OCEAN CITY — Ocean City’s move toward restructuring its tourism and marketing strategy to continue to develop the resort as a year-round destination continued this week with approval of a significant merger and realignment of multiple departments.
In April, the town tapped Tom Perlozzo for the newly-created position of Tourism and Business Development Director. The idea was to create an emphasis on business development and sales to attract more family-friendly events, sports tournaments and camps and other convention groups to fill the town’s hotel rooms and accommodations.
In the months since, Perlozzo and his crew have been working on a multi-pronged approach to better define the town’s brand and image in order to stimulate further tourism and economic development. The town is also in parallel process to contract with a new advertising agency, a process expected to be wrapped up by the end of the year.
On Monday, Perlozzo pitched his next step in the process with a realignment of some of the town’s tourism and marketing departments and the creation of a handful of new positions to help complete his vision. The plan would essentially place the town’s tourism, marketing and sales departments under a single umbrella and position the resort to compete with destinations identified in the town’s competitive set. Perlozzo said combining the town’s tourism departments is a necessary first step in building a strong destination marketing organization for Ocean City’s future.
“There are three strategic elements that we’re requesting based on your vision of tourism and business development,” he said. “Those are the results of prior council meetings, our concept review and our perception of branding and development. The first is to advance our internal destination marketing team by realigning current and potential positions.”
Find a way to have more visitors to walk longer in the freezing cold at Winterfest because the transportation people won’t run the Trams. That should do it.
Okay so far they’ve created a bunch of jobs to sit around and think of tourism stuff …. What is the overall goal ? What is the vision of Ocean city ??? Do you want a more family oriented destination or a Drug riddled cluster f@$& with chaos ? First order get rid of that idiot Lloyd Martin
OC already lost the year round resort crown. Look around. Most restaurants are closed 3 days per week, bus service has long since gone and even McDonalds has locked access to their restrooms. For those that choose to visit, pack some sandwiches and bring your own porta potti.
Dont forget about the HUGE surplus on the books. Taking lessons from private industry again? Why is it alway imperative that govt wants to learn from industry. 2 entirely different entities hence why they are separate. One is not for profit (paid by taxpayers) the other is for profit.
How about doing better when hiring for positions. The criteria for recruitment, selection and placement needs to be strong and sound.
this is what’s known as polishing a turd!