Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutM051011 TCC Minutes, 5-10-11, Draft Elk Meadows B&B, Brinnon, WA Members attending were: Bill Roney, Miriam Villiard, Diane Schostak via phone, Joy Baisch, Allison Willing, Chuck Russell, Debbie Wardrop, Amanda Lovelady via phone until 11:00, Bud Schindler, Mari Philips, Chris McKinney via phone until 11:00 Friends attending were: John Austin, Joe Baisch, Christina Pivarnik, Theresa Verraes, Staff: Kitti deLong Minutes, 4-12-11 Mari Philips was not listed as attending although she was on the conference call at the meeting. Mari made a motion to accept the minutes with the change to include her name as attending via conference call. Bill seconded. Motion passed unanimously. Financial Report, 5-10-2011 There were three invoices this month: 1. OPVB, Portion of Spring Campaign $5,597.07 Includes: King 5.com – email ($1,896.88) KingFM-KomoAM-TalkAM ($3,600) J. Gussman –Web Giveaway Changes($47.50) Newtek ($4.47) Ph Conferencing ($48.22) 2. OPTC, Joint Marketing Contract 6,648.45 Includes: Printing of Travel Planner WA Tourism Alliance Ads in Oregonian & Sunset Postage Various Ad Design thru Inside Out Miscellaneous 3. Coordinator’s Services 963.57 Total: $13,298.09 Bill made a motion to take $500 out of the Waterfall Trails category and $500 out of the Opportunities category and put both into a new category for the Bike Map of $1,000 and then to accept the Financial Statement with that change. Allison seconded. Motion passed unanimously. Additions Members and Alternates: Amanda reported that she and Chris could attend via conference call for only one hour. They both have a required meeting at 11:00 am with the Head Office. Amanda will think about whether there is someone else who could be an alternate. Discussion about how to be able to include Amanda and Chris in this meeting. Mari moved to change TCC meeting times from 10:00 am to 9:00 am at each meeting. Bill seconded. Motion passed unanimously. Mari announced that Larry McKeehan will be Mari’s alternate for the summer because Mari will be gone, and is considering whether she will be able to attend after the summer. Raina Randall will be Leslie’s alternate at the Commissioner’s Office. Chris McKinney will be Amanda’s alternate. Miriam is leaving, and Debbie Waldrop will be her temporary replacement until Miriam’s replacement at the Resort at Port Ludlow has been hired. Miriam made a motion to accept all above changes and alternates. Bill seconded. Motion passed unanimously. PT LTAC – Christina Pivarnik Saturday, May 14 will be the dedication of the new Community Plaza, newly th renovated Pope Marine Park and “Salish Sea Circle” public art. Mayor Sandoval will start the dedication at 1 pm, followed by the artist, Gerry Tsutakawa, and Jeromy Sullivan, chairman from the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe will speak as well. There will be a number of crafts offered for children at the Pope Marine Building following the celebration. “Share Your Washington:” The campaign is well underway! We have one sign that Jefferson County can share. Clallam County has their own. Please use the sign-up sheet to reserve time. Private businesses can use this sign as well, encouraging people to invite a friend or family member to Washington. Everyone is encouraged to post photos and videos on the ShareYourWA Facebook page too. Christina, Debbie Wardrop, Mary Brelsford from the OPVB office and Barbara Hanna from Sequim attended the Travel Writers Conference last week and felt it was invaluable networking with travel writers. Christina attended the Annual General Membership meeting for Tourism Victoria and informally invited the executive director and new marketing director to come for a visit. This might be a nice partnering opportunity. EnjoyPT.com is in the midst of a revamp as part of the Wayfinding Project. Included in that will be six :60-:90 second “documercials” that will give short “sound bites” about various aspects of Port Townsend, such as History, Maritime, Arts & Entertainment, etc. Champion Video Production is working on that with Christina. John asked if there would be much advertising about the Salish Ferry coming on line to make sure that people know that we will have a continuous and usable highway. Christina answered that yes, City of Port Townsend and Whidbey are doing an advertisement on the ferry itself. For Port Townsend, the tag line is, “Follow me to PT. Turn right at the light.” The company is also selling advertising for businesses to participate and is coming to speak at the Chamber meeting on the 23. There will rd be a big PR push as well. The inaugural sailing will be more low-key this year. We don’t anticipate the governor coming, but will include the tribes as a core element. The Chetzemoka will continue to operate providing ferry service during the festivities. We have Senator Mary Margaret Haugen, from Whidbey Island, to thank for the second ferry! Port Townsend Visitor Center – Theresa Verraes We are actively working to get word out about “Share Your Washington” during the short campaign until June 15, when the drawing happens. The website will probably be shut down after that for a while. Christina stated that we have an article going in the Leader next week about this. Commissioner’s Update – John Austin Sales Tax and Hotel-Motel Tax charts are on the County website. The Leadership of Old Dominions University is thinking about coming into the community, which would bring more students. There is a new tourist attraction in Port Townsend, the 180 foot radio tower for KPTZ, which will improve our radio communications for our 911 emergency services and will extend range across the bay. Festival by the Bay: The Navy will send a band, though we don’t know what size that will be. The BOCC has been having outreach meetings in the county, with one at Brinnon last week. There will be another meeting at the Hoh Tribal Center on Tuesday, June 7 at 7:00 pm, which will be the last one this year. This Thursday at 6:00 pm at the Quilcene High School, the DNR is having a public hearing on the natural reserve area around Dabob Bay to get public input on the public transfers of property around the Bay to a natural preserve area. Would like to have as much property preserved in Fire District #3 so they won’t loose any revenue. Mari stated that Quilcene Fire Department is expecting to loose around $180,000 if this goes through. Discussion about both sides of this issue. Joy asked if BOCC was getting closer to setting a Jeff Co LTAC meeting. The answer was no, not yet. Lodging Excise Tax Payors: Discussion about the discrepancy between expected income and actual income, and the difficulty in getting payors to list the proper place number on their tax forms. John will talk to Judy and Donna to see if they can follow up on this. Discussion. It was suggested that we send a letter to lodgings stating that this is what we do in this tourism industry and this is how you can make sure your tax dollars are doing what you want them to do. Diane suggested we start a side committee to work on this issue, and that the letter may turn into an annual letter. John suggested that he go with us to talk to the Auditor, or whoever is the proper person to work on this. The committee will consist of Joy, Diane, Kitti, John, and maybe Jim Jones from Clallam County. OPTC – Diane The FAM Tour plans are coming along. Kenmore Air has given us transportation both ways. Will go into Port Angeles, then out of Port Townsend so the tour does not have to backtrack. There is room for eight people in the plane, however, Willie has room for 12 people in his van, so will open the ground portion up to Victoria Concierges, as well. Spring Campaign – Debbie Black This is the last report for the Spring Campaign ending with a couple of components to it. Belo: Have had good results in March and April. Both exceeded the average rate for opens (6-8%). Ours was 11.33% and click-throughs (ave= 0. 85%), ours was 1.13%. See the attached report. April opens=8.63%, click throughs= 0.88%. Debbie asked if there was a reason for the lower numbers in April than we had in March (though they were still higher than average). She was told these were sent later in the day and typically there is a better open rate earlier in the day. Also, these were all unique customers who had not clicked through before. The radio schedule is now complete. The last was KINK-FM in Portland. The Trivia contest was promoted on the station and via E-Blast. Had to activate search for answers on OPTC website. E-Blast received their highest click-through rate for the year. The contest received more clicks. Two giveaways that we ran on OPTC website: First prize was an overnight stay at Five SeaSuns B&B, and $50 gift certificate to Michaels. Second prize was from the Red Lion in Port Angeles with one-half day guided kayak tour. Olympic Culinary Adventure on Seattle Dining: Weather was not in our favor. Had 32 people register for the packet. The only one to have taken the tour at the time of this meeting was Connie Mack from Seattle Dining and her family. She gave us a letter of feedback and stated that some of the venues were more on top of things than others. We are scheduled to run the second half of this promotion in the Fall Campaign. Discussion about how to make this better. There was an uneven amount of commitment from the venues concerned. It would be a good idea to have a conference call about the promotion at the beginning of the tour. Also, there was going to be a wrap up at the end at the Resort at Port Ludlow. Because we have had a very small amount of participation, the luncheon will be cancelled for now. There have been a number of prices including the grand prize from the Resort at Port Ludlow. We are going to hold on to these for the fall promotion. Debbie would like to continue with Seattle Dining in the fall but freshen it up a bit by adding a few more venues and then have entrants pick 12 of the 15 available venues. The problem appears to be that people had to register on the Seattle Dining website in order to receive the map and packet, and so SD could track the response. There was a $4.95 registration fee to cover the cost of mailing. Seattle Dining has a similar promotion to this and always run it this way so people feel they are part of an exclusive group and so Seattle Dining can track the results. The down side is that we are promoting the adventure and unless you register, you are not getting the information about where the venues are. Is there a way we can do this so people can get the information for free? If they want to get the prizes, they would have to register for that. Connie is going to talk to Tom, who is the coordinator of the electronic part of this. This is a brand new promotion and it may take some time to build this up. Diane likes the idea of opening it up to other people rather than keeping it only for the Seattle Dining customers. And would like wider distribution of the maps. It was determined that the marketing committee would discuss this. Debbie Waldrop suggested that we include a boating culinary element in this promotion. Discussion about the possibilities of that suggestion. Theresa asked if we could do something with Expeditions Northwest. Discussion. We will have another Seattle Dining E-Blast in August and Connie will talk about this from her experiences to encourage people to experience this adventure. The promotion will run from September to November. Debbie Black asked Miriam and Debbie Waldrop if the gift certificates could be changed to be good through November, 2012, and the answer was yes. Debbie Black asked for ideas of things to add. Diane liked staying with the themes we have worked on so far. Washington Tourism Alliance Update – Diane They are grappling with all the issues and will be looking for us to give feedback in that department. Discussion about difficulties of being a State department and how this change will be better for the tourism industry. Next meeting, the subcommittee will report on LTAC reporting. Christina reported that the City of Port Townsend has noted some mistakes made in Olympia, as well. Discussion. Diane made a motion to adjourn at 11:41 am. Bill seconded. Motion passed unanimously. Next Meeting: June 14, 2011 via Phone Conference.