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,...

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…