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January 20, 2013

It looks like it’s Lucky 13

The Norman Transcript

NORMAN — The Norman Convention and Visitors Bureau’s activity and performance measures have all increased from the first half of Fiscal Year 2012 to the first half of Fiscal Year 2013.

The number of leads the CVB sent out to our hotel partners increased and the number of nights those leads generated jumped by 45 percent. The number of bookings almost quadrupled from 2012 to 2013. The CVB also tracks the servicing of groups who book conferences, conventions, tournaments and other group travel. From 2012 to 2013, the number of groups serviced increased nearly six fold.

Other significantly increasing measurements included the number of media placements and the number of marketing programs.

In the website realm, the site showed enormous growth spurts. The number of user sessions, unique visitors, click-throughs and search-engine referrals in the first half of the year exceeded those same categories in the entire 2012 fiscal year. From December 2010 to December 2012, the number of unique visitors increased by a whopping 264 percent.

All those measurements lead into the most important categories: hotel occupancy rates, guest tax receipts and sales tax collection. Hotel occupancy has increased nearly 6 percent from 61.3 in 2012 to 67.1 (and 11 percent from 2011). The average daily rate of rooms in Norman also showed growth, going from $80.17 to $82.50 in FY 13. The amount of guest tax receipts paralleled the increases in both of those measurements, showing an 11 percent uptick. Overall sales tax receipts grew by 3 percent.

Stefanie Brickman, CTA, is the communications manager of the Norman Convention and Visitors Bureau. The NCVB exists to promote the city, to attract overnight meeting, convention, sport and tourism business to the community, and to enhance and contribute to the overall identity and economic wellbeing of the city.

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