San Francisco Travel CEO on Using The Super Bowl To Drive Destination Branding
Skift Take
By emphasizing how San Francisco is integrating the highest levels of sustainability, technology, inclusiveness, charity and local cuisine into Super Bowl 50, the city is really emphasizing its forward-thinking value proposition as a tourism destination.
San Francisco Travel is attempting to inject as much of the city's unique culture and brand identity into Super Bowl 50 as possible to leverage the big game as an integrated tourism promotion platform.
Meaning, according to the tourism bureau, it will be the greenest, most high-tech, gay-friendliest, and most multicultural Super Bowl ever, with the most ride sharing, room sharing, social media sharing, community engagement, and best local food and wine, too.
For the week leading up to Super Bowl 50 on February 7, 2016, the waterfront Embarcadero District around the Ferry Building will be converted into Super Bowl City. According to the website, "Super Bowl City will be designed to showcase the best the Bay Area has to offer, with interactive games and activities that highlight the region’s technological prowess, culinary excellence and cultural diversity."
Super Bowl City is not to be confused with the official NFL Experience, which is billed as an interactive football theme park inside San Francisco's Moscone Convention Center.
As we covered recently, Sonoma County Tourism is the official wine sponsor for the eight-day Super Bowl fan village, which has been extended this year to twice its normal length. The partnership illustrates the bureau's evolution over the last few years to promote the region well beyond the Bay Area as a whole.
Driving that broader perspective, in part, is the growing numbers of Chinese travelers visiting San Francisco for longer periods of time than domestic visitors. Asian visitors in general are using the city as a launch pad to explore Napa/Sonoma, Monterrey/Carmel, Yosemite and other outlying destinations.
Super Bowl 50 itself is taking place at the new Levi's Stadium, which is the first facility of its kind to earn LEED Gold status, located 47 miles south of San Francisco in Santa Clara.
To date, some of the big-name tech sponsors include: Google, Yahoo, Intel, SAP and Intuit, with more expected to be announced by the end of the year. Requests for more specific information about the tech sponsors' programming at Super Bowl City went unanswered.
Joe D'Alessandro, president and CEO of San Francisco Travel, says that information is being rolled out on a prescribed schedule. The following is an abbreviated version of our conversation about the tourism marketing opportunities aligned around Super Bowl 50.
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