State official now pushes visitors to Oklahoma the way he once pushed voters

“In the Republican Party, we would target individuals who had subscriptions to hunting and outdoor magazines,” Pinnell said, citing one example. “Things ... that were kind of our demographic.

“In the tourism world,” he continued, “what I’m trying to go after is people who love to fish (who live) in St. Louis, Missouri, or in Kansas City. They need to know about the Oklahoma Fishing Trail. People who vacation in Colorado need to know about Beaver’s Bend State Park and Broken Bow ... and we’re able to go find those individuals and tell them there’s a similar vacation experience in Oklahoma that’s half the cost and just as much fun.”

Before running for lieutenant governor in 2018, Pinnell was a high-ranking official in the Republican National Committee with responsibility for organizing and coordinating state parties. He was thoroughly versed in the latest techniques and technologies for identifying potential voters and the most persuasive arguments for winning them over.

Now Pinnell and his colleagues at the Oklahoma Department of Tourism are applying much the same tactics and strategies to bringing new visitors to the state, and to convincing Oklahomans there’s no place like home.

COVID-19 has played havoc with travel and tourism, but it’s also presented some opportunities. Visitors to Oklahoma’s state parks soared by two-thirds this summer — from 3 million in 2019 to 5 million this year. Tourism officials say they’re making promising inroads and hope the state will be jammed with tourists once the pandemic passes.

Jennifer Mullins, the tourism department’s director of promotions, told a House of Representatives committee last week that travelok.com is typically among the three most-visited state tourism websites nationally.

Latter, Mullins and Pinnell attributed that to the department’s search engine optimization strategy (known as SEO) as well as the size of the site (almost 30,000 pages), the attention given to keeping it current, and a social media campaign that drives traffic back to the site.

After years of cutting the tourism department’s budget and regarding state parks as liabilities instead of assets, Oklahoma’s political leaders are coming back around to the idea that money is to be made from tourism.

Like $800 million a year in state and local sales taxes, Pinnell told legislators.

“There’s no reason Oklahoma shouldn’t be a $1 billion state,” he said.

This spring Pinnell and director Jerry Winchester were able to talk the Legislature into a $48 million bond issue for updating state lodges and building new restrooms. What amounts to an admission fee for some parks is not popular, but Pinnell promises every dime will go for the upkeep of the park where it was collected.

And the parks have been given a workout. Pinnell acknowledged a lot of that had to do with COVID-19 and the limits it placed on travel and indoor activities, but he also said the state took advantage of the situation.

One important element of that, Pinnell and Mullins said, was quickly shifting gears last spring to put up an “OK Here We Go” campaign.

The department also launched a mobile trip planner app that has 265,000 users and posts weekly “road trip” episodes to a YouTube channel approaching 14,000 subscribers.

With all of this, the objective is be as targeted as possible, and to get more even more targeted every time the department gleans one more piece of information about a prospective visitor, either from out of state or an Oklahoman who just wants to find a new fishing hole.

But Pinnell is quick to say it is not all about marketing. Just like a political candidate, a tourism destination has to deliver.

“If we’re going to have that many people visiting Oklahoma, or that many Oklahomans traveling around (are) being more intrigued by their own state because of the OK Here We Go campaign, then we better be ready for it,” he said, referring to the big jump in state park usage.

He acknowledges COVID sent a lot of people outdoors over the summer, but said the opportunity must be seized regardless of how it occurred.

“You’ve got to take advantage of it,” he said. “There were states that were not ready. Oklahoma was not one of those.”

Featured video

Nature-inspired activities for all ages: A guide from Tulsa World's Outdoors writer