By MADDY VITALE
Sea Isle City is ready to welcome visitors back to enjoy an amazing 2023 summer season of lounging on beaches, dining, and shopping, not to mention an array of entertainment choices.
The highlights of the summer season’s marketing campaign were discussed during a Sea Isle City Tourism Commission meeting Thursday.
Mickey Coskey, marketing consultant for the commission, gave a presentation highlighting different features used to enhance the message that Sea Isle is a great shore town to visit.
“I feel like our site is up and running smoothly and I am excited to see how we do this summer with the new site,” she said.
The redesigned website, she noted, offers a more user friendly way for people to view the site. With just a click at visitsicnj.com residents and tourists can see all that the shore town offers.
“We do online advertising, social media,” Coskey said. “We just updated our website. We do print advertising. We do our billboards where we kick off the New Year. You need to do all the pieces to work to help bring more visitors.”
As in recent years, the 2023 tourism campaign will use the “Reconnect in Sea Isle!” slogan as the family-friendly catchphrase.
To kick off the campaign, the Tourism Commission has placed a digital billboard on the New Jersey-bound side of the Walt Whitman Bridge in Philadelphia to beckon visitors with the words, “New Year’s Resolution … Spend More Time in Sea Isle City, New Jersey.” The billboard features a view of the ocean with a colorful beach umbrella in the foreground.
“That has been our tagline for the last four or five years,” Coskey said of the media slogan. “We want to give the visual to come to Sea Isle and bring your whole family and reconnect here because we all have such busy lives.”
The city uses the website, social media and digital marketing along with more traditional forms of advertising such as billboards, print publications, a reference guide and commercials as the foundation of its summer tourism campaign each year.
Coskey said, this year, the city continues to utilize the avenues to deliver the message and market to audiences.
Sea Isle also promotes itself is with materials displayed at U.S. travel shows in partnership with the Cape May County Department of Tourism and the New Jersey Division of Travel and Tourism.
She pointed out that the digital visitor guide, on the website, is an excellent source for updated information. “Our calendar is one of our most important features on our website. People love the beach, but they want to know what is going on.”
In January, during a commission meeting, Coskey said that New York residents are visiting the website more and more.
“I am tracking what states people are coming from. We’ve seen New York just emerge in the last couple of years,” she said.
The stats she said went from 3.8 percent of people visiting the site from New York in 2022 and in 2023 over the same time period 11.76.
“It really is pretty significant the people from New York who are interest in Sea Isle,” she said. “Before we used to say it is PA and New Jersey, but it is expanding.”
Sea Isle City Public Information Officer Katherine Custer said she anticipates 2023 will be a strong summer season.
“The city is ready for a great summer season. The Tourism office is ready. We have expanded some events for teenagers,” she said. “We have a lot of private events lined up as well.”
Custer pointed out that there are many private events scheduled, including 5K fundraisers and other events at Dealy Field.
Bill Kehner Jr., vice president of the commission, said that the events for teens will be Friday nights, July 21 and Aug. 4, at Excursion Park.
“There are a bunch of lawn games from spike ball to Kan Jam to a few other things,” he said. “There will be a video truck that is coming.”
The Boy Scouts will be at the teen nights selling hotdogs, popcorn and soft drinks at reasonable prices, he said.
Custer said of the new event, “We are giving it a try and see how it goes. We want to dip our toe in the pond to see before we jump in full time. We are giving it our best.”
For more information about Sea Isle City click, www.visitsicnj.com
