Refocusing Business For Today’s Marketplace
By Madelyn Marusa, DCMP, Vice President of Industry Relations, PRA Destination Management
Like most of our industry, Destination Management Companies, including PRA Destination Management have been affected by the loss of corporate business in both meetings and incentives. The corporate and association markets that traditionally utilized services such as elaborate theme events, exclusive venues and high end destination activities have substantially reduced their spending.
Instead, DMCs have had to refocus their business model and think creatively in how groups experience the destination. To adjust to the market challenges, Allied International and PRA Destination Management began to transform our traditional activities and sightseeing programs to offer more community focus with authentic cultural experiences as well as give-back activities, in addition to opening markets of service, previously untapped by our former business model.
We’ve also reexamined how we market and sell our services to get through these difficult times. By pooling sales efforts such as offices prospecting nationwide, revisiting past business and partnering with our hotels in more marketing efforts, PRA was able to remain as a stable entity, successfully riding the wave of uncertainty in the volatile market. In addition, the company introduced some enhanced service elements such as PRA Transportation Services that provide an expert logistics team to assist clients in multiple PRA destinations for large scale transportation or shuttle systems.
Today there is an increased sense of urgency on response time from our staff as so much business is now short term and competition is very steep in most destinations with regards to capturing new business. Response time has been an area of focus for PRA/Allied as this is key to our partnerships with intermediaries such as incentive houses, and third party planners. As we strive to better evaluate and qualify our opportunities, we have also cross trained our staff to deliver the same high caliber of service with reduced resources.
At PRA we also looked at some new opportunities with government related contracts in some of our destinations and others uncovered local corporate business. We are now looking into unique ways of capturing the international inbound group business and high end FIT planner that has small exclusive groups/families that require full service and our expertise.
Resources and time have been allocated to join in social media networks to reach out to new planners that want to connect through these channels.
In a sense, we have reexamined our entire business model to assess our assets and strengths in terms of the service we deliver, ways to enhance the service and assist our clients in determining ROI on their events. Reaching out to new markets that would benefit from what we have to offer and ensuring that our staff was prepared to effectively respond to the needs of these new markets as well as our traditional ones were key strategies for our system. Achieving the ultimate partnership with our clients is determined on how we respond to business in helping them to maximize their spend and clearly demonstrate a solid return on events.
Madelyn Marusa, DMCP, Vice President of Industry Relations, has been with PRA Destination Management since 1983, serving a broad base of corporate and incentive clientele.
In 1998, when PRA launched its franchise company, Marusa began to oversee key areas of business development for the corporation and today continues to handle national marketing, key global accounts, strategic agreements, industry relations, tradeshows, public relations and media initiatives.
Marusa is an active and long-standing member of the Society of Incentive Travel Executives (SITE), Meeting Professionals International (MPI), Professional Conference Management Association (PCMA) and Association of Destination Management Executives (ADME) She obtained her Destination Management Certified Professional (DMCP) designation in 2002 and recertification in 2007.
She frequently speaks to university and colleges audiences about the hospitality and has co-authored a chapter on DMC Marketing for the new Best Practices in Destination Management Book published by ADME.
Marusa has won a Gold Key Award, SDMPI Visionary Award and is a past recipient of a SITE Crystal Award. She serves on the board of the ADME and is a trustee for the Site International Foundation Board where she designed and oversees the Site Classic fundraising event that supports research and education for the incentive travel industry.
