Sunday’s Super Bowl event between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers proved the perfect opportunity for Visit Newport Beach to market the luxury beach community and make it part of pop culture conversation, its CEO said.
An hour after the big game, Visit Newport Beach will host a 1,000-drone light show over Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. Along with paying tribute to the winner, the display will include images of Newport Beach. It will last 12 minutes and be visible from the stadium, the Las Vegas Strip and will be live-streamed.
“Our goal in terms of positioning Newport Beach is making sure we’re part of popular culture and engaged in an event people are talking about,” said Gary Sherwin, the tourism bureau’s president and CEO.
Visit Newport Beach “did outreach” in Arizona last year when it hosted the Super Bowl and had a float in this year’s Tournament of Roses Parade.
The “Touch Down Newport Beach” drone show will celebrate football’s biggest day of the year, but is also meant to get Super Bowl fans to begin thinking of summer vacations or a place for meetings. Las Vegas is among the city’s target markets and is only a 40-minute flight away.
Those watching Sunday will be able to win a two-day stay at the Balboa Bay Resort by capturing a QR code on their phone from the drone display.
If they win, besides staying at the waterfront property along Pacific Coast Highway, they’ll also be treated to an electric boat cruise, a two-hour Moke cart rental, $500 in food and beverage credits, and a $200 gift card to Fashion Island, the city’s popular outdoor shopping center.
And if the light show doesn’t get people hyped enough, Visit Newport is also launching a commercial tailored to football fans that will air in 60,000 hotel rooms along the Las Vegas strip. Sherwin said Visit Newport Beach did something similar during Super Bowl LVII hosted at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.
“Some of our most important markets are Las Vegas and Phoenix,” Sherwin said. “This gives us another opportunity to attach ourselves to the Super Bowl.”
Sherwin said the drone display is being flown an hour after the Super Bowl to avoid the hefty price tag that could come from dealing directly with the NFL. Still, it’s costing the marketing group $100,000.
Each year, Newport Beach draws about 7.5 million visitors. “The city takes in about $35 to $40 million each year of hotel taxes, which doesn’t include retail sales,” Sherwin said. “The total economic impact is about a $1 billion industry.”
Visit Newport Beach spends about $10 million annually to market the city. Half of that is raised from the hotels; the other part comes from the 10% assessment tacked onto a night stay by the city, which gives the tourism bureau 18% and uses the rest for public needs such as infrastructure and roads.
Sherwin said the Rose Parade float – it was the longest in the parade’s history at 165 feet – has already proven successful in drawing people to the city – event planners have reported more interest in having meetings in town. He said the parade had a worldwide audience of almost 7 billion people.
“From an awareness standpoint, it was a great hit,” he said. “We’re really excited about this one.”
