Atlantic City, N.J.
While casinos will always be an integral part of the Atlantic City landscape, a new branding and marketing campaign for the tourist destination is proving that gaming is no longer the only game in town. City officials are launching a major new branding emphasis on nongaming alternatives in a destination city that has traditionally been recognized as the East Coast version of Las Vegas.
“Gaming went from three to some 36 states and casinos have opened up in Pennsylvania in the last few years,” said Gary Musich, VP, sales and service for the Atlantic City Convention & Visitors Authority. “All of our efforts now are on telling people what else is going on. Our marketing materials and advertisements include everything but gaming. You’ll only hear us talk about market expansion and golf and all these other things that are the focus now.”
Liza Cartmell, a previous group president of Aramark Sports & Entertainment and since September 2011 president of the Atlantic City Alliance, a nonprofit entity charged with revitalizing and rebuilding Atlantic City’s reputation and broadening the destination’s appeal beyond gaming, added that when the resort was all about casinos there was never any need for marketing or promotion.
“The casinos were full 365 days a year,” she said. “But as gaming proliferated elsewhere, there was no longer a monopoly on things. If people wanted a quick gaming experience, they could stay home or they could drive 15 minutes to a local casino. We now have become that destination that needs to go back to its roots as a convention destination as well.”
To that end, respected venue veteran Karen Totaro, CFE, was hired from the Duke Energy Convention Center in Cincinnati on March 17 to serve as general manager of the Atlantic City Convention Center. Global Spectrum was awarded the contract to manage the convention center and Boardwalk Hall on January 1, 2014, on behalf of its client, the Atlantic City Convention & Visitors Authority, marking the first management change in 17 years, and just prior to that, former Temple University Liacouras Center GM Fran Rodowicz was named general manager of Atlantic City Venues, where he oversees the local venues with a focus on the iconic Boardwalk Hall that opened in 1929. All hires were made to broaden the appeal of Atlantic City as a destination visit.
“My initial two years here have been more about branding,” Cartmell said. “It is about reestablishing the brand and moving more into event-specific marketing. We also have some newer metrics that we are trying to put into the dialogue, if you will, because historically the only measurement stick that the destination has tracked for 30 years is gaming revenues. Those have done nothing but decline. The more people spend gaming elsewhere the less they spend gaming here. No new story there.”
But there are plenty of new stories being told that offer a glimpse of a market ready to burst at the seams. The hiring of Totaro was a huge step for the convention center.
“The biggest thing for me is to keep growing that relationship with the team in place,” Totaro said. “In this business it’s all about the relationships, whether it’s your partners, your promoters or your clients. This is a really good group and mix and what is nice is not only being part of Global Spectrum, but knowing they are just up the street (in Philadelphia). We have a great resource. We have a win-win combo here.”
The investment boom is led by the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority (CRDA), an organization with 11 local casinos as partners that provide capital investment funds for economic development and community projects that respond to the changing economic and social needs of Atlantic City and the State of New Jersey.
“The whole area is maturing as a destination,” Musich said. “We are definitely broadening our reach and market segment. Gaming is down, but non-gaming is up double digits.
“Just in the past 10 years there has been $10 billion in investments that have come in. You can actually go back to 1997 when $268 million was spent to build the convention center. Another $120 million came in to renovate Boardwalk Hall. Two years ago Forbes Travel gave this region a No. 6 ranking in the top 10 golf destinations. National Geographic rated the Boardwalk in Atlantic City No. 1 in the nation (among the top boardwalks). We had 100,000 people come to Restaurant Week in March. Our meeting, trade show and convention business grew for six consecutive years and is up 31 percent since 2009.
“That’s the evolution of this city right there. That’s the start of where we’re headed.”
Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville opened in the past year with a $70-million investment, while a new billion-dollar hotel and casino called Revel debuted and a new Bass Pro Shop will be opening. In addition, air service from Houston and Chicago on United Airlines now flies direct into Atlantic City.
Rodowicz said that the calendar at Boardwalk Hall is staying busy thanks in large part to the renovation.
“Even though the building is close to 90 years old, it is bringing back the history of entertainment that started in Atlantic City,” he said. “It is bringing back the nostalgia as a family destination.”
Talk nostalgia and Atlantic City and the obvious is the Miss America pageant, which after seven years in Las Vegas returned in September 2013 to the place where the pageant began in 1921. It took a package including hundreds of free and discounted hotel rooms, free use of Boardwalk Hall, and more than $7 million in state and county money to help pay production costs over three years for a telecast that is the fourth longest running live event in television history.
“We partnered with the CRDA to help bring Miss America back to Atlantic City,” Cartmell said. “Bringing it back to the state of New Jersey was important to the governor and lieutenant governor. They set the benchmark of informing people that this was going to happen.”
Cartmell said that the economic impact from the pageant was between $30 and $40 million in terms of spending.
“We had spectacular weather, which we traditionally get for September and October,” she said. “People were out spending money, enjoying the pageant, the parade and everything associated with Miss America. It far exceeded my expectations in a number of ways. You just don’t want to have an anomaly year with weather where it’s, oh no, my God, it’s the hurricane year.”
That would be Hurricane Sandy in 2012, and Musich said that even that historical event should not be viewed as a negative experience.
“To see people come together the way they did was a remarkable thing,” said Musich, who has worked in Atlantic City for 19 years. “We were fortunate because the major news networks were standing on the Boardwalk and saying it was gone, which was simply not true. There was no damage to our Boardwalk.”
Musich said that 90 meetings, conventions and trade shows were canceled but that every one of them returned or will be returning in the next three years.
“The convention center was a staging area for FEMA and instrumental in the recovery process,” he said. “It was also the staging area for the Red Cross. We housed people that were stranded with 600 beds. It was an amazing thing. The part of the Boardwalk that people said was destroyed had actually been closed for four years and was scheduled for demolition and to be rebuilt. Mother Nature just hastened the process.”
“We have a strong repeat business,” Totaro added. “We are developing a farther-reaching appeal than just regional business. We are positioned to draw very well for specific niches with the national market. I was excited to get here. I’m very quick to assess in this industry and I’ve usually been right-on in the past. I expect to be right again about making Atlantic City the very top destination location.”
Interviewed for this story: Liza Cartmell, (609) 348-7512; Karen Totaro, CFE, (609) 449-2012; Gary Musich, (609) 449-7110; Fran Rodowicz, (609) 348-7061