Advertising Urgency Replaces Subtlety in Summer’s Struggle for Visitors NYTimes.com

AS the crucial summer travel season starts, how much are tourism marketers scrambling to meet the challenges from fast-rising gasoline prices and airfares? Well, “What happens here stays here” is not staying around, at least for now.

The latest commercials for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority were intended to be strong and direct.

That feel-good slogan, which promotes visits to Las Vegas — also known as “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” — is being shelved for harder-hitting pleas. The familiar commercials with cute, funny tales about travelers whose lives are changed by trips to Las Vegas have been supplanted by spots with a fast-talking pitchman who urges the world to “do Vegas right now.”

The shift, which includes a new Web site (vegasrightnow.com), began in ads seen in 12 large markets where many travelers to Las Vegas live, including Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles, and was recently made nationwide.

“ ‘What happens here stays here’ is being given a rest,” said Rob Dondero, executive vice president at R&R Partners in Las Vegas, the agency for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, because “it doesn’t have a strong call to action.”

“We need to be a little more retail,” he added. “People want to know what is the best value for their getaway dollar.”

The Memorial Day weekend, which begins on Friday, marks the traditional start of campaigns to peddle vacation destinations. Even experts in tourism marketing say they have not experienced a market like this one.

“We are clearly in uncharted waters,” said Peter Yesawich, chairman and chief executive at Ypartnership in Orlando, Fla., whose agency, formerly Yesawich, Pepperdine, Brown & Russell, has long specialized in travel advertising.

“There is a palpable nervousness on the part of everybody in the industry,” he added, “and for good reason.”

“We’ve seen some of these conditions individually,” Mr. Yesawich said, referring to problems like high fuel prices and reduced capacity on airlines, “but never all of them at once.”

The result has been “a spate of promotional offers for this summer,” he added. “We say, value is king right now.”

That is underscored in a campaign from his agency for the attractions of Panama City Beach, Fla. An upbeat slogan, “The beach lovers’ beach,” is being supplemented with a direct appeal to saving money: a “Summer white sale” offering discounts, gasoline credits and other deals in person and online (pcbwhitesale.com) at more than 50 local attractions, accommodations and restaurants.

“I still think people will travel,” said Dan Rowe, the executive director of the Panama Beach City Convention and Visitors Bureau, “but it is tough.”

The ads for the white sale — a pun on what Mr. Rowe describes as the “sugar-white beaches” — took a speedy 10 days “from conceptual approval to the day we were in the market,” he said. Since the campaign started on May 4, “the response has been good,” he added, although it is “still building.”

Destinations are not the only travel marketers seeking to woo worried consumers, not only through ads and Web sites but also with public relations campaigns and event marketing.

For instance, car rental companies like Hertz are offering bargains like 50 percent off weekend rates. The Extended Stay Hotels chain is proclaiming, “Take shelter from the economy,” in suites with kitchens from .99 a night.

Even American Express is bringing back a promotion, Going Once, that joins with merchants to sell travel packages at discounted prices.

“It’s like the perfect storm, highly unpredictable and pretty volatile,” said John Dunn, the executive vice president at Tourisme Montreal, which is working with an ad agency, Sid Lee in Montreal; an interactive agency, Cactus, also in Montreal; and Laura Davidson Public Relations in New York.

Their efforts include beefing up the “sweet deals” section of a Web site (tourisme-montreal.org) and emphasizing the proximity of Montreal by car, train or plane to American cities like Boston, Chicago and New York.

“People still want to go on holiday,” Mr. Dunn said, but “I’m sure there are some who will scale back.”

As a result, “we have to appeal to the emotion of the traveler,” he added.

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This summer, that appeal will be aimed at tugging on the heart strings — and also at loosening the purse strings.