Nevada seeing results in China outreach

Tuesday, Dec. 7, 2004 | 10:54 a.m.

RENO -- Nevada got a 20-page spread in the Chinese version of Modern Bride magazine and a commitment to two 30-minute television specials, the first tangible rewards for the state's playing host to a delegation of Chinese journalists earlier this year.

Bruce Bommarito, executive director of the Nevada Commission on Tourism, told commissioners in their quarterly meeting Monday that a familiarization trip for Chinese writers and television reporters to Las Vegas and Reno in October already has paid dividends to the state.

The trip was organized through Nevada's Chinese tourism office, which opened earlier this year in Beijing. About 15 journalists toured the state, taking in the glitz of the Las Vegas Strip, air tours of the Grand Canyon, Lake Tahoe's beauty and the wide-open spaces of rural Nevada.

Nevada tourism officials are eager to get a head start on the rest of the nation as the Chinese government slowly opens its borders to visitors from abroad and permits its own citizens visas to travel. The state's office is the first to be licensed by the People's Republic of China and it gives Nevada immediate access to the estimated 300 million Chinese that have the means to travel internationally.

Bommarito said his office is continuing to lobby airlines to provide nonstop flights between China and Las Vegas' McCarran International Airport.

"Our job is to stay in their face," Bommarito said of efforts to keep Nevada visible to airline executives.

One of the airlines Bommarito's team continues to call is Northwest Airlines, which pioneered non-stop flights between Asia and Las Vegas with twice-a-week service between Tokyo and McCarran in 1998. Northwest, which maintains an Asian hub at Tokyo's Narita International Airport, discontinued its Las Vegas service when the Japanese economy faded and Japan Airlines stole share when it began its own non-stop flights.

Northwest, which recently announced plans to operate nonstop flights between Guangzhou and San Francisco, is one of two U.S. carriers already established in China. Northwest and the other established airline, United, are among several carriers that are bidding to increase lift to and from China when the number of weekly flights between the two nations is quadrupled to 240 over the next three years.

Bommarito said his overtures to Northwest includes suggestions for the airline to re-examine Tokyo-Las Vegas flights as well as adding trips to and from China.

One of the ways to sell airlines on Las Vegas is the Nevada office's efforts to generate excitement among the people by enticing representatives of the media to see the place for themselves.

In addition to the well-illustrated feature in the bridal magazine, Nevada was a featured attraction in Pooga, the Chinese aviation travel guide this month.

In other business Monday, commissioners were given an update on the Commission on Tourism's efforts to have a specialty themed Nevada license plate and Bommarito reported that the state's advertising campaign has resulted in double-digit percentage increases in requests for information from potential visitors.

The new Commission on Tourism license plates will debut in April or May and have two distinguishing features that will be firsts on Nevada plates: Each numeric sequence will be preceded by "NV," and each plate will bear the state tourism office's Internet site, www.travelnevada.com.

Sales generated by the new plate will finance rural infrastructure projects, Bommarito said.

Bommarito also said the state's advertising campaign produced major percentage increases in interest when comparing figures of July to October 2003 with figures from July to October 2004.

Call volume was up 72.9 percent, responses to inquiries was up 52.7 percent and the number of unique visits to the state's Internet site increased by 9.5 percent. Bommarito did not report raw numbers.

The commission is expected to review its two-year advertising contract with DRGM Advertising at its next meeting. DRGM unseated R&R Partners as the agency of record in a high-profile competitive bid in 2002. When the contract is reviewed, commissioners would consider an extension of DRGM's deal.