Promoting South Jersey on the cheap
Devon Perry loves South Jersey. She would like to claim she was born and raised here but, she confides, she was actually born in Philadelphia.
Luckily, she was raised in Cherry Hill.
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As the interim executive director of Visit South Jersey, the destination marketing organization for Burlington, Camden, Gloucester and Salem counties, Perry is intent on making people see the region as she does.
South Jersey is a great place, she said. It is close to major cities; it has trails for wine, trails for hiking. It has vibrant downtowns and a rich history.
“The only thing we’re missing is the megaphone to let people know we’re here,” she said.
Trouble is, they can’t afford a good megaphone.
“Unlike any other state in the union,” Perry said of New Jersey, “hotel tax dollars do not substantially fund tourism.”
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Every state uses a fee base to fund tourism, whether it is an occupancy tax or another revenue stream, explained Joseph Simonetta, executive director of the New Jersey Tourism Industry Association. In New Jersey, 10 percent of the occupancy tax goes toward tourism advertising and promotion. That amounts to $9 million, of which a portion goes toward state tourism advertising and promotion.
“Yes, it’s extremely low,” Simonetta said. “We are near the bottom of the list of the 50 states for government funds for tourism.”
The average DMO (destination marketing organization) budget throughout the U.S. is more than $3 million, said Jake Buganski. The 20 DMOs in New Jersey, each representing a different region, share less than $2 million in grant money.
Buganski is the former executive director of Visit South Jersey and was with the organization for 10 years. Last year, he moved to the Finger Lakes in New York, where he is the president at the Steuben County Conference and Visitors Bureau. Perry took over his position in January.
“The importance of public funding isn’t just the dollars itself,” Buganski said. “The issue with not focusing on public funding and making it the top priority is that when you receive the public funding, it is recognizing tourism as a viable industry.”
Funding tourism is an investment, Buganski said. Tourism marketing can further increase the hotel tax and sales tax revenue, creating a place people want to visit or even live in.
Tourism in New Jersey grew 3.3 percent in 2015, according to the annual study on the economic impact of tourism in the state, and generated $43.4 billion. The tourism industry directly supports 318,330 jobs.
The majority of that money goes into the general fund. The same state report estimated that without the tourism industry, New Jersey households would have to pay an additional $1,460 in taxes to maintain current services.
Those in tourism don’t think the funding reflects the importance of their industry.
“We know of every dollar we get, we generate $42,” Simonetta said.
Nobody denies the discrepancy, he said, or that more money would be beneficial. “The reality is the money is being used for the general fund, and there aren’t a lot of places it can be cut.”
Buganski worked with the region’s wineries to create the Vintage Atlantic Wine Region, Visit SJ’s major initiative, Perry said. Wineries began to proliferate, and Visit SJ created a visitor guide of the wine trails.
“We know we are having a positive impact,” Buganski said.
Yet in 2014, a year in which the economic impact report showed the four Visit SJ counties in the Top 5 in the state according to economic growth, Visit SJ actually saw its funding cut from $128,000 to $126,000.
It wasn’t the size of the $2,000 cut that irritated them. The problem was the cut didn’t fairly reflect their progress, Buganski said. Not to mention $128,000 wasn't enough to begin with.
Visit SJ should have reliable funding, Perry said. “But if we are not getting that, the one thing I won’t do is nothing.”
Perry’s background is in marketing; she has worked with United Way, the Red Cross and a smattering of nonprofits. She also owns Kings Hall in Haddonfield, a co-working space.
She is a strategic thinker. For instance, one of her hobbies is purchasing domains, which led to her being the proud owner of several South Jersey domains, including DontVisitSouthJersey.com.
While your average Joe might just redirect the website to Visit SJ’s homepage, she is going to use it to put a new spin on tourism, targeted at residents, not visitors.
“The thinking behind it is, don’t visit because you live here,” Perry said. “Shop local, support local, drink local."
She is working directly with the counties and private businesses, appealing to residents’ pride of place, dreaming up new initiatives, filling out grant applications to bring in more money.
“I’m trying to find MacGyver methods for instituting other revenue streams,” Perry said.
“I think this operation is at the very least a 10-person job,” said Dan Fitzgerald, her intern and a senior at Stockton University. Instead, they are scraping by with three.
Perry has an eye on Fitzgerald’s impending graduation and said she would like to be able to bring him on full-time.
“She does say that to everyone she meets,” Fitzgerald said.
He would also like to join Visit SJ full time. Originally from Rockaway, Fitzgerald has become a South Jersey convert. He’s a walking advertisement for the region’s hiking trails and the Pine Barrens. A beer enthusiast, Fitzgerald is also responsible for the organization’s decision to add craft breweries to their map.
At Visit SJ, Fitzgerald, a hospitality and tourism major, has experienced firsthand the funding shortage they learn about in class.
“It’s a little frustrating when you work in an industry that produces so much economic growth and is so underfunded,” he said.
Both Fitzgerald and Geri Kelly, the administrative coordinator, worked under Buganski and Perry.
“Both are amazing executive directors, and both bring different skills to the table,” Fitzgerald said. “Devon is a lot faster-paced than Jake. She’s buzzing with a lot of ideas. She has a lot of energy.”
She’s like the Energizer bunny, Kelly agreed.
Kelly has seen Perry bring new ideas and partnerships to Visit SJ but said there is a persistent lack of awareness.
Just the other day, Kelly said, she was at a tourism expo and had people coming up to her table and asking “What is ‘Visit South Jersey’?” In their defense, she said, some were from outside the area. But not all.
It is changing, she said, partly as a result of Perry’s outreach. “People are coming to us instead of us to them because they’re impressed with what they’re seeing.”
The organization needs Devon, she said.
“She thinks there should be more involvement, people should be interested in this because tourism brings in money,” Kelly said.
New Jersey has plenty of attractions in its own right, and being in between two major metropolitan areas is something the state can use to its advantage. “The traveler today doesn’t go to one destination,” Simonetta said. “They’re looking to cram as much as they can into their trip.”
The DMOs play an important role in advertising those attractions.
“The tourism revenue continues to increase although the advertising and promotional funding continues to be flat,” Simonetta said. “At some point, that ends. It’s something the industry is concerned about.”
The NJTIA is looking for alternative funding, talking to the cultural, historical and art communities that also bring in tourism dollars. The occupancy tax, when combined with the sales tax, is already on par with New York and other surrounding states, Simonetta said, so to increase taxes would put the state at a competitive disadvantage.
Visit SJ will be ferocious in trying all viable angles to succeed, Perry insisted. “South Jersey, as a destination, as a wine region, is going to eat other regions.''