Visit Redding Update 2025
Katie
I'm Katie.
Steve
And I'm Steve. This is the City of Redding podcast.
Katie
Today we reconnect with Danny Orloff, Marketing Director, from visit Redding to discuss how the city's tourism and marketing efforts have been working, from successful campaigns to exciting new developments. Danny explains how the work visit Redding is doing is helping to attract visitors and create a positive impact for the local economy and our community.
Steve
Whether you're a local or a visitor, this conversation will help shed some light on the great things and hidden gems that Redding offers. Let's get started.
Danny Orloff, Visit Redding
I'm Danny Orloff, the tourism marketing director for visit Redding. I help market our city and bring tourists to our area.
Steve
Thank you again for joining us, Danny. We're excited to have you here today and learn a bit more about where we've been with. Visit Redding and some key wins and successes and where you're hoping to take things. So maybe we can start with the past year specifically. How has visit Redding destination marketing strategy evolved over this past year? As you've seen? You know maybe what works and what doesn't work, and how travelers you know Best relate to some of the material that you're putting out there. What's changed and really worked well this year?
Danny Orloff, Visit Redding
Yeah, I think when we first took on the contract is a lot of it was learning the landscape, at least for me coming into the area, it was understanding what are the things that Redding does well and what are the things that people enjoy in Redding as well, and how do we be able to merge the two? This past year, we've noticed a lot of big wins with the outdoors and family content as well, and it seems like people still kind of want to be able to take a step away from your phone, take a step away from the desk, and enjoy the outdoors. It seems like our visitors still want to be able to find an affordable experience, and they they want experiences overall. They want to be able to do things differently. They want to be able to talk about memories and really, you know, be immersive into the destinations that they're going into. I think we've really been able to help showcase what Redding truly is and how we're unlike the rest of California. And also we're different than anywhere north of us as well, but we kind of have a little bit of all of the DNA for those places, like we have the outdoor trails, as if you're in the Pacific Northwest, but we have the Western culture as well as if you're in Texas, and then we have the cool, trendy culture, as well as in pockets of LA as well, or Palm Springs with cool April nights and just like a cool, vintage, nostalgic vibe to us, we've noticed a lot of those things doing really well. So playing on to To who We Are and vintage outdoors family are three key things that we've noticed people really enjoy about writing.
Katie
And kind of within that frame. What what recent marketing campaigns have been the most successful, in your opinion? What marketing campaign has brought the most people up to Redding?
Danny Orloff, Visit Redding
Definitely Basecamp for adventure really, really brought people to Redding and changed the bar overall. So our first campaign was called further, and then the second one was our basecamp for adventure Redding set go! And that one was one that we for base camp. So further, overall, we really focused on everything you can do and try to get that into the 30s. For base camp, we really showcase like that higher level adventure, very inspiring content showcasing things from people rock climbing, being behind a boat to things in the cultural district, all levels of adventure. But with base Camp for adventure aka Redding set go, that one actually was nominated for an award through Visit California. So it was really cool that we put out the ad and we saw Tot rising in comparison to the previous years and getting to be on a stage with LA and San Diego and seeing if we won an award was was really cool. And being able to get nominated over 200 destinations for the best marketing campaign was like, hey, we're we're onto something here. And we've noticed a lot of that based on the types of content that people are wanting to see and based on the surprising content that people engage with, whether that's all about the trails or the or the fishing or things to do with your family.
Danny Orloff, Visit Redding
People want to be odd, so finding ways to do that is makes the job challenging, but makes the job really fun. And as in marketing, once you you know that you did something successful, it's like how can you repeat it? But you change it enough so it's different, but hopefully has better success than the last thing. So it's a challenge. But overall, like people want to find those aha moments and whether they're people in our city or outside of our area, like one one win for us are our most engaged content for Facebook over the last year was the geosphere down there by Cyril that was like the Providence Blue geosphere. And knowing the history of of of that, unfortunately it is taken down now. But like a lot of people drive that drive by that every single day. But learning about it was something that they, they really cared for overall. But I think the visitors, they are constantly surprised on how much we have to do here and how much you can do in a weekend. So the base camp for adventure really showcased that.
Steve
And Danny, when you talk about success, you know many of your campaigns focus on data and analytics and seeing cell phone data and obviously the transient occupancy tax or Tot, that helps show how many visitors are spending hotel nights here and Airbnb nights. With all that in mind, what does success look like for you? How do you gauge success of these campaigns?
Danny Orloff, Visit Redding
Yeah, and I think success has been changing in these last few years a lot overall, especially with the new data sets that are happening. Initially, success really looked like how much does it cost for people to see this ad, or how much does it cost for them to click into the ad? And who are they when they're clicking into the ad? Is it maybe a 16 year old who likes to check out waterfalls? Or maybe it's someone who's retired, who's checking out the waterfall page? So I think their income levels are going to range a lot from a person who's going to be retired to somebody in high school. And of course, they can maybe convince their parents to take them on a on a vacation. But for us, it's really being strategic on what's going to move the needle and what's the audience, that core audience for the content that they're seeing. So initially it was a lot about impressions and click through rates, comments and saves and shares for social media time on the website, amount of pages engaged with what initially came from somebody clicking into the ad. Now our strategy is changing a little bit more, just with some of the new data sets we have. We're able to see if they were on the website and then if they came into destination within six months. So really trying to find out what's going to ultimately bring them in into shore. Like, I don't know, I'm thinking fishing right now, but like, you get these bites out there and sometimes you don't know if they're seaweed or if they're a big trout or a little guppy.
Danny Orloff, Visit Redding
But we want to essentially bring that fish in and, and learn about that fish more, seeing where they came from, like what stream they may have swam up, or if they drove or flew or things like that. And then how long do they stay and maybe how long they spent. We can't check all that stuff into one bucket, but we can see from our top markets, whether it's Sacramento or San Francisco or some of the rising markets with Eureka, Reno and Medford. Like, what do they typically spend while they're here, and what are the age ranges that are coming from that area? And what is that age, age range typically spend, and how do we get them to stay longer and enjoy the area the most? And I think that's been a surprising thing in the last few years, is the success has really looked into those empty nesters, those 55 plus market that maybe have the teenagers that are out of out of high school into college, and they want to do a little romantic trip with their spouse. Um, we've seen a little bit more of a rise on that by who's engaging with the content and who wants to come come to our area. So it's interesting, especially seeing some of the content when it's mountain biking focused and maybe some of these, some of the audience wants to do a wine walk. It's it's always different. But how do you one just make sure we're aware on the radar that we're a cool place to come to.
Katie
And you mentioned six months as like a life cycle, sort of. And I want to key into that because you're marketing is a bit challenging in that it's not like you're selling a product that somebody could just, with one click, buy it, and then it shows up at their door two days later. You know, you're you're potentially selling a vacation or a trip or and this might include taking some time off from work or planning or saving up. And so it's six months really the gauge that you're looking at when you're saying, like, okay, if someone saw our ad and they were interested in Redding, it takes them about six months to kind of get here or like, how do you figure out what your ROI is when the length of time between somebody actually planning a trip and taking a trip could be very different?
Danny Orloff, Visit Redding
Yeah, I think a lot of it's going to depend on the season. So right now we have a few different reports. A lot of it's going to check within six months if they've came here or not. But what we've noticed at least the turnaround time for when people have been on the website and then come to destination, 36% tend to make a trip within 15 to 30 days. So we're talking two weeks to a month is over a third of the of the population. That's with this new data set is is coming to our to our area. About 25% come 30, 30 days plus. So more than a month. But yeah, six months is kind of that time frame when we can essentially track that user overall.
Katie
So it's almost like you have to plant the seed and then they have to think, oh, reading's a really cool place to go. I want to plan my next trip to Redding, and then they have to actually plan it and make it happen and make it up here, etc..
Danny Orloff, Visit Redding
Exactly, exactly. And I think that's why we we tend to do like a lot of montage stuff too, so they can see it throughout multiple seasons. Already we're thinking about summer. What kind of content are people going to want in the summer, and how do we get more of our the cool April Nights ads coming? They hit hit the audience in the right time. And so those will drop in right around Valentine's a little bit after we can start promoting cool April nights like a month and a half out for, for events, typically for events. You don't want to do more than that. But, uh, for just like summer vacation with the family, a larger family than, of course you're going to want to go a little bit, um, longer out for it.
Steve
And, Danny, I think the other piece of this too, is the local community. How do you market to them in the sense of to allow them to feel a sense of pride in their community and then almost become marketing ambassadors for you by sharing that through their networks? I know those numbers aren't reflected in the total, right? They're not going to stay at a at a hotel necessarily, but it can be a very powerful tool to instill a sense of pride in our community here, to then help spread that message. Do you do specific marketing to the Redding community, or you just kind of, through your general marketing, hope that they see what you're putting out and kind of reshare and tell that story?
Danny Orloff, Visit Redding
It is going to be a little bit of both. We tend just to do the outside of the area marketing, just because that's ultimately going to move the needle for for us. But in order to get to the locals, a lot of it's going to be through free platforms. So Instagram and social media is a great way to hit that local audience. And I think they're a little bit around like 20% of our Instagram following is local. And then it goes to LA after that for our demographics. But that's how we get to them more versus spending money on local. We'll spend the money on people who are going to move the needle for tourism, but locals are so important to that pride piece and a lot of our newsletter signups are locals as well, so we can let them know about what's happening in our area from an events perspective or other other things they might want to know about, whether it's dates for a thing, or whether there's a wildflower bloom or whatever it might look like from a newsletter standpoint. And then Instagram is great because a lot of the following, like I said, are local, so we get to see them and interact with them instantaneously after we put out a piece of content. And that's how you can kind of test and see, hey, this is something that's performing well locally. Let's put some ad spend behind it. We might need to change it from a trending song into a licensable track, or find a few tweaks from it. But overall it's a great test market as well. If you're excited and and happy about the product you're putting out there, then how do you get more people to enjoy that product as well?
Katie
And has there been any challenges that you've experienced in the last year with marketing? Redding? I mean, I feel like you've had it's been a really challenging few years with Covid and everything else, but just in the last year, have you had any challenges that you've had to overcome?
Danny Orloff, Visit Redding
Yeah, I think the big challenges that we see are are from locals sometimes, and maybe it's from the locals who don't love our area as much. So it's they want to give their $0.02 on, on a comment or on a post or things like that where it it hurts the message going out because we're like, hey, this is such a cool place to be there. And then they say some things over the comments that are based on their opinion. Those are the main challenges that we see are are people who don't want visitors to come here, but the ones that we really want to help out, they want to see people come here. So the business owners, they would love to have an extra income coming into their business to be able to help support them and their families. And I think it's all about understanding the right growth and the right messaging. So that helps out Jennifer, who's on my team. She's she's great with public relations and is able to answer all those those comments and those the naysayers that come in. But I would say that's the biggest challenge is being able to stay positive, but having people comment negatively on your stuff.
Steve
So and Danny, looking ahead, what what are the top priorities for visit Redding. In 2025.
Danny Orloff, Visit Redding
Tot is going to be number one for us, making sure that we can move the needle for revenue for the for the city. A lot of that comes down to new campaigns that we're working on. Uh, one of them is focused around road trippers. So like the perfect vacation is is what that is talking about, and turning a pit stop into something more than that and not refueling your car, but refueling you. So being able to hit more people that travel on I-5 is a key area for us to focus on throughout this next year is how do we capitalize more on on the road trip traveler we've noticed that right now through trends is luxury, is is booming, and it hasn't noticed that much of a dip. But the non luxury experiences are noticing a small decline and those less expensive excursions. So trying to find ways to to market more of those luxurious things that people can do here. So we can kind of stay on that trend and then also hit the right people that are traveling. It seems like there's been a little bit more of a, a travel locally, where initially we took on the contract and people were excited to get out of Covid, and so they would kind of catch more plane rides to to a vacation where now people want that smaller drive time, maybe a three and a half, four hour drive to get to their location.
Danny Orloff, Visit Redding
So when they leave on Sunday. It's a quick drive back to their home, but we're able to escape reality from the week. So that's another key focus on on ours is really being able to move the needle from our sister regions and things like that with like a Reno or Eureka or Medford being able to target in on those areas and bring more people in through there. And then focusing on that new connection to Denver, how can we get more of those outdoor enthusiasts into our area? And, and to really experience all that there is to, to offer in the outdoors? We work with our TMG Redding Tourism Marketing group, and they've been awesome being able to fund some of the latest campaigns and some of their brochures and visitor guides that we've been able to do. So continuing, continuing a strong partnership with them and and really being able to do have two megaphones for our city and, and letting them know, like, hey, we're we're doing leisure travel and they're doing business groups and sports and being able to really hit multiple different target audiences is is really key for the success for this next year also.
Katie
So Danny, as the experts of all things, visit Redding. Are there any unique experiences or hidden gems that you think people should definitely experience when they're here?
Danny Orloff, Visit Redding
Yes. Oh, wow. It depends. Is it their first time here? Like their very, very first time.
Katie
Very, very first time. What is it? Not miss of Redding.
Danny Orloff, Visit Redding
I feel like you can't miss a damn burger. Like you have to get the OG Original Smash burger that's 90 plus years old with the recipe. I think that's a can't miss. I don't know if it's like a hidden gem because it's always in plain sight, along with like a jack steak. So you have like these classic establishments like gifts and also maybe like Jose's Diner out there on airport. So you're getting like these classic American experience and Jose's Diner. If you guys haven't been out there, it's all cool April Nights themed. So there's a bunch of like, old posters on the wall. If you guys haven't been to Jose's Diner on their wall, there's a bunch of different, um, fliers from previous years, so it's really cool to see that and get that experience. I mean, the Salt Caves is awesome from a wellness perspective. It does so much things for your body. I can't even explain them all, but I feel like Salt caves is really, really cool and unique. The caverns itself, Shasta caverns, like having you go across a boat into a hillside and you're like inside of a billion year old cave. I think that's pretty cool and unique as well. I mean, the list goes on and on that I could say, like hitting a ball into the Sacramento River, like, you know, there's top golf, but there's there's only one aqua golf. Like, that's really cool and like nostalgic in that aspect. So like, those are the few little experiences that I would say is salt caves. Shasta Caverns and Aqua Golf are kind of like semi hidden gems, but there's some, there's so much. And I'm sure like once we get off the podcast, I'll remember 15 more.
Steve
Got it. And I know, Danny, I know you have itineraries listed on the visit Redding website that folks can go and explore as well. I guess to that point, how can the community support Redding's tourism marketing efforts? And also, where can they go to find out the latest and greatest as to what's happening?
Danny Orloff, Visit Redding
Definitely. So our events page is one of our top pages and something we we put a lot of energy and effort into. And if they are anybody who's in the event or organizers or feel as if their event can bring in traffic from from tourists, I would say submit your event on on visit redding.com. It's also going to be a place for you to stay updated if you have thoughts, ideas or anything of that nature or concerns, even feel free to email us and all the contact information is on our website as well. If if there's things that they feel like maybe we should change or bring up to one of our steering committee meetings, we would love to to make sure that the city is represented to its fullest capability. But if they want to support, I would say the easiest way to support is following us on Instagram to stay, to stay up to date and then through events wise is going to be on our website.
Katie
This was a five year contract. We're coming near to the the end of the year. The last year, if you were going to look back on the past four years, the most exciting thing that you've seen happen.
Danny Orloff, Visit Redding
I mean, it sounds weird, but like the Redding Regatta is something like for me, like was really cool to learn about and to do and to, like, find the city. So open arms to it. I think that's what I've noticed is the city is extremely generous, and they want to be able to support you. And whether it's any member in the community, it's like, hey, if you share the same vision, like, hey, let's go. Like, we're totally on board with it. And it happened with the regatta. So the Lake Redding Regatta was an event back, back in the day in the 1930s, and it was called the Water Carnival, and it was the biggest tourism draw to our area back then. People would come for diving competitions and boat races and swimming races and all this down at Lake Redding um Park, right there by the steps. Um, so last year we teamed up with the Historical Society as well as headwaters and did a little regatta and kayak race and stand up paddle board race in the community. Loved it. They were like all about it. They're like, I wish I would have known longer. Like next year I'm signing up and I think it's finding ways for people to show pride. They'll come and they will show up and and really seeing that through celebrate 20 and walking down there. And it was ironic. I walked down to the Bandaloop and Steve's there with his family, and I have my family, and it's like it was just so cool to see, like, hey, we're we're promoting these things, but also we're enjoying these things as well as as parents and as people overall.
Danny Orloff, Visit Redding
So I think that's been a really cool piece or learning period is just like, hey, let's do the things that we want to do as city residents and other people will come here and visit and do those things as well. I think that's been a big learning curve. And another learning curve is just like knowing you can't do everything all at once and knowing that, hey, there's a time and a place for for it. And figuring that out has been really fun. And as much as we want to be able to promote everybody, we want to make sure that we uphold the brand image, and we really showcase the best that we can to offer. And it's always hard to include everybody. Maybe if they don't hit that or feel as if they don't hit that. But a lot of times it's like, hey, we're we're two people organization or four people organization technically, and there's so much we want to cover and there's so much time we can cover it, but give us a nudge if it's something really cool, like we want to put it out there just as bad as you want to get it pushed out there as well. So.
Steve
Well. And Danny. So maybe in closing, given that you are a a champion for the city of Redding and obviously a positive and optimistic individual when it comes to that, what what's kind of your, I guess, your closing message for community and visitors alike as to why they should feel a sense of pride and optimism for the city of Redding, both where we are and where we're going.
Danny Orloff, Visit Redding
If you think about it, how many other cities in California have a city that have a river running through the city? And I mean, yes, Sacramento has a little river. Yeah, I get it. And there's a there's a few other river cities also. But to be able to drive 15 minutes and go to two different lakes and you can go either jet skiing or to a waterfall all within an hour. There's so much to do here from an outdoors perspective, and there's something that we always call. It's like, pick your pace. Like whether you want to be like super chill and relaxed, you can do that if you want to, like go full send and like full throttle, like send it at Shasta. Like, you can literally go on any of the OHV trails and go full throttle. So overall, it's like all of these things are out here. It's just you have to find a way to do them. So go to visit redding.com. Find a way to do all the cool stuff here in the area. And if you want to build cool stuff, I encourage you to do so and we'll try to help market it if it will bring a visitor.
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