Clearwater gears up to market its marinas
Officials hope an aggressive marketing campaign will increase revenue of the city’s two marinas
By LESTER R. DAILEY
| Article published on Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2008 |
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CLEARWATER – With a new downtown marina on the drawing board, city officials are planning a marketing campaign to promote both that marina and the existing municipal marina on Clearwater Beach.
At the Feb. 19 City Council work session, marine and aviation director Bill Morris outlined the plan and promised to provide more details at a council meeting in June.
Current print ads’ photos and advertising copy will be updated. Web page accessibility and functionality will be streamlined. And the city will rent booths at three local boat shows at a cost of $1,000 each.
“One of the positives we saw to this was a source of e-mail addresses for future contacts,” Morris said of boat show advertising.
Specific groups of boaters, such as day trippers, weekend boaters and long range cruisers will be identified and targeted. Tide tables, calendars, the Mariner Phone Book, fishing and boating periodicals and the southern edition of Waterway Guide are among the places where the city will put print ads.
“We’re essentially in competition with other marinas, and we’d like to be in cooperation with other marinas,” Morris told the council members.
He suggested a cross-marketing plan in which Clearwater rack cards and other advertising materials are placed at marinas and yacht clubs in Mobile Bay, the Florida Panhandle and other popular sources of Clearwater-bound boats, and Clearwater’s marinas would stock advertising materials for those marinas. City officials will contact tourism officials in those areas to determine if there is any interest is such a mutually beneficial arrangement.
Morris hopes to have the city’s marinas become Boat U.S. Cooperating Marinas, of which there are 870 nationwide. Doing so would give the city access to the organization’s 670,000 member boaters through its cruising guides. A 10-cent-per-gallon fuel discount would be another incentive for Boat U.S. members to visit Clearwater, and offering branded fuel, such as ValvTech, would make the city’s marinas even more appealing. Other fuel discounts are also being considered for nonmembers.
Clearwater’s Municipal Marina is a state-certified Clean Marina, and was recently visited by Gov. Charlie Crist to celebrate that safety and cleanliness honor. Morris intends to keep the Clean Marina status on the existing marina and get it for the new marina.
Morris said that the city’s advertising “markets the fleet” by saying that it is the largest fishing fleet of its kind on the west coast of Florida. But it doesn’t feature individual boats, he added.
Council Member Carlen Petersen recalled reading a recent newspaper article about St. Petersburg getting thousands of dollars per year in docking fees for a mega-yacht, and asked if Clearwater could attract such yachts. Morris replied that it cannot.
“Our water depth is the biggest single problem,” he explained.
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Article published on Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2008
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