12.01.00
Mecca Marketing
Becoming a destination within a destination is still outlet-center developers’ No. 1 marketing goal.

By Tom Kirwan, Senior Editor

By the time Gettysburg (Pa.) Village Factory Stores grand opened on Oct. 7 (related story, page 20), little had left to chance in its bid to draw not only local consumers, but also those from the region and beyond.

Long before opening day the center boasted 14 new billboards – one as far as 30 miles away. The project’s brochure program, which will put 1 million brochures in Pennsylvania rest stops and other tourist hot spots over the next year, was well under way.

The project is getting its message out to the tourist markets in other ways. It joined two motorcoach associations, sent thousands of promotional brochures to tour operators that already serve the area, and successfully lined up feature stories about the project in tour/travel industry publications. Ads in consumer travel publications, such as the AAA regional guide and the Pennsylvania Visitors’ Guide, were placed.

Center representatives also courted area hotel and campground employees in hopes that they will recommend the project to area visitors. The outlet center is minutes from one of the nation’s top heritage tourism attractions, Gettysburg National Park, scene of the bloody turning point of the Civil War. Park visitors totaled 1.7 million last year in an area steeped in U.S. history, including the Gettysburg battlefields and 10 Civil War related museums.

By targeting tourists, center marketing directors continue to show the importance of promotional strategies that draw shoppers who aren’t part of the permanent population. Value projects are using an array of tactics to attract regional and domestic travelers, and to a lesser extent, international visitors

.But few of the tactics are especially new or innovative. Ever since the 1980s, when outlet centers blossomed nationally, their marketing directors have relied mainly on billboards and brochures to attract out-of-towners, supplemented by tour-bus programs, visitor-guide ads, and partnership tie-ins, among other efforts.

Some new wrinkles emerge from time to time, though. When Jersey Gardens opened a year ago in Elizabeth, N.J., the value megamall’s media plan included “wild postings,” posters that went up at construction sites and other unconventional spots in nearby New York City. And early last year Fashion Outlet Las Vegas, which despite its name is in Primm, Nev., 35 miles south of the Vegas Strip, began offering $229 roundtrip helicopter rides targeting upscale shoppers. The flights whisk shoppers on 15-minute helicopter rides through the Mojave Desert to and from the mall. For the less daring there is a free shuttle bus.

Such offbeat marketing efforts, however, are more the exception than the rule for outlet centers, which over the years have refined more tried-and-true tactics for luring tourists.

Sandra Zechman, director of tourism marketing for Memphis-based Balz Enterprises, which operates six outlet malls mostly in tourist meccas, says that while the nuts and bolts of outlet-mall marketing have changed little over the years, marketing directors are busier than ever.

“You have to market three, four, 10 times as much as 10 years ago because there are so many outlet centers out there now,” she says. “That’s true for ad placement, tour groups, brochures, partnerships and in other areas. The need to market more has gone up exponentially. The basics are the same, but you need to do more.

”The number of outlet centers nationally has nearly tripled in 13 years, from 108 projects in 1987 to 284 at the beginning of 2000.

But as the nation’s outlet-center portfolio grew, so did its reputation as a tourist magnet.

“One of the biggest changes is with tourism agencies and travel bureaus,” says Michele Rothstein, VP-marketing for Roseland, N.J.-based Chelsea GCA Realty. “Today they have a much better understanding of outlet shopping and more specialized outlet shopping. They have a better understanding that outlet shopping is an enhancement to their offerings, that outlet centers make a perfect marketing partner, either as a stand-alone or a travel package. Outlet centers are now recognized as bonafide destinations. The agencies we work with understand the role we play in fulfilling the needs of the traveler.”

Rothstein notes that Chelsea and other outlet-center developers have seen the advantages of becoming active in the Shop America Alliance (SSA), a national consortium of shopping malls and retailers who market themselves as tourist attractions. At meetings hosted or attended by the SSA, developers of outlet and value projects are located in the same general area for appointments with travel executives, giving the developers added visibility in a crowded marketplace, she says.

Maturing dividends
Because the outlet industry has matured, she adds, relationships between outlet-center marketing executives and the travel industry have grown stronger. Likewise many developers’ portfolios have grown through the years, allowing developers easier entree before tour-group companies for potential motorcoach traffic at new centers.

Consumers more fully understand outlet retail concepts as well. “Among travelers there is a better awareness of what an outlet center is, ” Rothstein says. “That helps differentiate Chelsea projects, which are a more upscale offering. We are past the first stage of education, and we’re in the stage of differentiation and segmentation.”

That means consumers know the difference between Chelsea’s 21 fashion-forward projects and other developers’ centers dominated by min-tier outlet tenants, and megamalls that offer huge entertainment anchors as well as many tenants not found in traditional outlet centers.

Industry maturation can translate into other benefits. The original marketing director of an older center probably has a better understanding of her market compared to her colleague at a nearby rookie project. Understanding a market’s nuances – how a region’s tourism is shifting, or how new roads will impact travel, or which media best reach tourists – can be crucial to a center’s traffic and sales. Another advantage: Older centers can clinch a market’s better billboard locations.

“It’s all an on-going process of continuing to monitor and gaining better understanding of your market,” says Rothstein.

Embracing the Internet
One of the more significant new twists for outlet centers eager to market to travelers is the rapid rise of the Internet. Some outlet centers are already building their third or fourth generation of sites, keenly aware that many Internet surfers love to plan even the smallest details of their trips.

Better sites are replete with such features as directions, hours, tenant lists, and store phone numbers. Some sites even have contests, raffles and special promos supported by tenants. Site-visit numbers are swelling as consumers worldwide increasingly embrace the Internet.

An industry trade group, Developers of Outlet Centers (DOC), is encouraging the trend. For several weeks in October and November, DOC sponsored an e-sweepstakes on its site aimed at attracting Web surfers to members’ links. Three weeks into the promotion, more than 8,300 consumers had visited the site, which features a sweepstakes with three prizes totaling $1,600 in shopping sprees at any of the nearly 100 centers linked to the site. The site is hosted by OutletBound.com, which offers consumers free information on the nation’s nearly 300 outlet centers.“

DOC is largely composed of smaller developers, and many are not Web-savvy, but as a group they are kind of walking through it together,” says Barbara S. Matuscak, president of Matawan, N.J.-based Jonathon Kelly Ames Marketing and editor of the DOC Web page. “Many of the smaller, independent developers are taking full advantage of this program, which is free to members. In all, about 75 percent of our three dozen member are involved.”

Going global
Another growing trend in outlet projects’ push to reach tourists is on the global front. More and more outlet centers are either reinforcing existing international tourism programs, starting their own for the first time, or making plans to do so.

Among outlet- and value-center developers, Chelsea GCA Realty and Mills Corp. are among leaders in the pack in this area. Although costly, time-consuming and sometimes difficult to execute, international marketing programs can have a big payoff, especially when successful with free-spending foreigners such as Brazilians and the Japanese.

Mills Corp. is especially aggressive on the tourism front. Each of its megamall properties has its own tourism director, whose duties include working to attract international visitors. Its oldest project, Potomac mills, has proven to be a hit with international tourists who visit Washington. The mall’s tourism division visits overseas travel agents to lobby them to include a mall visit on their itineraries, citing services like an in-mall foreign currency exchange.

Potomac Mills already draws strongly form England, Canada, Germany and Japan, and executives there see future anticipated growth largely coming from France, Argentina and Mexico.

Not just shopping
Outlet-center marketers agree that no matter how great a tourism-oriented marketing plan is, its success largely hinges on the quality of the center – its tenant mix, its location, its amenities and its cleanliness – rather than hype.

Alice Estrada, VP-marketing and community affairs for Philadelphia-based Delancey Boyle Retail Group, doesn’t pause for a second when she is asked what her best weapon is for marketing her company’s new center in Gettysburg. “Overall we’re trying to blend shopping and entertainment,” she says. “We want this experience not just to be about buying stuff. This is part of a national trend, combining shopping with entertainment.”

Her boss, Greg Boyle, partner in the company, wholeheartedly agrees. After seeing the crowds and excitement that legendary rock ‘n’ roller Chubby Checker and country music star Lorrie Morgan generated during concerts at the center’s first two weekends, Boyle thinks a plethora of on-site entertainment is the way to go.“

The concerts were great and we want to do more of them,” Boyle says. He notes that the village-style center – complete with Civil War era style bandstand and other historical touches – has an appeal lacking in more barebones retail projects.

He estimates about 100,000 people visited the center during its first eight days.

The new outlet center in Gettysburg reflects how many outlet centers are working to add amenities, services and other features that make them more appealing to tourists in an increasingly noisy retail environment.

That emphasis appears well grounded: According to the Travel Industry Association of America, shopping continues to be the most popular trip activity by U.S. adult travelers. Shoppers typically travel for 4.2 nights, and on average they spend $531 on the trip, excluding the cost of transportation to the destination.