iphone application!!!

We are now available on your iPhone! CityPass recently launched an application for iPhones and it has received a lot of media attention! Prior to it’s launch, however, it caused a lot of trouble for those of us working in Public Relations and Marketing. It was a great lesson in communication!
Our web development team posted the application and directions on how to get it on your phone WAY before they were supposed to, so we were left scrambling to come up with a press release and get it out on the Associated Press in time for media to see it without having gone to our page prior and getting completely confused! Initially we intended to launch it and get media attention prior to the launch, but miscommunication really threw us off our game. Oh well, crisis averted with a few extra hours of hard work!
Here is the press release that we wrote, I think we did a great job considering how fast we had to come up with it:

CityPass®, the visitor program bundling North America’s most popular museums and attractions into convenient booklets, has launched a mobile web site to zero in on CityPass information, savings and premier attraction details on an iPhone.
CityPass ticket booklets have always been conveniently pocket-sized for the budget-savvy traveler. Now the resources of citypass.com are available to travelers via an iPhone through a partnership with WhereTraveler®, the online and mobile edition of one of the world’s most trusted travel brands. The new CityPass mobile site is available at http://wheretraveler.com/mobile/cp/.
The CityPass mobile site is designed to link visitors with CityPass attraction descriptions, exhibits, locations and extras. The next version of the site will also include WhereTraveler content , providing users with select, concierge-style recommendations on the best places to eat, shop and explore in the vicinity of a CityPass attraction. “The combination of CityPass attractions and WhereTraveler information takes care of the questions every traveler has – what are the best places to visit in a city, and afterward, what is nearby to see and do,” said Co-CEO and Founder of CityPass, Mike Gallagher. The Where® suite of products, WhereTraveler, Where® Magazine and Where Guestbook® reach more than 136,000,000 readers every year with content that is developed by local, veteran editors in each market. By sharing CityPass’ visitor attractions content on WhereTraveler.com and WT Apps, the partnership will be the first all-in-one travel source for in-the-city mobile users.
Unveiled at the U.S. Travel Association’s TravelCom ’09 in early April, CityPass Mobile proved its viability within the first two weeks, selected as a “Staff Pick” by Apple personnel, “Featured App”, and continuing as the number one spot in the travel category.
“WhereTraveler is happy to help bring the CityPass content to travelers via their mobile phones,” said Russ Leseberg, WhereTraveler Vice President of Operational Innovation. Leseberg continued, “CityPass is the leader in attractions for the travel industry, and CityPass Mobile’s content is the perfect complement to WhereTraveler’s select recommendations and bundled tools that enhance traveling. Our ultimate goal is to provide users with everything they need when visiting a city, all on their iPhone or Blackberry.”
About CityPass
CityPass saves time and money in 11 North American destinations: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Hollywood, Houston, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, Southern California and Toronto, Canada. For more information, to take an online page-by-page look inside a CityPass ticket booklet or to check attraction exhibits, public transportation, CityPass price savings and how to purchase an e-ticket, click on http://www.citypass.com/ or call toll free (U.S./Canada) 877-THEPASS or direct, 707-256-0490. CityPass. It’s the ticket that makes the trip.
About WhereTraveler
WhereTraveler’s reputation and content is backed by the publishers of Where magazine and Where Guidebook, names trust by travelers since 1936. The Where® suite of products, WhereTraveler®, Where® magazine and Where Guidebook®, reach more than 136,000,000 readers every year. Content is vetted by seasoned professional editors who live in the places they write about, making it the name travelers trust for information as they plan for and engage in traveler. With over 120 destinations worldwide and 15,000 local and national advertisers, WhereTraveler delivers an unprecedented mix of unique destination content and money-saving offers from local restaurants and retail establishments. To view and download WhereTraveler’s mobile applications, visit http://wheretraveler.com/mobile/tools/.

Check it out at Citypass.com

Reticketing

Re ticketing is such a crazy process! It feels so wasteful, but I know it is necessary.

Every year, we update our product and include new, helpful tips, and also new attractions and therefore need to create new ticket booklets and brochures. We currently have a lot of brochures and ticket booklets currently in stock in our office, though, so first we must destroy them. This is one of those entirely unglamorous jobs that you do not think about when you are dreaming up your future career! With the ticket booklets themselves, I have to remove all of the covers by tearing them off. With the first hundred it is no big deal, but when you have well over a thousand, it gets a little old. Next we have to go through our brochures. Since some of them are not changing, we have to carefully read through and figure out which will need to be edited and replaced and then then destroy them as well. We are not re ticketing every city immediately, some are OK until late May, so we have to make sure to keep those cities' materials separate from the new stuff. I finished clearing everything out and reorganizing everything for the new stuff to be put in and then I needed to refill our stock.

Unfortunately, our main office mixed up delivery dates and did not send us our portion of the new tickets and brochures. Because we already destroyed our old stuff, we are unable to send out media comps and take care of a lot of the CVB's who are in need of their new stock! I did call today though, and they said everything should be in in the next two days...Thank Goodness!!!

Spring has officially sprung!

Well, everyone is finally starting to travel again! This has made things extra busy around the office for us. We are getting a ton of media comp requests which means a lot of trips to the UPS store.
In the past, media would just send an e-mail asking about receiving complimentary passes. However, we realized that we could not monitor this system very carefully and could not keep in contact and track the publicity we received because of the comped passes this way. Recently, we created a link on the site that sends media people to a form where they tell us what city they would like passes for, how many passes they would like, what they intend to use them for, and also their contact information. Afterwards, we are able to track publicity on Cision (which I talked about in a previous blog) and make sure media is actually using them for stories, and not just for free travel entertainment.
This also allows us to build a greater network of people to pitch our stories to. When we know their typical story or what they do in general, we are able to let them know about events happening within our company.
With so many media comp requests coming in, we should be getting a lot of great coverage soon!

One CRAZY week!!!

So... recently we have been very busy preparing packages for CVBs all over the country. We are including a letter introducing our product, a complimentary CityPass, business cards and also a brochure for the city they are in. We distribute 300 media comp packages every season to each city we have a product for. The purpose of these media comps is to get visiting media to use our product and then write about it.
Creating these, despite them being very small, is a very time consuming project. First, my boss and I had to write and proof a letter for each city. As soon as we prepared all of the letters, we had to get them copied. We always copy onto our seasonal letterhead. Then we tri-folded all of the letters (there were 3300 of them, so this was no small task!) and began preparing the kits. This year, we created new packaging which looks great, but it takes forever to put together! There are so many pieces to put together in order to complete the packaging. I will say though, that our new ideas and designs made our product a lot more attractive.
Well, I won't say much more about this project, I will try to post some pictures of the completed project! What I will say is, this was the longest and most tedious project I have ever worked on. I know now how much work really goes into public relations and marketing. Hopefully it pays off and we get a lot of media coverage!

US Travel Awards

OK, things have been absolutely crazy! I will be finishing a few posts I started over the last two weeks! Unfortunately it has taken me a while to actually finish them because of how busy I am!

The US Travel Awards are a yearly competition for travel writers to compete for the best article about either the annual Pow Wow city or a United States destination. This is the second year for the competition. I also assisted last year as part of my professional experience hours, but as that was the first year, there were a lot of issues that needed to be ironed out.

This year I was responsible for rewriting the rules and entry form and making sure all of the due dates were appropriate. I never realized how much went into making sure every possible issue was covered in an entry form. Hopefully it saves us from all of the confusion from last year.

I had to contact the PR department at the United States Travel Association, my company's media designer (regarding the slide show that needs to be created), and also my boss. After talking to all of them, I was able to set the dates and get the official entry form sent out.

I also created a specific email account specifically for this contest to field questions and web entries for the competition. This has actually been so helpful because I can sort entries and questions and make sure that everyone's questions get answered as fast as possible! It also allows other people working on the contest to have access to everything we have received whenever they want.

This has been a lot more rewarding than I expected it to be. After last year I was actually dreading it, but by changing a lot of the rules and how the contest runs, I was able to save the company thousands of dollars and many many hours! I also saved myself from a lot of the very simple copying and shipping tasks that filled a lot of my available time last year.

The contest results are not announced until May, but I think this year things will really be a much better experience!

San Francisco

I left my heart in San Francisco...
So, one of the greatest parts of my internship is I get to do some traveling! Recently, I went to San Francisco to check on our attractions and to see how our vendors treated customers of CityPass. I also had to take pictures of all signs with our logo that are supposed to direct customers on how to bypass lines and use their prepaid tickets. Not only that, but I also went to a few tourism information stands who we provide with passes to sell and information and questioned them and looked to see if they mentioned our company. I almost felt like I was a bit of a spy, but it was a lot of fun!

Now I have been to San Francisco 8 or 9 times but this time I actually got to see a lot of the tourist attractions (for free!!!) and really experience it through the eyes of a business person rather than just a typical tourist. It was also exciting to see some of the new attractions on our pass!

With the San Francisco CityPass, travelers get to see the California Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Aquarium of the Bay, the SF Museum of Modern Art, the Exploratorium, a few fine arts museums, take a Blue and Gold Fleet Bay Cruise Adventure, and also have a 7-day passport for the Muni and Cable Cars!

On my last visit to San Francisco, I visited many of the attractions, but very briefly. This time, I convinced a friend to come along and spend some time actually touring the attractions. We also made sure to use all of the public transportations and directions provided within the booklets to make sure to get the exact same experience as CityPass buyers.

My favorite site this year was the California Academy of Arts and Sciences. It was newly reopened after they joined all of the old buildings together to form one large attraction. It has a living roof and floors of exciting exhibits including crocodiles (one is albino!!), an aquarium, a rain forest, a natural history museum. The line literally wrapped around the building, but when someone outside saw me and realized who I worked for I was able to bypass the line. However, this was not really what I wanted to happen. I will not lie though, it was great to avoid a two-hour long line! I will put up a picture of my friend and I on the living roof (the best part is you have a great view of Golden Gate Park from the roof!)... it was really interesting, and you can see it from a viewing tower across the way as well!

Also near the Cal Academy was the DeYoung Museum. This museum is very pretty, but sadly was not very well signed with our company's logo. I also do not like that so many of the special exhibits require customers to pay extra (especially because one of them was a fashion exhibit!) This is where the viewing tower near the Cal Academy is located!

Another interesting thing we did was go on the Bay Cruise. Although it was foggy, this allowed me a chance to talk to some CityPass customers and also do a little word-of-mouth marketing for the company.

I really enjoyed this little reconnaissance trip and thought traveling for work was very exciting. My boss has to make trips like this occasionally and I really think it must be an exciting lifestyle (at least while you are young and not tied-down)!

Cision

Some people might not know of Cision (formerly known as Bacon's) but it is a media monitoring program that is very useful in marketing and public relations. Company's can pay Cision to review any form of media outlet for a mention of their name. Depending on what your company is currently pitching, you could receive many mentions in one day and it finds all of them for you! It would be impossible to find everywhere you were mentioned if not for a media monitoring service.

With our Cision account, we monitor newspaper, magazine and online articles. The article is then listed in our Cision account and we can view a PDF of it. I divide them into categories (based on which of our cities is mentioned) and it helps us see whether or not we need to increase our advertising and press releases in particular places. It also is very beneficial when creating the annual plan so that we can see where we were successful and where we need improvement.

What I find most interesting is that on each article posted, you can see where someone highlighted your company's mention in the article. This means that someone sits and reads newspaper after newspaper every single day looking for one particular mention. This seems so monotonous, but I suppose someone has to do it! I am just glad it isn't me!