Chicago Tourism

Introduction
Known as the City with Broad Shoulders, Chicago is one of the major cities of the US, and as such has a lot to offer the tourist. That is not to say that attracting visitors is always easy, as there are challenges that inhibit Chicago from being a premier destination. However, the city does reasonably well, attracting 54.1 million visitors in 2016 (Marotti, 2016). With a refined understanding of the strengths and weaknesses that Chicago has, the city can undertake a communications strategy that focuses on what attracts visitors to the city, and perhaps counter some of the negative messaging that exists.
Strengths
There are a number of obvious strengths that Chicago has as a city. The first is the basic strength – it is a major city with high visibility and great transportation connections. O’Hare is one of the busiest airports in the world, taking in 78 million passengers, with another 22 million passengers passing through Midway (Wisniewski, 2017). Several Amtrak routes and interstates also pass through the city. While the airport traffic reflects the hub status of O’Hare in particular, and many people simply pass through, it makes Chicago an exceptionally easy city to get to and from. There are connections through North America, and around the world with almost all major cities. If someone is choosing to not come to Chicago, it’s not for lack of transportation options.
Another strength that Chicago has is that because of its size, it has great infrastructure. This includes tens of thousands of hotel rooms, conference facilitites that brought in 31 major conferences in 2016, and a wealth of dining and entertainment options. Chicago is one of the more attractive cities in America for dining and entertainment, and most of the infrastructure is linked with public transportation, so there is no need for visitors to bring a car to Chicago.
Chicago scores well for its rich cultural life. This is not just things like theaters and the arts, but diverse neighborhoods, immigrants from around the world, and this brings great cuisine, areas where anybody will feel comfortable no matter where they are from, and there are an increasing number of travelers attracted to cultural events. The cultural life is encapusulated by the food scene, one of the city’s top strengths – it remains famous for diverse food. Consider some of the food festivals held in the city – Greek, Mexican, ribs and wings and more are all represented, showcasing the different immigrant communitites that contribute to Chicago’s diverse cultural life.
Events, naturally, are a another strength. As the major city in the Midwest, Chicago is a major event draw. McCormick Place is America’s largest convention center, for example, something that allows it to do all the big events. The city boasts teams in all major sports, hosts conferences, has numerous festivals throughout the summer, and generally has a lot to offer the visitor, especially during the warmer months. These attractions are one of the reasons why Chicago is able to draw so well among visitors.
The city also invests heavily in promotions. From the perspective of marketing, Chicago does well in terms of having a budget to get its message out there. This helps because having a marketing infrastructure allows Chicago to control some of the messaging surrounding the city – smaller cities often struggle to control the narrative of their cities, but Chicago is large and sophisticated enough that it can do so. This is a strength that Chicago can draw on.
All told, the city itself is really its greatest strength. Chicago has a lot to offer the visitor, and can offer different visitors a diverse range of experiences, allowing it to appeal to a number of different markets. If one drew up the marketing personas for Chicago visitors, there would be dozens of them, which may make for a marketing challenge but showcases the city’s strength as an attraction.
Weaknesses
Chicago has a couple of major weaknesses that can be a risk to people who want to visit. In fact, while O’Hare is a strength for its traffic, the airport is not viewed favorably. Nor is Chicago able to draw cruise ship traffic that a lot of coastal cities like Boston or Vancouver or Fort Lauderdale rely on to draw big tourism numbers.
The weather is another major weakness for Chicago. The city can’t really help its climate, but ultimately it is only a tourism draw for certain months of the year. Winter tourism numbers are much lower, and some will even avoid the city in the summer, when it has a reputation for stickiness and humidity. Given that there are constraints in terms of physical infrastructure (i.e. hotel rooms) the city ends up being at capacity in the peak months, and well below capacity in the rest of the year. The ideal scenario would be a more dispersed amount of traffic throughout the year.
There are other disadvantages as well. Chicago has faced a substantial amount of negative publicity for crime and corruption (Woody, 2017), two factors that certainly would be of concern to visitors. The crime is concentrated in certain areas, most of which are away from the tourist sites, but nevertheless this negative publicity can have an impact on tourism numbers, especially when it impacts on the decision-makers for convention hosting and other big events. That said, most of the city’s areas are pretty safe, and few visitors encounter the problems that are confined to certain areas.
The crush of people in the peak months also makes Chicago an expensive destination. Its costs are not out of line with other major cities in terms of hotel rooms and dining, but these costs are high when compared with other destinations in the Midwest, and high compared with smaller cities, or ones with more excess hotel capacity. It can be daunting for a visitor to look at hotel rooms $200+ for anything. Again, this isn’t a weakness versus, say, New York or San Franscisco, but against somewhere like Orlando it is defeintiely a competitive weakness for Chicago. Thus, this won’t be an issue for global travelers, but can create problems for locals whose comparable options are cheaper (CNNGo, 2012).
Opportunities
There are significant opportunities for Chicago. One is to boost the convention business. A big convention these days can run well over 10,000 people, and some are even larger than that. The cities that have the ability to host those sorts of events gain a massive influx of people during those periods. CVent ranked Chicago #2 behind Orlando, and ahead of Las Vegas, in the US for its ability to attract conventions. That means, unfortunately, that there may not be much upside to this business. However, Chicago needs to continue to attract conventions at a high rate in order to continue bringing in the business. A downturn in conventions would spell downturn for the city’s visitor numbers overall.
There is considerable opportunity for shoulder season business. The city might not attract many people in January, but the weather can be wonderful even in March, something many visitors might not be aware of. And there is no reason why the summer shouldn’t have lots of visitors, sticky or not, as much of the US is even hotter. Filling capacity during the slower months would help the city’s tourism profile significantly, and knowing that there is capacity being left on the shelf represents substantial opportunity for Chicago.
International travel is something Chicago should do well. The city has connections to international destinations all over the world. However, there is a sense that some people look to the coasts for their travel, or to Florida, and Chicago lacks the draw that a cluster of destinations can bring. This is something that Chicago has to overcome, but if it can there is a lot of potential for international travel, or long-distance travel within the US, because of the great connections that Chicago has with the rest of the world via its airports.
Another opportunity for the city is to focus on cultural events to draw people in – Chicago is the sort of tourism destination that never ranks first in too many things, but it is always in the mix, top five, and in that respect the key for Chicago is just to find a way to get to #1, and be the place that people choose to go. There are a lot of great opportunities for Chicago to capitalize on.
So what this means is that there is an opportunity for Chicago to develop a speciality. It has a lot of things to offer, but if it can be known for one thing, something that draws people in, then that would be powerful from a marketing standpoint. This is not to say that it’s hard to sell people on Chicago, just that it would be better to have the city actively decide to be a market leader at a tourism venture.
One major opportunity lies with inbound marketing. Most tourism is done via more conventional advertising means, but the face of modern marketing is more on the inbound side of things. Creating content is easy for a city with that much going on, so Chicago has a ton of potential where this is concerned. Just creating stories that people can relate to will help market Chicago a lot. With an inbound strategy, and top of the line content creation, Chicago can start to tell the tourism stories that not only make people want to come to Chicago, but will convince people to come back by reminding them of what they loved so much the first time around.
Lastly, there is a great opportunity in repeat business. First, a lot of consumers are creatures of habit, and they go back to places that they liked, rather than risk going somewhere new. So there is a big market of people who have been to Chicago. That’s actually something where the conventions come into play – people come to the city, love it, then come back with their whole family next year. So an active re-marketing campaign to win repeat business can be a part of the marketing strategy, getting people back. In fact, if you’re talking about expensive hotels that limit how long people stay, and a big city full of a million things to do, you’re really talking about a city that takes multiple visits to really uncover. So why wouldn’t someone who loved Chicago once want to come back for 2, 3, 4 more visits? It’s a no-brainer.

Threats
Competition is always the biggest threat in the tourism industry. For every tourist, there is a decision that needs to be made. This is where Chicago has to make a case for itself over everybody else, because most people don’t revisit that decision again for a while. So for example, if someone is choosing a trip in the Midwest and decides Chicago is too expensive, and goes to Minneapolis or Cleveland instead, they might not revisit Chicago next year. Same thing if they choose New York over Chicago for culture. So at some point, Chicago needs to separate itself from the competition as being the actual best at something. Now, personally, I love Chicago, and it’s hard to admit that the city might not be the most amazing place to spend a week or long weekend, but the reality is that if someone is choosing between two places they’ve never been, the sale has to be made on account of factors other than personal experience.
Another threat is the economy. The reality is that travel goes down when there is any sort of economic crisis. People lose their jobs, but even those who do not start to think about it. They schedule fewer vacations,to conserve money, and to make sure that they continually prove their worth at work. So economic downturn is bad for the tourism business. In addition, economic downturn hurts business travel, which is one of the areas in which Chicago specializes. As such, it’s important to have a plan as to how to handle an economic downturn, because while some shows are so huge and profitable that they will continue, there’s also a lot of more marginal conferences and meetings that provide ample opportunity for a city like Chicago – a 10% haircut on convention business would very much be felt.
As to other threats, the rise of the cruise ship industry has to be one. It’s one thing for Chicago to compete against cheaper cities, or bigger cities, because it has things that it can sell. But Chicago is not able to compete against the cruise business, and at the end of the day that is a business gaining share of trips, and gaining share of travel dollars. As such, Chicago has a disadvantageous geography, in that there are no Great Lake cruise ships. That might make for a nice niche opportunity, but the city doesn’t have a massive cruise port to bring in that sort of business on the regular. As such, the more cruises eat into conventional travel, the more of a threat they become to Chicago.
The last threat is really internal, in that the city needs to increase its investment, but if there is no political will to attract tourism, then the efforts will suffer. There are a lot of things a city can focus on that will improve its economy, tourism is just one of them. So if the city chooses to spend its money elsewhere, then tourism will suffer, as policy, infrasturcutre and funding will all fall behind competitors that are being more aggressive on that front. So there is a threat, an internal threat, that other interests will hold more sway at city hall, and that investment in developing the tourism business will end up suffering as a result. If you want an inbound strategy, for example, that requires specific and deliberate channeling of resources into that. So there has to be leadership buy-in for tourism investment in order to win the extra millions of visitors that the optimal scenario would yield.

Conclusions
There are a few conclusions that can be drawn from this analysis. The great power of SWOT analysis lies with being able to align the strengths and opportunities, and the weaknesses and threats. So if we think about that alignment, there are a few things that stand out. First, Chicago is a great destination that has already done really well in attracting people to visit. That’s a known thing, and something on which the city can capitalize by attracting people to come back and make repeat trips. At the end of the day, that can be quite powerful. Think about a social media campaign that asks people for their best Chicago experiences…and how much that will influence their friends, families and followers to put Chicago on their radar for a trip. Think about engaging Chicago’s creative community in promoting the city as a destination – an outlet for their work but one that makes people want to come to Chicago and see this amazing place. There is just so much potential.
Another situation is that inbound strategy – Chicago can outcompete a lot of places by developing a 21st-century marketing strategy. So many destinations aren’t doing this yet, and that means there’s this moneyballesque opportunity to do something that other people aren’t doing, and gain some wins that way. This is where people can be engaged with stories, and invited to come to Chicago and tell their own. That’s playing to the city’s strength as a diverse creative hub, leveraging its marketing infrstrucuture, and seizing an opportunity in the market.
The output of a SWOT should also look at the weaknesses and threats, and find ways to work around those. Chicago has already done a decent job of working around the negative publicity – most people who know anything about Chicago know that those issues don’t affect your experience here as a tourist. But countering messaging is important, and that’s why showcasing Chicago via an inbound strategy has so much value, because it allows the city to control the narrative, and not let anybody paint the city in a negative or unfair light, no matter what their position.
Another example would be finding stories to tell about winter tourism, or even just summer tourism. The city’s reputation for weather worries people who don’t live in colder climates (nobody from Winnipeg is worried about Chicago in January!) but for most people the key here is finding a way to attract people to the city in early March, or early November. Some well-time flash campaigns could work – like if there’s a forecast for warm weather the second weekend in March, flash sale on hotels. People see the flash sale, and if they’re worried about the weather they check. Mid-60s? Book it. Partner with United and make sure you get some seat sales for that, too.
Being able to identify, honestly, where Chicago stands as a tourism destination is illuminating. It allows the strategist to think about what Chicago does well, how it can leverage that, and ultimately to figure out strategy that builds on the city’s strengths as a destination and eliminate its weaknesses. There is tremendous value in the exercise. What it tells us is that there are more strengths than weaknesses, which is why Chicago performs so well, but that the power of the strengths is also bigger. Still, tourism is competitive, and what you did yesterday doesn’t matter all that much today. So you have to always look forward. For that reason, it is recommended that storytelling is really the area of focus most critical to Chicago’s future tourism strategy, based on the assessment contained in the SWOT analysis here.


References

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Marotti, A. (2016) Chicago’s tourist tally hits 54.1 million visitors in 2016. Chicago Tribune Retrieved September 26, 2017 from http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-chicago-tourism-increase-0106-biz-20170105-story.html

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Wisniewski, M. (2017) Flights down slightly but passenger numbers up at O’Hare, Midway. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved September 26, 2017 from http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-ohare-midway-flights-down-0127-20170126-story.html

Woody, C. (2017). Trump’s favorite target for anti-crime rhetoric may not deserve its violent reputation. Business Insider Retrieved September 26, 2017 from http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-chicago-feds-murder-rate-2017-7