Getting more visitors to town remains a priority for the Kent City Council.
The council approved a $70,000, six-month contract with Genesis Marketing on April 5 to continue to update the visitkent.com website and entice more people to stay at local hotels.
The funds will come from a 1 percent tax the state levies on hotel rooms sold in Kent and returns that money to the city. The tax raises about $200,000 a year in Kent and must be spent on tourism or to support community events that bring people to the city. The city’s Lodging Tax Advisory Committee recommends to the council about how to spend the money.
Kent launched the new website targeted for tourists a year ago. The city paid Spokane-based Genesis Marketing $15,000 to design the website and last year approved a $30,000 contract with Genesis to run the website as well as an advertising campaign to Portland and other out-of-town markets.
“They (Genesis) were instrumental in putting together a successful TV ad campaign in the Portland market during the Seahawks season to highlight Kent as an attractive, affordable alternative in the Seattle metro area,” said Ben Wolters, city economic and community development director, in a report last month to the council’s Economic and Community Development Committee. “It was aimed at Seahawks fans but others as well.”
The ads were set up to direct people to the visitkent.com website and find places in Kent to stay rather than Seattle or other nearby cities.
“We saw a dramatic increase in hits on the site after TV ads began to run in Portland market,” Wolters said.
Under the new contract, Genesis will work with Hotels.com to track people who found out about local hotels from the Kent website.
The contract covers maintaining, refreshing and improving the website to market the city through campaigns aimed at different platforms such as Facebook and other online marketing strategies, Wolters said.
“I’m excited,” Councilwoman Tina Budell said prior to her vote in favor of the contract at the committee meeting. “I like that we are using social media and tracking the success of it.”
Budell encouraged marketing the website in Portland and other cities not just during the Seahawks season but when the Sounders and Mariners play as well.
The city is working with the Seattle Thunderbirds of the Western Hockey League to market the website, including ads on the video screen on the scoreboard during games at the ShoWare Center and an ad on the back of the T-Birds private bus used to travel to road games in Washington, Oregon and Canada.
The city also has its government website at kentwa.gov and will spend $117,000 from the city’s Information Technology fund to upgrade that website for relaunching this fall.
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