CLEVELAND — Destination Cleveland rolled out its vision to attract visitors to the area in 2020 at its annual meeting on Monday at Playhouse Square.
The organization says its goal is to attract 20 million visitors here by the end of the year.
“Destination Cleveland’s primary goal has been and always will be attracting visitors by improving Cleveland’s narrative and enhancing the customer experience, which leads to positive word of mouth and repeat visitation,” said president and CEO David Gilbert. “We are then able to amplify the impact of these efforts by harnessing the power of those visitors to consider Cleveland as a place to live and work through collaborations with community partners. When we grow the number of visitors to Cleveland, everything we do surrounding that grows, as well.”
Gilbert revealed Destination Cleveland's marketing initiatives for the coming year.
- Evolve the Cleveland brand to attract visitors to Cleveland with the understanding that visitors are potential new residents.
- Support, leverage and market the 2021 NFL Draft in partnership with Greater Cleveland Sports Commission.
- Launch a new sales deployment strategy focused on booking larger conventions farther out into 2024-2027.
- Consider ways to improve Cleveland’s narrative on a more significant scale, including exploring additional video formats that reach national audiences and other avenues that reach a broad audience quickly.
- Get more residents to learn about and experience more of their hometown so that they can confidently recommend Cleveland as a place to visit, live and work as part of the Visit Me in CLE campaign.
Gilbert also stressed the importance of improving the perception of the city as a place to live and work. The organization employed insights from Destinations Counsellors International (DCI) research to determine strategies on how to change perceptions of Cleveland. Research results from the nearly 4,500 people surveyed included:
- Previous visitors to Cleveland rate the city 32 percent higher as a place to live and work compared to those who have not visited Cleveland before.
- 90 percent of people want to visit Cleveland before they would consider it as a place to live and work.
“Improving perceptions of Cleveland as a place to live and work is central to our efforts to amplify the impact of visitors and realize our vision of harnessing the power of the visitor,” said Gilbert. “It’s that vision that led Destination Cleveland to get involved in leading community initiatives related to economic growth. With the right marketing and an ecosystem ready to help potential new residents, we can work as a community to get visitors to consider Cleveland as a place to live and work.”
Destination Cleveland also introduced Jon Pinney, Managing Partner of Kohrman Jackson & Krantz LLP, as its new Chairman of the Board of Directors.
You can see Destination Cleveland's 2020 annual meeting in the player below: