Arkansas hot deals

guest commentary by Jennifer Boulden, communications manager for the Fort Smith Convention & Visitors Bureau

A lot of talk gets thrown around about tourism dollars. Getting them can be a very competitive task for any business. Guess what? There’s an app for that.

The Arkansas Department of Parks & Tourism offers a program that is just now starting to be utilized by Fort Smith’s hotel, restaurant, attraction, and retail sectors. It’s called Arkansas Hot Deals & Packages. It provides free, highly targeted web and iPhone advertising for Arkansas businesses that tourists might use.

That’s right: free advertising. There’s not a catch. It’s already paid for by the state’s hospitality revenue. There are some guidelines, but if you’re an Arkansas business that can generate tourism dollars (e.g., lodging, food, shopping, fun), you can get free advertising by building packages and coupons that will be featured in two places: on Arkansas.com under “Hot Deals & Packages” and on the brand-new Arkansas Hot Deals iPhone app.

Here’s how it works.

Arkansas.com gets thousands of visitors each month from all over the world looking for information about Arkansas destinations. One of the boldest, most alluring sections they’ll see on the home page is a link for Hot Deals & Packages. For obvious reasons, this is one of the site’s most popular pages.

Visitors can search for packages or coupons by date, category (History, Family & Kids, Weddings & Honeymoons, etc.), lodging type, region, or city.

What happens when people who have heard about Fort Smith’s historical attractions or rodeo or beautiful scenery search for Hot Deals & Packages in Fort Smith? Until recently, they got almost no options. That’s not encouraging, which is why we’ve started a new initiative to promote this free service.

When visitors search for Eureka Springs, Hot Springs, Little Rock, or other areas of the state taking full advantage of their tourist appeal they get dozens of Hot Deals and Packages of every flavor. That’s what we need. We are competing with these cities for every dollar, and our incentives to come to Fort Smith must reflect that.

As of March, there is also a jazzy new iPhone app with a streamlined version of every deal included on the Web site. The iPhone app searches for deals within a 25- or 50-mile radius of the user. Right now, only four hotels in Fort Smith or Van Buren have deals on this app. That’s it.  We need more hotels plus Fort Smith restaurants, clubs, museums, boutiques, and other attractions to use it. If I’m a tourist traveling down I-40 and I check my app for somewhere good for dinner, I’m likely to bypass Fort Smith entirely in favor of a hot deal my iPhone tells me is in Clarksville. We need deals that make them stop and spend money here.

One more thing: most states don’t offer this kind of comprehensive database of travel deals, particularly not without charging for the ads. What Arkansas offers us for free is nothing short of remarkable. Spend a little time on Arkansas.com/HotDeals. Download the iPhone app and play with it. You’ll see.

You get:
• A free listing for your business that reaches thousands of people who are searching for a reason to visit our state. Additionally, your business will be listed under Fort Smith’s page on Arkansas.com with a very thorough breakdown of your amenities, 800 words of description, directions, photos, hours, credit cards accepted, and other specialized information tourists want to know before making plans to visit. Whether you create packages and coupons or not, you can take advantage of this listing.

• A deal title of your choosing. Make it catchy!

• Several sentences of description of your package or coupon and your business.

• Directions on how to redeem the deal (your choice of method).

• Free, automatic iPhone advertising specifically accessed by travelers in your area.

• Up to 3 photos or logos of your choosing (1 will show on iPhone app).

• A clear link to e-mail the deal to friends.

• A “Share” tool with immediate linking capability to more than 100 social media sites.

• Also, a Facebook link prominently displayed at the top of the page and on the iPhone app gives the option to instantly post the deal to the user’s Facebook profile to tell their friends about it.

• A translation tool to translate your deal information into dozens of languages for international tourists.

• Open access to your listing to add as many more deals as you’d like, edit, or remove your deals any time.

Setting up these deals for your business takes about five minutes each. I’ve included a more thorough explanation of the program on the Fort Smith Convention & Visitors Bureau Web site.

This is an exciting time for Fort Smith as the city is transforming into a more recognized tourist destination. Our staff at the CVB works year round marketing Fort Smith’s unique blend of “Old West” and “New South” appeal to leisure, group and business travelers from across the nation. We are genuinely enthusiastic about our city’s heritage, attractions and potential and about bringing people here. This program is just the newest tool we are promoting to share Fort Smith with the world.

Our Convention & Visitors Bureau would love to have your business on board helping Fort Smith generate tourism dollars that benefit everyone. The more participation we have in this program, the more we show our enthusiasm as a tourism-friendly city. And the more we look like one of those to the rest of the world, the more we become one.

Jennifer Boulden is communications manager for the Fort Smith Convention & Visitors Bureau. She welcomes questions about this free marketing program and ways to help your business be part of Fort Smith’s tourism mix. You can reach her at 783-8888 or [email protected]