OCEAN CITY — Resort tourism officials this week got a look at an innovative data collection platform geared toward tracking visitors to Ocean City, where they stay, how long they stay and what they do when they are in town.
For years, Ocean City officials have tried to pin down a profile of their typical visitors and where they come from with varying degrees of success. From visitor surveys collected at the convention center or the Boardwalk information kiosk, for example, to zip codes provided by participating private sector lodging establishments, the town has a pretty good sense of its visitor market and directs advertising efforts in those identified areas.
However, that information is often cumbersome, recorded on spread sheets and shared among the various tourism agencies such as the Chamber of Commerce and the Hotel-Motel-Restaurant Association (HMRA), for example, and ultimately with MGH, the town’s advertising and marketing agency. On Monday, the Tourism Commission reviewed a data collection platform aimed at providing a deeper dive into its visitor data.