Quad Cities - The Quad Cities Convention & Visitors Bureau (QCCVB) announced today new features added to their website at www.visitquadcities.com in order to improve visitors' trip planning experience.
The new interactive trip planner option allows visitors to build a personalized "shopping cart" of attractions, hotels and restaurants that they'd like to visit. As they're browsing the website, each listing has an "Add to My Trip" button so visitors don't have to keep track of the places they are interested in visiting. Their trip planner can be edited, saved online, printed out, or shared with family/friends on Facebook.
In the Places to Stay hotel section of www.visitquadcities.com, additional filter options have been added to help visitors find the exact hotel that meets their needs. The user can customize their list by filtering by room rate, number of rooms, hotel amenities (ex. pet friendly, free wi-fi, free breakfast, pool available, meeting space, etc.). In addition each individual hotel's listing page now has a full list of the same available amenities.
Throughout the website, the QCCVB is integrating more information to help their trip planning process. Videos from the QCCVB's social media channels have been added. Each month staff from the QCCVB's social media team visits locally-owned businesses to highlight their special events, unique products, and locally-made products with in-house produced videos. "The Monthly Bite" is the most popular series. It features local restaurants and receives 15,000 views per month.
"A website is never finished; you have to keep improving things to meet your customers' needs and to make the experience fresh and inviting. We think these new additions do just that," says Charlotte Doehler-Morrison, QCCVB vice-president of marketing & communications. "We have also added a new blog to our site that gives visitors and residents an insider's view of the Quad Cities."
The QCCVB launched a new blog in April 2015 with five local residents regularly blogging several times a month about what there is to see and do in the Quad Cities. The blog gives visitors a first-hand look at the area. Now blog posts have been integrated throughout the website sharing topic-related pages, such as a blog post about antique shops is found on the Shopping web section. Since the launch the blog has had over 37,000 pageviews and gained 50 blog subscribers.
"The website is one of our most important sales tools for promoting the Quad Cities," said Jessica Waytenick, QCCVB public relations & marketing manager. "I've been so excited about what our bloggers are writing about each month. It has so much variety from topics such as outdoor recreation options to new boutiques to local bakeries."
So far in 2015 www.visitquadcities.com as a whole has had over 1.3 million page views. The website is built using responsive design, so it automatically resizes to fit whatever device the user has whether it's a computer, tablet or smartphone.
Located on the Mississippi River, the Quad Cities is comprised of Bettendorf & Davenport in Iowa; Moline/East Moline & Rock Island in Illinois; and surrounding communities. The area is just a 2-½ hour drive from Des Moines, Iowa, and Chicago, Illinois. It is easily accessible via I-80, I-74, I-88 and several major state highways.
The QCCVB is the official tourism destination marketing and management organization for the Quad Cities region. The organization serves the tourism interests of Scott County in Iowa and Rock Island, Mercer, Warren and Henderson Counties in Illinois. The QCCVB increases visitor expenditures and overnight stays through strategic sales, marketing, and services to customers, members and communities. Visitors generated an economic impact of $837 million from over 1.6 million visitors to the Quad Cities in 2014.
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