Mayor: Cape May Needs Long Range Marketing Plan

CAPE MAY — Mayor Edward J. Mahaney Jr. told the city’s Tourism Commission Aug. 26 the city needs to create and implement a long-range master plan for the marketing and promotion of Cape May because the marketing and promotion of the seaside town is fragmented with a number of groups spending money on advertising without enough resources.
The city has signed an agreement with Temple University School of Tourism and Hospitality Management to manage Cape May’s future Convention Hall and coordinate tourism promotion for the seaside town.
As Cape May competes on global basis for visitors, combined with a weak national economy, the city will need to use the resources it has in a more efficient manner, he said.
Mahaney said as an example, the city quotes a population figure of 40,000 to 50,000 people on summer weekends but can’t confirm that figure.
“Our market share seems to be changing in various geographic areas, the age groups are changing,” he said. “We need to know where the people are coming from, why they are coming, what they are looking for in Cape May, what they are spending their money on, what they like and don’t like, what we could possibly do to make this more attractive to them.”
Mahaney said business owners would be able to participate in meetings and seminars. He said information gathered such as the demographic information about visitors would be available to businesses. He said residents could also participate in the master plan through town meetings.
Mahaney said he hoped the result would be to create niche for Cape May that was “stable and expanding.”
The city’s Department of Civic Affairs and Recreation will be expanded to include a public information office to send information to the media on tourism and government activities. That department will use the master plan to oversee marketing and promotion of the city, said Mahaney.
He said he hoped the city would have the cooperation of the other public and private agencies that do tourism promotion. The mayor said he did not want to usurp or infringe on their independence but wanted to be certain efforts are not duplicated so as to get as much return as possible from advertising dollars.
He said the city needed to be aware of what competing cities are doing particularly in the area of their convention centers.
Bob Steenrod, president of the Chamber of Commerce of Greater Cape May, praised the plan acknowledging a current lack of manpower. He said it was nearly impossible to pull together all the local groups involved in tourism.
Steenrod said he thought tourism suffered in Cape May from a lack of a public information office. He said a question has been “What is the Cape May brand?”
Steenrod said it was something different to everybody and the city needed a unified message of what makes the city unique.
Mahaney said he envisioned the city’s Tourism Commission as the steering committee for the new plan. He said Temple students would be in Cape May providing fresh ideas.
A redeployment of the city assets was needed in particular for functions that are not essential any longer, said Mahaney.
“Tourism is our number one industry,” he said. “The point is our residents realize we have to have tourism properly provided in order for all of us to continue to be able afford to live here.”
Steenrod said residents would be impacted financially if tourism goes away and the city no longer has revenue from room tax and beach tags.
Mahaney said Cape May’s former ten and a half month economy has begun to shrink back to a seven to eight month tourist season.