Mount Bachelor Village Resort Sales and Marketing Manager Michelle Marquis uses her software to track the rate at which sales staff close deals.
Across town, developer Aaron Lafky can monitor progress on his urban townhome project with the click of a mouse, panning left and right and zooming on real-time images of the construction site that appear on his computer screen.
Meanwhile, Bend tourism officials tap their computer programs to track who is responding to advertising campaigns promoting Central Oregon vacations.
They are just some of the examples of how the Internet, high-speed connections and digital phone lines are helping local businesses, particularly those in the tourism and sales industry, tailor their marketing campaigns. As a result, they are stretching dollars and saving time.
It's a change that largely has occurred in the past five years for many businesses as their employees become more tech savvy and the number of tools available in the marketplace grows.
At Mt. Bachelor ski area, for example, a new ticketing system installed before this season allows the business to track if a ticket was purchased at one of the preseason ski shows or at Costco in Eugene.
"This system will help us link who is buying what kind of ticket and where," said Mt. Bachelor's Carly Carmichael, director of sales and marketing.
It's vital information for the ski area, which this year will spend more than $200,000 marketing the resort to skiers and snowboarders in the Northwest through a combination of direct mail, print, radio, Internet and television advertising.
The growth of technology in the tourism trade is not an issue unique to Central Oregon. The International Society of Hospitality Consultants recently identified the adoption and utilization of new technologies as one of the top priorities for the industry in 2006.
Bend officials say they are trying to embrace the change.
"The Internet has re-created the way we can market to people directly," said Alana Audette, president and CEO of the Central Oregon Visitors Association, which spends about 80 percent of its $1.7 million budget on advertising and marketing.
COVA uses most of its traditional print advertising to drive traffic to its Web site. From there, COVA dangles chances to win Bend vacation packages to entice Internet visitors to fill out surveys and add their name to COVA's mailing list.
Now, when COVA wants to promote a special event, it draws from a list of thousands of names in its database that have been culled largely from Web visitors.
Last week, Audette sent a mass e-mail advertising post-holiday deals and promoting the idea that some of the best winter recreation opportunities in Central Oregon lie ahead in coming weeks and months.
Audette estimates that the e-mail was sent to about 2,500 households in Portland, Seattle and other key markets.
The organization used to rely on direct-mail pieces to do the same job. Now, these types of specials are promoted almost exclusively via e-mail. As a result, COVA, which is funded by public room-tax dollars, has cut its mail campaign costs by as much as 85 percent, Audette said.
It's not just the Internet that has changed the way companies are promoting and selling Bend.
Marquis said the biggest innovation at Mount Bachelor Village Resort, a conference facility that also features rental condominiums, is a new phone system that allows her to track incoming sales calls.
Among other things, the system assigns the resort's advertising promotions to toll-free numbers, allowing Marquis to track which campaigns generated the most interest. From there, Marquis can decide what seems to be working and where future advertising dollars will be spent.
The system also tracks how many calls her sales associates answer and how many of those calls result in a sale.
Marquis said she starts each morning by running a report on the previous day's calls. She also listens to recordings of the calls in which sales staff did not close a deal.
In some cases, she will ask a more experienced salesperson to call the potential buyer back with more information.
"I'll say, 'Listen to the this call and then go call them,'" Marquis said. "And they will book them. Normally, you just lose that business."
The same goes for prospective customers who are turned away during busy times such as the recent Christmas and New Year's holidays, when the resort was fully booked.
Marquis said the resort turned away about 170 potential guests because the property was full. But the names and addresses, which are logged automatically every time the phone rings at Mount Bachelor Village's reservation line, are added to the resort's database. Every few months Marquis compiles a list of those names and addresses and sends them a promotional offer.
"It rocks," Marquis said of the system that costs her business $500 per month to use. *
At the Bend Visitor and Convention Bureau, Executive Director Mike Glover said he relies increasingly on computers and the Internet to stay in touch with potential customers.
To help promote holiday vacations in Bend, the bureau developed an e-mail promotion titled, "The 12 Days of Bend."
The campaign included a Bend trivia question and other promotions intended to drum up interest in the area's winter tourism offerings. The e-mail directed users to the bureau's Web site and also included a forward option with a space for comments.
If visitors liked the site and chose to forward it to others in an e-mail, Glover received copies of the e-mails and senders' accompanying comments. The technology allowed Glover to monitor how people were responding to the campaign.
"We know whether people opened it, how long they spent on it and if they went from there to the Web site," he said.
It's not just tourism businesses using the Web and other high-tech systems to track marketing and customers.
Developer Lafky punches in a user name and pulls up a Web page that tracks how many people have visited his project's Web site over the past 12 months. The chart reads like a heart monitor with peaks and valleys at seemingly regular intervals.
He also can read snapshot profiles of prospective buyers who have filled out a form to join the mailing list.
Like those in the tourism business, Lafky said he uses traditional print advertising to drive traffic to his Web site.
From there, he can tell which types of townhome units are drawing the most interest, information that can be used to drive design decisions on the second phase of his project.
Lafky said he had to be convinced by his partners, who have a background in computers and Internet marketing, that the Web site would be useful.
"I was not a believer in this in any way, but I was proven wrong," Lafky said.
Eric Flowers can be reached at 541-383-0323 or eflowers@bendbulletin.com.
*Emphasis ours- Navis