philadelphia has as many col-leges as Boston (50) but an even denserconcentration. In fact, the Philadelphiaregion boasts the highest per capita con-centration of higher education institu-tions in the U.S. Even leaders of highereducation seemed unaware of this brag-ging point and the city’s hospitality indus-try had barely considered local colleges’contributions to tourism.

Following publication of the study,Campus Visit Inc. was contacted by theGreater Philadelphia Tourism MarketingCorp. (GPTMC) in early 2000. “TheGPTMC had just been hammered in thelocal paper,” Hoffman recalls, referring

to an article in the Daily News titled “WhyIsn’t Philly Building a Better StudentMagnet?” Meryl Levitz, president of theGPTMC, called Hoffman.

In terms of the colleges themselves,Philadelphia was a marketer’s dream butpublic perception of the city itself provedchallenging. “Boston was a different situ-ation,” Hoffman says. “The colleges likedthe program but they didn’t really needit. It was a nice-to-have, not a must-have.It was Philadelphia that needed it.”

“There is a serious perception-realitygap regarding Philadelphia,” he explains.“People don’t appreciate it for what it isuntil they get there. From 1970 to 1995,Philly wasn’t a place you wanted to sendkids.” Some would argue that the realitybegan to improve well before that. Oldneighborhoods like Rittenhouse Squareand Society Hill had long enjoyed the

prestige of big-ticket real estate and finerestaurants, but there were still shadyareas downtown and a lackluster nightlifefor such a populated city.

Then, in the early 1990s, neighbor-hoods like Manayunk and Old City wererenovated and turned into boutique dis-tricts with distinct, artsy personalities.Under the stewardship of master mar-keter, then-mayor Ed Rendell, a strip ofmusical venues and theaters along BroadStreet were revived and promoted as the“Avenue of the Arts.” Restaurants, gal-leries and nightclubs began to appear inthese neighborhoods, improving thenightlife and cultural scene—and youngprofessionals began moving downtown.

Local perception of the city continuesto improve, but on the national radar,Philadelphia, still personifies crime,urban decay and the kind of cultureRocky personified: greasy cheesesteaksand sentences that begin with ‘yo.’“Changing a mindset about a city usuallytakes a generation,” says Hoffman.

At the time GPTMC was planning a

TV spot targeting prospective college stu-dents and their parents. “But they real-ized they weren’t going to reach manypeople efficiently,” Hoffman says. Heconvinced them instead to invest a por-tion of that quarter million in his grass-roots program and invite local colleges tomatch funds.

Around this time, the University ofPennsylvania contacted Campus Visitindependently. The university agreed tohelp the GPTMC fund the program,whether or not other colleges were inter-ested. Eleven local colleges attended apresentation at Penn in fall 1999. Tensigned up on the spot; the last, BrynMawr, joined later. There are now 18member colleges, Campus Visit’s largestgroup.

Swarthmore College, one of severalsmall colleges along the Mainline west of

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A Tourism Goldmine

Philly, was among the first paidmembers of the new program,titled One Big Campus.Swarthmore’s director of admis-sions loved the idea, as did its pub-licity director, Tom Krattenmaker. “Ithink the proximity of Philadelphiahas had a neutral impact onSwarthmore admissions so far,”Krattenmaker says. “But the col-lege’s biggest competitors amongliberal arts colleges, Williams andAmherst, are in fairly remote loca-tions. So if Philly developed a hotreputation as a great place to go tocollege, it would become a competi-tive advantage for us.”

Within the first year, CampusVisit’s “travel desk” was fielding 500calls per month from visitors plan-ning trips to Philadelphia colleges.“Eighty percent of the kids visiting thesecolleges are from outside the market.Their parents are all worried about send-ing them away. By exposing them toPhiladelphia, we can help them over-come their fears. We help people havemore enjoyable visits and leave withfavorable impressions of the schools andthe city. That, of course, will stand outlater when they have to make a decision.”

One Big Campus is Campus Visit’slargest and most ambitious project todate. In Philadelphia, affiliated hotelshand out Campus Visit bags with dispos-able cameras, the magazine, discountcoupons and a letter of welcome fromthe mayor. Next year, the city’s orchestra,ballet and opera companies will makedeeply discounted “student sampler” tick-ets available through One Big Campus.Campus Visit and its Philadelphia part-ners are focusing more attention onestablished college students and plan-ning to target graduate students andalumni next. “We’re hoping to get thealumni from the eighties to come back tocampus,” Hoffman says. “We’ll invitepress from around the country who stud-ied in Philly so they can see that the cityhas changed.”

Beyond steel: the starter cityAfter the success of the One Big Campuslaunch, Hoffman’s team was called in tohelp with another Pennsylvania city strug-

gling with a bad reputation: Pittsburgh.Contacted by the city’s CVB, Hoffman setup a pilot program based on the tagline“Pittsburgh: The College City,” creating aPittsburgh version of the Campus Visitmagazine and a Web site calledwww.thecollegecity.com. Like the sites forBoston and Philadelphia, this one mapsout Pittsburgh’s attractions from the col-lege visitor’s point of view.

Pittsburgh too has a high concentra-tion of students, 120,000 students and 32colleges in the region, according toHoffman. “We believe that if a city hasten or more schools than it becomes astory the public will believe.” (Baltimore,the latest city to sign on, produced 13member colleges and claims 100,000 stu-dents in the region.)

Pittsburgh, however, had a differentset of problems than its neighbor. Whilethe perception of Philadelphia was “byand large negative,” Hoffman explains,“Pittsburgh has no identity whatsoever.People go to Carnegie Mellon in spite ofPittsburgh—not that they have anythingagainst it, they just figure they might aswell be going to Williams or Amherst.The city has no influence—which meansthat they under-appreciate what the cityhas to offer.”

According to its CVB, Pittsburgh has“more culture per capita than any othercity in America,” due mainly to thelargesse left by steel magnates Andrew

Mellon and Andrew Carnegie.“The issue there is to putPittsburgh on the map,” saysHoffman.

“It’s a moderate-size, very man-ageable city—everything you’dwant in a city but not too much,”he says. “It’s everybody’s startercity. You’re 17, you want a city tobe comfortable with before you gooff to New York. That’s step one,because if you become part of thecity and get to know it, becomepart of the work community, thearts community, you’re very likelyto stay. That’s what happens inBoston. It would take a lot ofincentive to get most college grad-uates in Boston to go elsewhere.There are too many reasons to

stick around.”While Philly’s image problem comes

from insiders as well as outsiders—nativePhiladelphians love to bad-mouth thecity—Pittsburgh’s is primarily external.“When you go to Pittsburgh and talk tothe people about their city, you hearnothing but good things,” Hoffmanclaims. “Kids there thought Pittsburghhad everything they needed; they didn’tneed to go elsewhere.”

Attracting new blood to Pittsburgh isthe problem facing Bill Flanagan, CCOfor the Allegheny Conference onCommunity Development. He is spear-heading an imaging campaign for theregion and sees Campus Visit as “theleading edge as well as part of the imple-mentation.”

“Pittsburgh is still known externallyfor what it was known for 30 years ago:steel and manufacturing,” says Flanagan.A few years ago, the CVB did marketresearch and found “a lingering percep-tion of Pittsburgh as a smoky industrialcenter known for steel and sports—likethe Steelers—and not much awarenessthat it’s also a thriving cultural centerand a center for higher education.” It’san image that has made it difficult toattract new businesses, especially serviceand technology, not to mention leisuretravelers. “Who wants to vacation in amanufacturing center?” Flanagan laughs.

An “image gap committee” of 15tourism promotion organizations and 55

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onebigcampus.com

senior marketing executives from a vari-ety of organizations convened in April.“We have a very fragmented marketingsystem in this region,” Flanagan says.“More than 100 entities are telling thestory of the region, each coming up witha different message aimed at their targetaudiences. As a result, we have a com-plex and confusing message going out.With so many different constituencies,we’re having a hard time agreeing onthe name of the region—Pittsburgh,Metropolitan Pittsburgh, etc.—let alonethe sales pitch. It’s tempting to pick theleast offensive platform just to get every-one to agree, but then you’re notaccomplishing anything because it does-n’t resonate with the public.”

Campus Visit’s Pittsburgh initiativebecame a kind of pilot program, Flanagansays, largely because it provided an exam-ple. “Ten colleges and universities in theregion actually managed to come up witha position and an approach to use collec-tively,” he says. “We’ve been working close-ly with them all along.” When the commit-tee convenes in February 2003, the newregional message will be introduced intoCampus Visit materials. But becauseCampus Visit is so heavily involved,Flanagan says, “I don’t expect the result tobe all that different. My guess is they’ll domore to inform the regional brandingmessage than vice versa.”

Measuring the effectOne difficulty for Campus Visit is justify-ing the annual membership fee tocolleges who demand evidence ofadmissions payoffs. “Personally, Ithink that schools participate in aprogram like this because it’s partof being a good citizen of the area,”says Swarthmore’s TomKrattenmaker. “I don’t think col-leges can expect concrete admis-sions payoffs in four years. Tochange the reputation of an area isa huge, long-term project. In theearly going, you just have to havefaith in the idea. It takes a longtime to effect a change in thenational consciousness.”

Campus Visit points to the num-ber of calls to its travel desk andvisits to its Web sites. Philadelphia’s

Onebigcampus.com receives more than220,000 hits annually. “There are alsoindicators we look at from an admissionsstandpoint—visitors on campus, numberof applicants, whether that’s changed—but it’s purely speculation,” Hoffmanadmits. “The best indicator of how we’veimpacted admissions is the number ofpeople who’ve been accepted whochoose to go there. If we can increasethat number by even 2 percent, we’ll takesome credit for that. Because the schoolwon’t have changed, only the environ-ment around it—or the perception of it.”

Better than a conventionWashington D.C., Atlanta and New Yorkhave all contacted Campus Visit. For now,Hoffman is taking on one new city eachyear. He predicts that college-basedtourism will be commonplace eventually.“Twenty-five years ago, ‘I Love NY’ was thefirst regional tourism effort. Now everyregion in America has a CVB. You can’tgo anywhere without finding some collec-tive marketing effort aimed at tourism.That will be the case ten years from nowwhen it comes to college-associated trav-el—because the impact is so great.”

One college student attending fromout of state will have a $50,000 annualimpact, Hoffman claims: “You don’t getthat from a conventioneer.” Cities’emphasis on convention promotion is apet peeve. “Everybody plays follow the

leader to attract convention visitors,” hesays. “CVBs are obsessed with attractingoutside money into the region by gettingconvention visitors for a couple days. Butthe impact of any convention palesbeside what they could get from one col-lege’s graduation. The difference is,those college visitors started coming fouryears earlier, so you not only have peoplewho come en masse but repeatedly.

“If you work with colleges from thebeginning, which is our approach,you’re building an alliance with a fre-quent traveler who spends multiple hun-dreds of dollars in the region over thecourse of four years. You’ve got interna-tional students who return to their coun-tries and enter business or government.When they’re looking to parlay theirrelationships back in the states, their firsteffort is usually focused on where theywent to school. That impact can equalmany millions of dollars. Every interna-tional student is worth, on average, 45trips by friends and family in the courseof their lifetime.”

You might say colleges are recession-proof. “After September 11 (2001), whenmost of the leisure audience stoppedtraveling, parents continued to visit theirkids,” Hoffman points out. Colleges arean unusually stable destination—well-established, requiring no financial outlayby the city; the infrastructure is already inplace. Industry will come and go,Hoffman says, “but colleges are rooted intheir communities. Their endowments

and nonprofit status is strongenough for most to remain inde-pendent. They won’t move.”

As Pittsburgh and Philly haveboth discovered, keeping a cityvital and dynamic means appealingto a youthful culture—and a city’scolleges are a goldmine wherethat’s concerned. “Everythingthat’s cool about a city can usuallybe traced to the environment of itsyouth—whether it’s Austin,Boston, Seattle or San Francisco—and the engine behind that is thecolleges,” Hoffman says. “We trulybelieve this is an emerging market.We believe in the ultimateimpact—but it isn’t going to hap-pen tomorrow.” ■

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