Philadelphia expects big boost from King Tut museum exhibit

Philadelphia is wasting no time in promoting the February arrival of the King Tut exhibit at the Franklin Institute.

The city has launched a $1 million marketing campaign to promote "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs," including TV, radio and online ads. The campaign, called "Philadelphia's King-Sized Celebration," highlights the exhibit and the city's other attractions.

Part of the campaign includes a 100-foot banner draped on the side of Madison Square Garden in New York.

One reason the exhibit is visiting Philadelphia is Zahi Hawass, the secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities in Cairo, who has been a fan of the city since he was a grad student at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1980s.

But there's another reason. Aside from the fact that Philadelphia has a track record of hosting major traveling exhibits -- it recently hosted the anatomical exhibits of Gunther von Hagens' "Body Worlds" -- there is also a growing sense that the city itself has arrived.

The interest in Philadelphia is in stark contrast to the city's image a decade ago. Back then, if you asked travelers what they thought of Philadelphia, they might have paused.

"They would say it has great potential, but they wouldn't be able to describe what that meant," said Meryl Levitz, president and CEO of the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp. "They just talked about what it could be."

In short, Philadelphia had one of the worst kinds of image problems: it had no image at all.

In 1996, the city, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the Pew Charitable Trusts teamed up to invest $12 million to create the GPTMC, the city's main tourism promotional arm.

The GPTMC also promotes Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery counties as part of a regional tourism effort.

"It was only in the past few years that people started coming back for something other than a visit to the hospital, a trip to the airport or a game," Levitz said.

The city particularly got a boost in 2000 when it hosted the Republican National Convention, Levitz said.

"In order to do that, we built 4,500 hotel rooms. We had 15,000 media attend the convention," said Levitz.

But the following year was marred by the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which chilled consumer interest in travel. GPTMC focused its efforts on helping the city's travel industry recover.

"Everybody realized that travel was not this frivolous thing," Levitz said, "that if the business went away, a lot of people would lose jobs."

Among other things, the GPTMC launched its campaign, "Philly's more fun when you sleep over."

The campaign, which included discounted hotel packages, featured a big guy wearing a nightshirt and sleeping cap and holding a teddy bear.

The $3.6 million marketing campaign generated more than 37,000 room nights and $10 million in direct visitor spending and has since become an annual promotion.

The city continues to use a variation of the sleepover promotion.

Now, along with its other efforts, the GPTMC is striving to attract new visitors to Philadelphia, such as families and gays and lesbians.

The downtown area now has more than 10,000 hotel rooms and is home to 167 outdoor cafes (up 61% from 2002). Retail businesses have grown from 1,869 in 1995 to more than 2,148 in 2005.

Philadelphia, meanwhile, has hosted more major events, such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art's Salvador Dali exhibition last year, Disney's "The Lion King" production at the Academy of Music, Big Cat Falls at the Philadelphia Zoo and an event commemorating Ben Franklin's 300th birthday.

About 27.3 million people visited Philadelphia in 2005, up 7% from the previous year.

In comparison, New York and Las Vegas posted increases of 2.8% and 3.2% respectively.

And now, with the King Tut exhibit set to run from February to September, Philadelphia could be looking at a record year in 2007.

"Success breeds success," Levitz said. "Image-building brings business."

To contact reporter Michael Milligan, send e-mail to [email protected].