Sarasota to fly sky-high

Next month, when 3 million US Airways passengers pick up their in-flight magazine, they’ll be thumbing through 50 pages jam-packed with pictures and text — all about Sarasota.

“We had a fabulous story about Sarasota in AirTran that focused on circus heritage,” said Virgina Haley, president of the Sarasota Convention and Visitors Bureau. “We were out-of-control excited because it was three whole pages. Something like this — granted, that it’s advertising, but in editorial style — we started out with 14 pages and space sold-out in hours.”

Two hours after the request had been made, with responses from seven local cultural organizations, the SCVB sent out an email saying the space had been filled.

“Everybody was upset with us because we said they had a week-and-a-half to send in paperwork,” Haley said. “So, we opened it up to 30 pages of advertising space. Some people came in independently and worked with US Airways. It’s been interesting because in the last year, I’ve seen so many more organizations collaborating — it’s something I see growing in this community.”

The initial suggestion for the magazine spread was brought to the SCVB in July, after Sarasota resident Harry Leopold noticed a special advertising section for Greensboro, N.C., in the US Airways Magazine and thought it would be a perfect vehicle to promote Sarasota. At the same time, the Sarasota County Commission approved a one-time cultural tourism grant that the SCVB would manage on behalf of the Arts Alliance.

“Because of a change in accounting, the county had about $1 million in cultural tourism funding that became available,” Haley said. “A committee had met for a year thinking about creating a festival and in the end decided not to do the festival and use the funds for the existing arts grant. They set $200,000 aside specifically for cultural tourism marketing for the coming year, and this US Airways section is part of it.”

With the right idea and money to put behind it, Haley said it seemed like a win-win situation.

“As usual, we wanted to run the numbers,” Haley said. “Especially with one-time funding where people were counting on us to do a really good job for arts groups, we wanted to invest wisely. It came back at an incredible price and we would be reaching out to markets we wanted to reach — the northeast Mid-Atlantic into the Midwest — with solid projects.”

Twenty-seven organizations will be represented in the advertising spread in the magazine, which will produce 315,000 copies that will reach 3 million people. The magazine will be distributed on all US Airways flights for the entire month of November.

“The other really neat thing is that visual artists are combining to do a section within the section,” Haley said. “You tend to see performing arts in Sarasota, but Elizabeth Van Riper has put together two whole pages featuring eight of the area’s visual artists.”

The airline is the second-largest carrier of passengers out of Sarasota, behind Delta. Haley did her legwork on Delta but felt the airline didn’t publish special sections in the same manner that US Airways does.

“It meant a lot of scrambling to pull it together so quickly for November, but that’s the crazy Thanksgiving traffic period and the busiest travel month of the year, just before season starts,” Haley said. “I think because you have such a variety of organizations participating, for someone who may not know Sarasota, it leaves the passenger with an impression of the cultural activity and how deep it goes.”

By the numbers

80 million — number of passengers served each year by US Airways
19,700 — number of daily flights offered by US Airways to customers
3,200 — number of US Airways flights each day
1,077 — number of airports served by US Airways
200 — number of communities served by US Airways in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Europe, the Middle East, the Caribbean and Central and South America
175 — number of countries served by US Airways
9.6 — number of readers per magazine copy