A CVB website should say "Come here". If you want to clutter up the page, it might also say, "Meet here" and "Play here" and "Eat here" and "This place is fun" and "This place is interesting." But subordinate pages can do that other stuff. It really should just say, "Come here." And it should say it with smile. Nobody picks up the phone any more to ask that you send a brochure. They go to your website. It has to be a baited hook.
Unfortunately, web search engines don't like static pages. So, it's not enough to design and launch a beautiful website. It also has to be freshened up frequently. The benefit of this is that the visitor who is seeing the site repeatedly in the process of choosing a city for a conference will see multiple reasons to "choose this city".
By the way, to show how fickle the search engines are, the Newport Beach site, which was the Number One result in a Google search for "CVB" this afternoon is now number 3 tonight, behind the New Orleans CVB site* (See the positive note below) and the Dallas CVB site. The rest of the Top Ten are pretty much the same, with Phoenix CVB creeping in and both Charlestons (WV and SC) showing. Los Angeles has dropped out.
The New Orleans site says, on its "Where to Stay" page, that "75% of the hotels operating 21,000 downtown New Orleans hotel rooms were operational October 31, 2005. 95% expect to be fully functional, with most remediation completed, by January 1, 2006!" Good for them, good for the city, and good for business.
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