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HomeMy WebLinkAboutM080911 TCC Minutes, 8-9-11, Approved Madrona Room, WSU Extension Center 9:00 am Members attending were: Bud Schindler, Allison Willing, Bill Roney, Diane Schostak, Joy Baisch, Chuck Russell, Carol Christiansen for Larry McKeehan, Amanda Lovelady via conference phone. Friends attending were: John Austin, Christina Pivarnik, Theresa Verraes, Kim Aldrich, Charlie Brown, Deborah Black via conference phone. Staff: Kitti deLong Minutes, 6-14-11 Diane moved to accept the minutes as presented. Bill seconded. Motion passed unanimously. Financial Report, 8-9-2011 There were two Invoices this month: 1. OPTC, Joint Marketing Contract $1,810.70 (Included: Admin Services; Travel Planner Admin; Trapeze-Victoria Co-op; Travel Planner Envelopes; Travel Planner Postage.) 2. Coordinator’s Services 856.73 (Included: WSU Mtg Rm Rental for 4 months) Total: $2,667.43 Additions There were no additions. PT LTAC – Christina Pivarnik Business has been booming in Port Townsend. Christina attributed that to the addition of the second ferry. Ridership is up 35%. PT is in process of planning another Salish Sea FAM Tour in conjunction with the San Juan Island Visitor Bureau and the Whidbey/Camano Island Tourism Commission, similar to last year. She hosted a travel writer from Sacramento, who visited Kitsap County, Sequim, Port Angeles, Friday Harbor, as well as Port Townsend. She really put a lot into this trip. Christina is in the process of doing an e-newsletter to travel writers and editors. The Port Townsend Farmers Market was named the “Best Farmers Market of the Year for Large Markets” and will be celebrated Saturday at 10:00 am. The PT brochure has just been reprinted and Christina has placed it on the Seattle/Bainbridge route, as well as the Edmonds/Kingston route. There is a 15 foot mural on the PT end of the Chetzemoka ferry and it will be going on the Salish by the end of August. Teresa: The PT VIC is tallying numbers though they are down a little this year. There has, however, been an increase in BC visitors. They rank second as a category of travelers. The links to Port Ludlow and Tri Area on the Jefferson County Chamber website are going live. Teresa will send the links to everyone. She is going to do a full campaign around “The County Reach.” Webervations: Christina, Steve Shively and Laura have been working on this for two years and are seeing huge results. Jefferson County Chamber will be extending it into the County and adding it to the Chamber’s website. Commissioner’s Update – John Austin John related an experience with a young Italian couple that were visiting Port Townsend and were on the Courthouse steps. John showed them around a bit, and before leaving, the young man said that the people here were so very friendly that he would always remember this place in “his head and his heart.” An LTAC meeting will be set up for the morning of Sept, 1, 8, or the afternoon of Sept. 23. Talk to Julie. Navy is going to be expanding their operations at Bangor and their maintenance fund for degradation of the environment of $40 million is going to be poured into maintenance of Hood Canal. That will be administered by the Hood Canal Coordinating Council, which includes Kitsap, Jefferson, and Mason Counties, and Skokomish and Port Gamble S’Klallam tribes. Josh Brown, Commissioner for Kitsap County, is Chair. Last year, Phil Johnson was chair. That positions changes each year. Clearing continues for the cabins on the upper Hoh. Friday, will meet with Sue Trettevik, Regional Manager of DNR, to discuss having some property in East Jefferson County go into a Community Forest Trust. This type of trust would change the focus of the trust to be a working trust that would not have to be managed in such an intensive manner. John says this is a way of preserving a working forest in Jefferson County. 9:30 Amanda and Debbie joined the meeting via conference phone. Fall Campaign Presentation - Debbie Black The Fall Campaign will be 12 weeks long with the bulk of the promotions happening in September and October, with some promotions extending into November. We have the opportunity to get a couple of extras through Fisher: email blasts to 19,600 listeners and weekend ad in STARS Newsletter to 14,300 people or wait- listed on KVI newsletter. KOMO Weather followers: There is a possible two week opportunity Sept 26-Oct 9. In addition, we can extend the Fisher portion involving give-away’s. The Budget for Fisher is $13,000. Second possibility: Public Radio – we have steered away from this in the past. The audience is great, likes food and wine, and does have expendable income. But there have been restrictions for promotions: limited to 20 seconds, straight message only, cannot use descriptive words. Debbie felt that would be difficult to deliver our message but wants to try one week on KPLU and one week on Classic KING. Our messages would also be included in live streaming. The budget for Public Radio is $2,510. Portland Market: KWJJ 99.5, The Wolf. This is a different station than we have used in the past, which reaches from Chehalis to Lebanon, The Dalles to the Coast. Includes 32 spots per week of 60 seconds; 100 streamed 60-second spots. Each time our ad ran, a visual would pop up with a link to the website. Also will include a permission-based e-blast. Will be created for us by The Wolf in-house. The fourth Component includes some Social Media via Face Book ads. We are allowed to create our own ad, and then are able to target our ad specifically via age, gender, etc. After you choose demographics, Face Book will tell you how many people that ad will reach. Are allowed to set a daily or life-time budget for your campaign. You tell Face Book what your maximum is and they will not go beyond that amount. You must have an account to create an ad and OPVB has one that we may be able to use. There is $500 budgeted for this. Christina asked why KING vs KUOW when considering Public Radio. Debbie responded that KING and KPLU are offered together. KING is much more expensive than KPLU and KUOW. Debbie has put this together as a package for the best value. KPLU has a broad reach and she has combined this to get us the broadest reach. Promotions: There are a lot of options for give-aways. Debbie asked us to determine what we really are able to do. Culinary Adventure: We will continue this in the Fall Campaign. There is no additional cost as we continue with this except for a small design change cost. All venues that participated in the Spring promotion have confirmed that they want to continue in the Fall. We will add three new venues; two in Grays Harbor and one in Jefferson County. We are extending into Grays Harbor because the Culinary group is partnering with us on that. The Geoduck Tavern in Brinnon is going to join this promotion. This campaign will begin on Sept. 1, and Debbie needs to get all the pieces together now. The two additional venues in Grays Harbor are West Port Winery and Hoquiam Farmers Market, which is open six days per week. These three venues will be added to the map that Laurel Black designed. Last time, those who were interested in participating went to Seattle Dining website to join, which cost approx. $4 for mailing, then participant received map, travel planner, promotional dental floss from Culinary Assoc. This time, we want to do away with the cost. This time, there are two options. 1. There are those who are interested in traveling the route but not interested in taking part in the Trivia Contest. Some information about the Trivia Contest will be available. We want to make the information widely and readily available. 2. Those who are interested in the Trivia Contest will be directed to Seattle Dining website. We will send information to them electronically and Seattle Dining will send them an electronic version of the player cards. Each participant is required to visit 12 of the 15 destinations during the three-month period of the contest. Each contestant must take a picture of themselves with the player card in front of the destination and must answer 12 of the 15 questions on the trivia list. Participants may earn additional points by attending events around the area. They will then send answers to Seattle Dining and at the end of November, Seattle Dining will be tallying up the points and will draw a Grand Prize Winner. The Grand Prize for the Spring portion of this promotion was a two-night stay at Resort at Port Ludlow, dinner for two, and a cooking class with Chef Dan. We have a dinner at the Fireside Restaurant that we did not use and we will extend the invitation to supply another two-night stay. For the second prize, we have a dinner at the Fireside Grill in Port Angeles, and will be looking for another two-night stay. Third Prize is dinner for two at the Alderwood Bistro, and at Linda’s. The Culinary Assoc. has shown interest in participating. The Association may contribute the production of a promotional piece that the venues at the sites can use. Debbie would like to have training at each of the destination venues to tell them about the promotion, how it is working, and what support is available to keep the promotion going and improve staff awareness. Last time, some sites were really on top of things and other sites didn’t seem to know anything about the promotion. Diane suggested that maybe we could encourage the venues to do some cross promotion. Maybe we can create a little window poster on the sites. Christina requested that if this is made, could it be placed on the Culinary website, as well? Laurel Black’s work will cost $300 for design additions, changes, etc. Next opportunity will be through Fisher Radio on STAR 101.5. This would be a week-long promotion and we would need a minimum of five packages with $150 per package value with two over-night stays. Would be listed on STAR’s website. KOMO’s “Deal of the Day:” This is something similar to Group-On, with packages you can purchase for half of retail value. In order to do it, we would need to provide a minimum of about 100 packages if the minimum package value was $50. We would need more if the packages were each less in value. This is a trade promotion. There is a third party vendor that handles fulfillment and takes 3% and then KOMO takes the rest. This involves a TV announcement on the 4:00 news, and “Deal of the Day” will drive people to the website. This program has 18,000 followers. “Deal of the Day” would also be highlighted in the weather newsletter. There are a minimum number of deals required. We are able to do up to four Deals of the Day. This could be run throughout the entire week, or could do four Mondays. Debbie asked if we were able to do this? Besides the minimum number of packages, there is also a caveat that there can no longer be any expiration dates on give-away’s because the law has changed and does not allow that. We can have black-out dates on give- aways, but no expirations dates. This applies to all of our promotions, since this is a state law. There was a question, “What if it is for a specific event which would, by its nature, require an expiration date?” Debbie will check on that. Opportunities on “The Wolf” in Portland: There is an opportunity for a two-week long text-to-win promotion. Fulfillment would be handled by The Wolf staff who would conduct a drawing at the end for the winner. Participants will receive a reply message that their text has been received and they are entered in the contest. Washington vs. Oregon Trivia Contest: Mike and Amy will select some witty questions and respondents will be entered in a pool for the grand prize of $500. Wolfe winning weekend package: Listeners are invited to call in when they hear a wolf howl on the radio. The first caller receives a prize worth a minimum of $150 with 12 packages. We are looking for overnight packages with dinner or activities. Then all 12 winners are entered in the drawing for the grand prize valued at $500. This promotion includes 30 produced promotional spots and 30 live promotional spots and will also be included in the Wolf’s newsletter. In the last give-away opportunity, Debbie asked if we want to do our own give-away, then we can do one a month, or two a month, or whatever we want to do. Summary of give-away opportunities: 1. A Grand Prize for the Culinary Adventure with Seattle Dining. Debbie is hoping that Grand Prize will again be from Resort at Port Ludlow, so that we can incorporate the dinner certificate that we did not use in the spring. I plan to talk directly to Debbie Wardrop about this. In addition, however, I am looking for an overnight stay at a Port Angeles lodging venue for the Culinary Adventure. 2. 100 packages, or fewer if each is more value than $50, for Deal of the Day. Debbie is awaiting confirmation from her radio rep as to the number of vendors that can participate in this opportunity. 3. Two grand prize packages of overnight stays, with dinner, for The Wolf. Value should be around $500 per package, so perhaps a 2-night stay with dinner and/or an activity. In addition to one of the grand prize packages, we would need 12 additional packages valued at about $150.00 each (i.e. an overnight stay with dinner). The 12 packages must be identical (one vendor). 4. Two or Three overnight packages we can give away on OPVB website. 5. A minimum of five packages with $150 per package value with two over-night stays for STAR’s website. Need total of 10 overnight stays with dinner-for-two packages. These are for two separate on-air contests on STAR (5 packages each). OPTC – Diane Diane distributed a handout, “O.U.R.” Report, which is a new that was done for the Tourism Commission. That report shows Google Analytics for the website for this period. Victoria promotion: Coho was a huge partner with $4500 contribution in addition to their ad presence and were very good doing give-away’s. The “Sporting Goods Saturday” was held in Victoria to help introduce Victoria residents to the Olympic Peninsula, with Joe Baisch, Vanessa from Sequim, and one other helping. Quite a few people more than normal came in that day to find out about the Olympic Peninsula. We will do this again next year, maybe in April or May this time. We have to be careful to coincide with the ferry schedule. There has been a bigger portion of our visitors coming from Canada. Bill said that he had seen a bump in Canadian visitors. Diane also gave a presentation to the Victoria Rotary. Diane presented some promotional opportunities at the OPTC meeting last Thursday, and the group approved them. On the second weekend of November, 76 tour operators that sell common tours, which is quite an elite group, will have their annual meeting in Spokane. There is an opportunity for all of Washington area tourism entities to have a booth there. OPTC put $1500 toward that. Diane wants a bureau person to go along to help. State Travel Planner: There are two great planners this year, one printed by Washington Lodging Assoc, and one by Destination Media Alliance. Discussion about which one to use. Agreement was reached to place 1/3 page ads in both, with the opportunity to bump up to a bigger ad if partners want to co-op and take advantage of this opportunity. Elwah Media Center: Dam removal will take place on September 16. Will have a place for press conferences for the dozens of people who will be there. WTA: Diane and Christina have been appointed to WTA Board. The Board has hired Suzanne Fletcher, the interim director for one year with an option for 18 months. She comes from the industry as a corporate travel planner. There will be a five-hour Board work session soon. China Trip: Diane will stay to manage the Elway Media Center, etc, during the dam removal. Someone from the Port of Seattle will do our part in China; show our video, host our table, make our presentation. Getaway Guide for Fall 2011: The lodging list for Jefferson County has been placed in the Getaway Guide and will be paid by TCC. Gateway VC will pay for the graphic ad that we ran in the Spring Guide. Christina stated that Port Townsend has put in their lodging list. She has asked for a proposal from Scott Wilson for 2012 so we can do our planning accordingly. He has agreed to get that to us by Sept. 1. Bike Map – Bill Bill presented a copy of the new Bicycle Map, which is beautiful. He will be distributing the map now. This is a great publication for us because it comes with a website. People who have seen the bike map on the web have come into Gateway VC to pick up the hard copy. There was discussion about the high value of this map. Amanda asked if we have distributed this map to the Cascade Bike Club. Diane felt that since David McCulloch attends that trade show, then the CBC would receive this map at that event. Update on VC Promotional Efforts – Bill Activities Map: We are offering the Activities Map in several forms, folded or flat. Have used about 6300 copies of the map since printing in June. Have only had the maps for about a month. This amount used is in addition to what we send out in bulk mailing each month. Bill is trying to get the map placed on the ferries and will take some funding from his bulk mail account that it looks like won’t be used this year to pay for that. Christina stated that the ferries want 5-7,000 copies. A good percentage of the people we are seeing this year are doing short-term trips. Gateway VC will become a WTA member as soon as he gets a response from County for third quarter funds. Bill is putting in an activity section at Gateway VC that will increase coverage of Jefferson County by about 25% and will be about trails. Information will be pointed out by area. New Business: Quilcene Museum – Carol In the last three months, the Museum Board has been working on a proposal to buy the Worthington property, built in 1871, adjacent to the museum. Have entered into an agreement to purchase the mansion with 10 acres. The challenge is that the Museum has to raise $287,500 to buy the property, and has a two year contract to accomplish that task. Mrs. Worthington has retained a life-time estate in the property. The museum will start fund raising immediately. Any donations would be immensely appreciated. Hospital Commission – Chuck Chuck has a dream to make Port Townsend a “medical tourist destination,” and part of the draw is that we have a hospital with the best view in the state. Will now have an affiliation with Swedish, which is one of the 50 best hospitals in the world. People may come to Port Townsend for hip replacements or face lifts, enjoy the view from their rooms, and also enjoy the food. The hospital has hired Chef Aaron Stark, who will use fresh ingredients and will incorporate farm produce in the menus for an additional draw. Chuck will not be able to attend the next meeting. Next meeting: September 13, 2011. Venue for the next meeting will be announced. Motion to adjourn was made by Diane at 11:30 am. Bill seconded. Passed unanimously.