Saffire Blog

Beyond the Lanyard: Chattanooga and San Diego!

Well friends, here I am for another fun episode of Beyond the Lanyard! What an amazing few months it has been for traveling on the Saffire circuit. I’ve had a blast “taking off my lanyard” on a few trips during conferences, and I wanted to share with you all the fun things we’ve been doing! … Continue reading “Beyond the Lanyard: Chattanooga and San Diego!”

First of all, we went to Chattanooga, TN for the SFEA Convention, but got to see a few sights along the way. What a fun town! It was a little cold (and snowing at times!) which is tough for a Texas girl, but nothing was going to stop me from exploring! Chattanooga has so much to offer—restaurants, museums and an AWESOME aquarium where we got to spend a fun-filled evening! We saw HUGE fish that live in the rivers near Tennessee, and got to learn a lot about the topography of Tennessee.

We also went to an AMAZING restaurant called Urban Stack that served fresh, locally-sourced hamburgers and classic southern sides. Delicious!

Shortly after my trip to Chattanooga, I headed to the west coast for a little fun in San Diego! One of my favorite parts about my hotel was the location: only about a quarter mile from the beach! I enjoyed running on the beach boardwalk in the mornings. Since there were several military bases nearby, I had the privilege of seeing our troops out for their morning workouts too. A truly beautiful sight! We’re so lucky to have them!

Finally, I capped off my trip to San Diego with one of the most fun things I’ve ever done on a Saffire trip – RIDING A ROLLER COASTER! This roller coaster sat between our hotel and the beach. It was a very old, historic ride, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t move fast! WHOA! It was even more fun because I got to ride with my friends from lots of fairs around the country. I was so excited to see that fair managers could still enjoy a good carnival ride! What a blast!

Until next time travel team!

Welcome Belton Convention and Visitors Bureau

We had the great privilege of designing the Bell County Exposition Center Website a few years ago and are so excited to welcome another client from Belton to the Saffire Family! We are also thrilled to welcome another destination client to the growing Saffire portfolio! The Belton Convention and Visitors Bureau is tasked with showcasing … Continue reading “Welcome Belton Convention and Visitors Bureau”

We had the great privilege of designing the Bell County Exposition Center Website a few years ago and are so excited to welcome another client from Belton to the Saffire Family!

We are also thrilled to welcome another destination client to the growing Saffire portfolio!

The Belton Convention and Visitors Bureau is tasked with showcasing Belton, Texas as a destination. Located deep in the heart of Texas, Belton is a unique city with friendly people and a rich history. Founded in 1850, Belton is located along the famous Chisholm Trail. Belton’s location also puts it squarely in the middle of natural wonders, shopping and entertainment. From beautiful lakes and interesting museums, to historic landmarks and shopping, Belton has an endless supply of places to experience.

Welcome Kern County Fair

Kern County is one of the highest producing counties of agricultural products and is the top oil-producing county, with 81% of the state’s active oil wells. The county is also home to over 800,000 people. Every Fall, the Fair serves the county with agricultural education and fun, including a carnival, rodeo and livestock show! The … Continue reading “Welcome Kern County Fair”

Every Fall, the Fair serves the county with agricultural education and fun, including a carnival, rodeo and livestock show! The Fair also strives to have lots of family friendly entertainment from concerts to pirate shows. We look forward to showcasing the many events this fair puts on every year!

Welcome Lodi Grape Festival & Harvest Fair

What a great event! The Lodi Grap Festival & Harest Fair takes place every September in Lodi, California. The Lodi Grape Festival and National Wine Show Association, Inc. is a non-profit organization established to promote agriculture and agricultural products of San Joaquin County and to offer diverse forms of agriculture education. In addition, the 20 … Continue reading “Welcome Lodi Grape Festival & Harvest Fair”

What a great event! The Lodi Grap Festival & Harest Fair takes place every September in Lodi, California. The Lodi Grape Festival and National Wine Show Association, Inc. is a non-profit organization established to promote agriculture and agricultural products of San Joaquin County and to offer diverse forms of agriculture education. In addition, the 20 acre fairgrounds are home to many other events ranging from RV groups to wedding receptions.

Be sure to check out this event and stay tuned for their website launch!

Welcome Flatonia Chamber of Commerce

The Saffire family is definitely growing in destination clients! We are excited to welcome Flatonia Chamber of Commerce and the town’s rich German and Czech heritage. Flatonia is a community of about 1,300, centrally located between three major Texas cities – Houston, Austin and San Antonio. It was established in 1873 and quickly became a … Continue reading “Welcome Flatonia Chamber of Commerce”

The Saffire family is definitely growing in destination clients! We are excited to welcome Flatonia Chamber of Commerce and the town’s rich German and Czech heritage.

Flatonia is a community of about 1,300, centrally located between three major Texas cities – Houston, Austin and San Antonio. It was established in 1873 and quickly became a melting pot for English, German, Bohemian, Czech and Italian immigrants. Flatonia is still a well known and scenic spot for train watchers, boasting one of Texas’ longest standing, manually operated railroad switching towers with North-South, East-West cross rails.

Welcome Eastern Sierra Tri-County Fair

We sure do love a fair here at Saffire and are so glad to add this amazing fair to our portfolio! The Eastern Sierra Tri County Fair is held every August in Bishop, California, near where Inyo, Mono and Alpine Counties (the Tri Counties) all meet! The Fair offers the more traditional events, along with … Continue reading “Welcome Eastern Sierra Tri-County Fair”

We sure do love a fair here at Saffire and are so glad to add this amazing fair to our portfolio! The Eastern Sierra Tri County Fair is held every August in Bishop, California, near where Inyo, Mono and Alpine Counties (the Tri Counties) all meet! The Fair offers the more traditional events, along with a few adventurous events with truck pulls, an ATV rodeo, traditional rodeo and the ever-popular destruction derby, not to mention a fantastic family friendly carnival!

How Does Your Website Stack Up?

Are you in the event, venue or destination industry and want to know how your website analytics stack up to others in the industry? We pulled Google Analytics from over 150 clients in these industries and found some extremely useful information. Google analytics stats from 2013 to 2014 Pages per Session and Average Session Duration … Continue reading “How Does Your Website Stack Up?”

Google analytics stats from 2013 to 2014

Pages per Session and Average Session Duration
These analytics refer to the average number of pages a visitors looks at and how long they’re staying on the site.

Bounce Rate
Bounce rates refer to the amount of users who have landed on a page and left after viewing only that page. The lower the bounce rate, the better. Low bounce rates mean visitors are finding the information interesting enough to pursue information on other pages of the site.

This represents a big shift for this industry in the last year. Desktop and Mobile traffic swapped a total of 16%. It’s amazing to see that mobile traffic now accounts for over half of this industry’s traffic. Another trend we noticed as the year went on is that on an average day, desktop traffic is still typically higher than mobile. However, during an event, mobile traffic spikes and overtakes desktop traffic. This highlights how the mobile device is used for gathering more immediate data while at events or destinations.

What came as no surprise, we saw a big change in the number of referrals our clients received from social media sites, increasing the importance of maintaining multiple online presences. One incredible statistic (but also not very surprising) is that 93% of the social media referrals were from Facebook, proving that they are still king of the social jungle.

Ensuring your website and analytics are up to par can be a very tedious and confusing task. We hope that this gives you a few goals to strive for along with some basic Google Analytics information. One great resource is to go directly to the source, and check out Google’s help desk for analytics here.

TTIA 2015 – Unity Dinner and Matket Place

This week, the Texas Travel Industry Association (TTIA) hosted the annual Unity Dinner, a night where tourism professionals and their supporters unite to express the impact the travel industry has on individual communities and the U.S. as a whole. The event continues to become more and more popular, averaging around 1,000 in attendance this year! This year’s featured speaker was the one and only, Tilman Fertitta, sole owner, chairman and CEO of Fertitta Entertainment, Inc. Fertitta is a native of Texas and has made a remarkable impact on the tourism industry through his 500 properties (including the San Luis Resort, Spa & Conference Center, Galveston’s Pleasure Pier, the Kemah Boardwalk and ALL of the Landry’s Restaurants).

This dinner has grown to become a 3 day event, starting with a speed-dating style tradeshow and concluding with a day-long event known as “Converge on the Capitol” where travel and tourism professionals come together to address tourism-related issues to local Senators and Representatives at the Texas State Capitol.

As ALWAYS, we loved seeing and bonding with many of our Destination Marketing Organization (DMO) friends over the three days and we look forward to our next tourism adventure!

SFEA 2015 in Chattanooga

Every year at Saffire, we are privileged to travel to new and exciting conferences and meet more amazing people than the year before. This year, Cassie and Elaine had the pleasure of going to the Southeast Festival and Events Association in Chattanooga, Tennessee. There, we were almost snowed in, met scores of fun people from … Continue reading “SFEA 2015 in Chattanooga”

Since it was unusually cold outside, everyone at the conference stayed inside most of the time! One exception was to go to the Tennessee Aquarium in downtown Chattanooga, which had been closed off and privately catered for the conference attendees. It was such a good time, especially thanks to the face painting artist and delicious food.

At the end of the conference, we had some time before their flight and were personally shown around by Dave Jones, the East Tennessee Regional Manager from the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development. Needless to say, we had an expert to show us all the beautiful attractions in Chattanooga and we went to a fabulous local burger joint called Urban Stack. A huge thank you to Dave for helping us kill the time before their flight and for representing Tennessee so well! His enthusiasm was a pleasure to experience!

We want to thank everyone at the conference for being so welcoming and warm! Who doesn’t love Southern charm and hospitality?! We also can’t wait to get back to SFEA in 2016 in Charleston, SC….hopefully without the snow and ice! (Maybe next year we’ll get to ride on the Segway again??)

You’ve Got to Pin it to Win it!

Seriously Saffire, another Social Media site we have to maintain? Yes! With 70 million users and 28% of online US adults using the site, it is definitely worth pinning for a few minutes a day! Do you know what the fastest growing demographic on Pinterest is? Men! Currently, 79% of users are female with only … Continue reading “You’ve Got to Pin it to Win it!”

Seriously Saffire, another Social Media site we have to maintain? Yes! With 70 million users and 28% of online US adults using the site, it is definitely worth pinning for a few minutes a day!

Do you know what the fastest growing demographic on Pinterest is? Men! Currently, 79% of users are female with only 21% male. But when you consider that in 2014 the number of men using Pinterest doubled and there are now more men using the site than read Sports Illustrated and GQ combined, Pinterest is quickly breaking free of the stereotypical recipe and interior design rapport. Pinterest recently announced a change to its site’s search settings, which will now filter search results based on whether you’re interested in products for men or for women. By introducing these new search filters, Pinterest shows its devotion to diversifying its customer base.

In late 2013, Pinterest introduced one of its best features: Place Pins! If you are a destination marketing organization (DMO), Place Pins provides users with great, rich information about your destination in a map format. Place Pins allows for more context and information for travelers and requires minimal effort from a DMO. Below is an example from two different Pure Michigan’s boards which shows how much more interactive a destination post can be when placed on a map.

If you are planning an event, one of the best ways to get pinners involved is to easily collect photos from attendees! The Pinterest mobile app allows event attendees to pin photos from their mobile devices. At some point during the event, invite attendees to contribute to a collaborator board (i.e. a board named 25^th Annual Saffire Valley Rodeo) and you have a real-time, crowd-sourced photo album! To make it even more successful, you can even turn this board into a contest and give prizes to the pinner with the most repinned photos.

If your organization does not have a Pinterest yet and need help getting started, check out our tips on creating a successful Pinterest page: Click Here! Let us know what Pinterest strategies you use and what has been successful for your organization!