Newport Beach tourism executives took a trip across the pond last week to attend the British Academy of Film and Television Awards—BAFTA—and promote the affluent city while there.
Destination management organization Newport Beach & Co. participated in a week’s worth of kickoff events for the awards ceremony, Britain’s answer to the Oscars, including working with the Newport Beach Film Festival and Variety Magazine on an evening event featuring 10 prominent British actors.
It’s the fifth year Newport Beach & Co. has been involved in the awards ceremony and the “10 Brits” night did so well it launched a similar soiree at Resort at Pelican Hill in November. It had been held in the Hamptons prior—preceding the U.S. film awards season, including the Golden Globes in January and the Oscars this month.
Newport Beach & Co. Chief Executive Gary Sherwin describes the nontraditional approaches—a tourism promoter hobnobbing with actors in London—as strategic work that breaks through a clotted tourism market for the U.S.
It gets high-end international exposure from events here and abroad and involves dozens of media that cover them—and are likely to cover Newport Beach as well.
“Our philosophy is to zig when the others zag so we can carve out a unique space and not compete on the same race track as other destinations,” Sherwin said.
Marketing Moves
This could be said for Newport Beach & Co.’s business model as well.
Destination marketing organizations—DMOs—often mainly manage tourism marketing for specific cities and areas. The private nonprofit—with a roughly $10 million annual budget—oversees all economic development for the city.
It’s essentially a marketing arm for five different entities: Visit Newport Beach, Dine Newport Beach, Celebrate Newport Beach, Enterprise Newport Beach and Newport Beach TV. Each pays Newport Beach & Co. a stipend, whether from city contracts, restaurant fees, or the 3% bed tax on the city’s eight biggest hotels.
This incentivizes “everyone to want to do their part to make business better,” Sherwin said.
London callings included media meet-and-greets in the week leading up to BAFTA; culinary events featuring Jean-Pierre Dubray from Resort at Pelican Hill, a radio blitz, and the Newport Beach Film Festival Honours Night, the pre-BAFTA kick-off party on Feb. 7 at The Langham Hotel, which included members of Variety’s “10 Brits to Watch” list.
Sherwin’s group hires a U.K. marketing firm to promote the event, which brings 250 attendees including about 60 media outlets, and dozens of celebrities.
This year’s event included actors and producers from TV shows like “Downton Abbey” and “Game of Thrones.”
Movie Magic
After last year’s event in London, Variety Executive Editor Steven Gaydos asked Sherwin about holding another for the entertainment magazine, “10 Actors to Watch,” in Newport Beach.
“He thought it made sense to bring the event to Newport Beach because of the success of the London BAFTA,” and for the city’s luxe rep, Sherwin said.
Honorees from films like “Crazy Rich Asians” and “Black Panther” came to Pelican Hill last fall with an encore this fall already scheduled.
All this folds in nicely with the Newport Beach Film Festival, now in its 20th year and slated for the end of April.
Shortly after Sherwin started promoting the city 13 years ago, he began working with the film festival, which brings about 50,000 attendees to the area annually.
“We try to use the film industry and our festival … [to sell] the aspirational lifestyle of Newport Beach,” he said.
Make-Up!
Another Newport Beach & Co. zig-when-they-zag is going to the U.K. at all, when most U.S. West Coast attention in tourism and travel is focused on markets like Canada and China.
The DMO’s work with our English cousins has contributed to a 40% increase in Newport Beach package offerings promoted in U.K. product catalogs, which in turn has led to a 21% jump in visitors from Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the group said.
The city’s tourism industry is estimated to generate about $1.2 billion annually, bringing in $43 million in taxes.
The organization’s new, star-studded event in Newport Beach may bolster this interest.
BAFTA and Pelican Hill are among the city’s more notable nontraditional marketing initiatives. Sherwin, author of tourism marketing tome “Destination BrandScience” says the strategy is less about selling “heads in beds” and more about getting into people’s heads, telling the tale of Newport Beach.
Tourism can get “too focused on selling stuff. We want to focus on the compelling story that makes you want to buy” in the first place, Sherwin said. “Heads in beds is a byproduct of doing all the other stuff right.”
