Discover Long Island launches ad drive in Arizona, first outside Northeast

Discover Long Island, an agency promoting tourism in the region, kicked off a six-week publicity blitz in Phoenix over the weekend, launching its first ad campaign outside of the Northeast.

The $100,000 campaign will highlight Long Island's shores, vineyards and historic sites in television and digital ads running through March 5. Discover Long Island decided to make its foray in the West in Phoenix because research shows the area has one of the largest populations of people who are likely to be interested in Long Island.

The Island appeals to consumers interested in luxury, shopping, historic sites and beaches, which may be particularly attractive to people living in the desert region, according to Discover Long Island President and CEO Kristen Jarnagin Reynolds.

The Arizona school year also ends before Memorial Day, which means Arizonans are more likely to take vacations ahead of Long Island's peak tourism season, Reynolds said.

Discover Long Island has wanted to target travelers outside of the Northeast for a while, but tabled these plans when COVID-19 hit, she said. Americans have cut back on international travel during the pandemic and grown more interested in new, domestic destinations, according to Reynolds. She said this gives Long Island a chance to attract visitors from farther away, who are more likely to stay longer and spend more .

"It's actually a great opportunity for us to do things differently … and not just bring in the most amount of people that we can via car on weekends in peak season," said Reynolds, who relocated from Arizona six years ago. "When you target long-haul destinations, that's how you fill your midweek rooms; that's how you fill your other seasons."

Drawing visitors from beyond the Northeast could bolster one of the sectors hardest hit by COVID-19. Long Island hotels' revenue fell more than 40% to roughly $417 million in 2020, but rebounded to $671 million — or about 94% of 2019 revenue — in 2021, according to STR, a global hospitality data and analytics company.

Discover Long Island is running television commercials on local Phoenix TV stations and digital ads on social media and Google. The group will use geofencing, where people who allow their phone location to be shared and have certain apps on their phone will see ads after they're at or near major Phoenix-area live events that draw crowds, such as the Phoenix Open golf tournament. The tourism agency also used mobile phone data — along with other research — to identify the Los Angeles area and Phoenix as regions with many people who may be interested in visiting the Island, Reynolds said. Discover Long Island can't afford ads in Los Angeles, but may be able to snag Californians who have relocated to Arizona during the pandemic, Reynolds said.

She noted that Discover Long Island gets aggregate estimates from advertising and analytics firms on how many people who see its ads travel to the region, how many tourists visit some 70 regional sites and how much visitors spend in the area. Reynolds said looking at figures on an aggregate level curbs concerns about privacy.

"We don't ever receive or report individual peoples' information," Reynolds said.

This type of partnership with data brokerage firms is common, according to Stacey Finkelstein, associate professor of marketing at Stony Brook University. Tourism agencies are unlikely to have the budget or staff to collect, aggregate and analyze data on their own, Finkelstein said.

By Sarina Trangle

sarina.trangle@newsday.com@SarinaTrangle

Sarina Trangle covers affordability and cost of living issues and other business topics. She previously worked as an editor and reporter at amNewYork.