exploreseattle

About Explore Seattle

Explore Seattle is a bi-weekly podcast aimed to increase tourism in Seattle and provide a resource for those lucky enough to live here. Each episode, we will provide three fun activities: Art/History/Culture, Outdoors/Sports/Leisure and Events/Activities/Festivals.

Explore Seattle by Vera Hsu, Helen Pitlick, Alvin Singh is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Situation Analysis

According to the 2000 census, Seattle’s population has grown by about 9% (or 47,000 people) since 1990. The city increased by almost another 20,000 between 2000 and 2007 (1), though this growth has slowed somewhat due to the recession (2) Seattle also attracts 9.4 million tourists a year. In 2007, visitors to King County spent $5.1 billion dollars jointly. The average visitor is 41 years old, travels with a companion and stays 6 nights in town. Many visitors (79%) come for vacation or to visit friends and will be looking for activities to do during their stay (3). Seattle is home to a wide variety of cultural, educational and outdoor attractions, making the city a great place to explore for tourists, new residents, and old-timers alike.

However, with the current economy, tourism is suffering. On March 11, 2009, tourism industry leaders met with President Obama to discuss the launch of a Travel Promotion Act. They hoped that this action would increase tourism and create thousands of work opportunities during unsteady economic times. (4) Based on these two reasons, the number of visitors to Seattle is still growing despite the recession, and the entire tourism industry agrees that it is best to develop certain strategies now and invest more money in tourism businesses.

In addition, thousands of visitors from all over the world will flock to the Pacific Northwest for the 2010 Winter Olympic games. There are 1.6 million tickets available to the games (5), and with Vancouver just a few hours away from Seattle, an investment in tourism at the current juncture is a priority. The Seattle Convention and Visitors Bureau (SCVB) is trying to connect with Vancouver to draw visitors south during this period.

Moreover, according to the data from Podcasting News, 43% percent Americans are aware of podcasts, up by 6% since last year. Also, about 42% people between the ages of 12 - 44 years old own a portable media/mp3 player (10). Considering that most tourists will bring their portable media/mp3 players, making the “Explore Seattle” series podcasts a valuable addition to the Seattle tourism industry.

Objective

The goal of “Explore Seattle” is to increase tourism and provide a resource for current residents as well. In order to collaborate with the Seattle Convention and Visitors Bureau (SCVB), our podcast will target three objectives.

1) The podcast is aimed to brand a connection between Seattle and Vancouver to coincide with the 2010 Winter Olympic games. The podcast will be released both in French and English versions, the two official languages of the Olympic games, as well as languages that correspond to current tourism trends. Based on the medal count from 2006 Winter Olympics (9), Germany, United States, Austria, Russia, Canada, Sweden, South Korea, Switzerland, Italy and France won the most. It is possible that a large percentage of visitors will be from these countries in 2010 Olympics. According to a statistic from Comscore , people from China, United States, Canada, UK, Australia, France, India, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan most attended the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Therefore, we will also launch German, Russian, Korean, Spanish, Japanese and Chinese versions to correspond both with predicted attendance and normal tourism trends.

2) In addition, SCVB is now holding the campaign “Why tourism matters?” This campaign attempts to unite the whole tourism industry in Washington state and increase the revenue of tourism in the upcoming year. Local businesses are viewed as “tourism ambassadors”. They are making efforts to collaborate with SCVB to make Seattle as a perfect destination for travel. The podcast is also responsible for conveying the message by having a rotating “tourism ambassador” act as a host.

3) The SCVB hopes that this podcast will increase revenue, though its success will be measured by the number of downloads and subscribers.

Proposed Project

The role of the Explore Seattle podcast is to provide a platform to gather and share Seattle tourism information and offer the most representative activities to our target audiences each week. In order to fulfill interests of different groups (such as families, outdoor enthusiasts, history buffs, and more), each podcast will cover three different kinds of activities in Seattle. Each episode will include: a) Art/History/Culture, b) Outdoors/Sports/Leisure, and c) Events/Activities/Festivals; the length of each part will be around 3-4 minutes. What/When/Where will be the underlying three contents of each part.

Production Plan

Explore Seattle will release an episode every other Thursday. This timing will benefit both visitors and residents looking for something to do fun on the weekend. The podcast will be produced in-house by SCVB. The tone will be inspirational, funny and informative, with an upbeat tempo. Each podcast will run 10 minutes. Different genre will be used according to different topics. At our primary thoughts, interviews and sound-seeing tour will be two pillars of our podcasts.

Promotion and Distribution Plan

1) We will create a mock-up blog to organize the entire series of podcasts. Besides the podcasts, we will also offer printable notes of each episode. Visitors will be able to download the notes to use as their tour guides, especially if they are travelling with another person or a group and cannot listen to a personal mp3 player. This text will allow the podcast to be found by a search engine. We will also link to the SCVB website and 2010 Vancouver Olympics website.

2) Our podcast logo will be put on the homepage of SCVB website and will direct visitors to our official blog to look for more episodes and detailed information.

3) In order to make our podcasts accessible to more listeners, we will submit them to the major podcatchers: iTunes and PodcastAlley.

Project Summery

Explore Seattle is a weekly podcast aimed to increase tourism in Seattle. It will focus on three activities

- history/exhibit, Seattle celebrities, and outdoor activities to increase exploration. Our hosts, “tourism ambassadors” will be the upbeat thread among shows. As an informative and interesting audio tour guide, Explore Seattle is expected to stimulate the local tourism, attract more international visitors with the connection of 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics games and bring fun to every prospective tourists.