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HomeMy WebLinkAboutCity Council Committees - Lodging Tax Advisory Committee - 05/21/2015 Special Workshop Meeting Lodging Tax Advisory Committee May 21, 2015 Start Time 4:05 pm Centennial Center Conference Room North & South Committee Members Present: Chair Bill Boyce, Andrew Hutchison, Josh Bang, Tim Higgins, David Kwok, Others present: Ben Wolters, Julie Pulliam, Ryan Hart, Andrea Keikkala Chair Boyce called the meeting to order at 4:05 pm. Introductions were made. Chair Boyce asked for any additions to the agenda. Seeing none, he called for approval of the Minutes. 1. Approval of Minutes David Kwok made a motion which was seconded by Josh Bang to pass the minutes of April 27, 2015. Motion PASSED. 2. (a) Proposed ShoWare Marketing Ideas/Strategies — Ben Wolters Chair Boyce explained the purpose of the special meeting is to discuss the request from ShoWare asking for funds to help bring customers to ShoWare and there is a question around how it ties to heads in beds. The purpose to day is to brainstorm and determine how we go forward. Today we will be focusing on ShoWare. As we go on there may be other types of requests and the committee will want to have a way to tie future requests to heads in beds. Chair Boyce asked Tim Higgins to give an explanation on his original request from ShoWare. Higgins stated the request was a ShoWare advertising funding request. Getting connected with communities 25 miles or more with advertising on billboard, signage, and bus ads to bring more awareness to ShoWare, what's good for ShoWare is good for the region. So the question is how we connect out there. So many times people say "What is ShoWare Center?" So the question is how do you connect that with bringing in heads and beds? It really can be quantified. To us it is all about getting the word out that ShoWare Center is here, located in Kent. The initial proposal was to get the word out via advertising targeting Seattle and Tacoma using billboards, signage, and bus ads for $30,000. Higgin's clarified he did not bring that request back to the committee for this meeting. Tim Higgins presented another proposal he has been working on for funding on a Roller Derby event in July. The expected attendance is between 400-500 room nights. Higgin's still feels the $30,000 request is the start to helping bring more recognition to ShoWare Center in turn helping to bring more people to the Kent area. Chair Boyce asked Tim Higgins to present the request he has ready to present to the committee. Higgin's handed out the proposal to the committee, Jr. Roller Derby Tournament that is an annual event. The first to days will be the World Club with participants coming from out of the country, the other days will be the National event with people coming from all around the country. The cost they will pay is $10,000. Last year it was held in Stockton CA and the overnight stays were 400-500. ShoWare's cost is $25,000. This is going to be a good event for the community and the area. Teams will be coming from Australia, Argentina, 15 cities throughout the county. This will help make Kent a destination place. Stockton CA received funds from their Chamber to offset the event. Higgins is asking for $10,000 to help offset the costs of this event. Chair Boyce asked 'what would the $10,000 be for?" Higgins replied "for the building expenses to hold the event. Ryan Hart stated if the funds are approved he will call and make sure they are instructing people to book rooms in Kent. David Kwok questioned "How did Stockton control the team staying in Stockton?" He wants to know how we get them to stay here. They teams have been sent a list of all the Kent Hotels and we will follow up to remind them to stay with the hotels on the list. David Kwok wants to know what guarantee can we get that they are staying in Kent. Chair Boyce said we can only give them the information so they will want to stay there we can't make them stay in any particular place. Lodging Tax Advisory Committee Minutes of May 21, 2015 Page: 2 Andrew Hutchinson said can we vote next meeting. Chair Boyce ask if there is a reason to wait or what is it you need to make a decision. Wolters went to the website for the Jr. Roller Derby event and under hotels it is listing hotels in Kent Comfort, Ramada and the miles to venue. Perhaps we can ask them to include a broader list of hotels and links back to ShoWare of additional places to stay. They have no hotels on their website that are not in Kent. Ryan Hart will reach out to them to see if they will add additional hotels. Kwok asked if the deal is already done. Boyce and Higgins stated deal is already done, just asking the committee for additional support to cover building expenses to hold the event. Andrew Hutchinson asked if this would come out of the $60,000 set aside for ShoWare in the 2015-2016 budgets. Wolters stated yes that is where it will come out of. Andrew Motion: Andrew Hutchison moves to approve $10,000 to be used for the Jr. Roller Derby Tournament to help offset building expenses to host the event at ShoWare. Josh Bang seconded. Call for Discussion; Josh Bang added if we can continue to look for these events in the fall and winter months also that will be beneficial to the hotels. David Kwok is concerned that more of the hotels are not showing on the website. Higgins will contact and make sure they have more choices on their website. Motion passed. Chair Boyce had to leave and left the running of the rest of meeting to Andrea Keikkala. 2. (b) Love on Ice Request Tim Higgins has another request for discussion with committee, "Love on Ice". ShoWare has done this before and it has been a successful event, and it is televised on nationally on NBC. ShoWare is going to guarantee and take the risk, dates Sept 5t" & 6t". The acts will be Christin Chenewick, Fournier, and Matchbox 20. The agreement will be dependent on the act. The first year Valley Medical Center sponsors the event and a minute long vignette was produced for TV at the cost of $35,000, which was contributed from Valley Medical Center. It was on TV and was great advertising for Kent. The next year we did $35,000 out of the Lodging Tax funds to produce a City of Kent vignette promoting the City of Kent which was nationally broadcasted during the show. Tim Higgins stated he would like to move forward on the "Love on Ice" event. $35,000 will be a formal request at a later day, today is just a heads up on the event. This could come from the $60,000 already set aside in the Lodging Tax budget to fund ShoWare shows. Higgins will also be asking for an additional $15,000 for marketing costs. This show will bring 175 room nights, ShoWare has to guarantee the 175 room nights. Dates are Jan 22t" is the date of the event. With the rebranding of the City what a good opportunity to put together a new vignette to be shown 2 times on ABC live. Tim Higgins asked the Committee their thoughts. Wolters asked who will own the commercial after it is done. Higgins answered the City will own it. Do we have any say in who will produce the video, Wolters questioned. Disson will produce it so we would be able to have a discussion. Wolters raised the question because in the last one there were questions about the film quality, the speaker did a nice job, with the new branding effort it would be nice to have something that would really pop. Higgins said he can be more involved in asking the questions. Wolters stated for 60 seconds of National exposure for $35,000 that is a pretty good return on dollars. To be able to have this to reuse on the VisitKent.com website would be another return on investment. Andrea Keikkala asked if the commercial will only address the event, so if it is only publicizing the event that limits the shelf-life for its use. Would it be more able to be just a classic Kent commercial to be able to use for longer? Wolters stated the last one was more Kent related Lodging Tax Advisory Committee Minutes of May 21, 2015 Page: 3 not directly related to the event. Keikkala asked if we own the commercial and we have spent $35,000 can recoup the cost by selling showcasing to other companies in Kent, i.e. R.E.I. Ryan Hart said we can really track the traffic from the commercial be using a url VisitKent.com/Disson. Wolters said he thinks it is something that could be done, depending on the shelf-life. Ryan Hart asked if it would be possible to have a 15 or 30 second version also. If we do want to use it for future campaigns 60 seconds is too much for TV. David Kwok asked what can we do to take advantage of the exposure and have a way to recap or capture that maybe have a link that created to see how many people really are watching and actually go to the web link. Wolters said earlier we had not tool in place now with the VisitKent.com site which could be promoted and in real time track as the ad ran, do we see a spike on the website. Wolters asked what does it mean, Higgins replied that is the skaters and performers and production crew. That is something ShoWare is paying for, that is what was also done with the last show hosted at ShoWare. David Kwok said he got a lot of mileage from the last "Love on Ice". Andrew Hutchison questioned with an event like this what makes it successful for ShoWare? Higgins stated the number of tickets sold as well as having shows call to come back year after yea r. David Kwok asked what if it is a group that is not attractive to ShoWare. Higgins replied we will not take the show. There is a proforma on the show by tickets sold to know what is the break-even (number of tickets sold) to cover costs. Hutchison asked if there was a count of the last show how many room nights were secured. We would not have a way of knowing the guest book room totals. 2. (c) Addition to agenda Tracking of overnight stays Wolters said we should be asking the Hoteliers that question. We will be asking that question more the State is requiring us to track information. The only ones that really have the information are the hotels that get the bookings, but some of the hoteliers do not want to give the information because it might provide some competitive advantage to their competitors. We would like to try to work with all of you on this process. Hutchison stated someone at each hotel should be assigned to collect that data. We won't know officially until they arrive to the hotel front desk. Tim Higgins wanted to get a head nod from the committee to see if the committee is onboard and would like him to push forward to secure. Hutchison replied as he remembers when the committee authorized $60,000 to buy events we trust Higgins judgment and if he thinks the show is going to be a show that will be good for ShoWare go ahead and move forward. This will be a January 2016 show, Higgins stated. Hutchinson said he hopes this will generate more than the 175 guaranteed stays. Tim Higgins thanked the Committee for the vote of confidence and will continue to move forward with securing "Love on Ice" and will come back to the committee with a formal request for dollars. Lodging Tax Advisory Committee Minutes of May 21, 2015 Page: 4 Kwok wanted to know more about the state's request tracking of room stays. Pulliam said it is a very hard thing to quantify, many because the ones who have the numbers are the hoteliers. Pulliam stated this was the first year of the new reporting requirements and the Auditors may have additional requirements after the data is reviewed from each city. Before the new reporting system from JLARC we would report per the requirements from CTED. Pulliam stated the requestor for money from Lodging Tax have a form to fill out stating how many room number their event has created and how many come for how many miles away. Hutchison said that is only part of the picture you should have the hotels part of the picture with stays. Ryan Hart asked if there is a way that the hoteliers can filter in the days how many stay you get? Hutchison said if he receives an email he would reply. Kwok said it is not as easy as that. The reservations come from many different venues. Hart asked if we are only talking about certain days that are event days could you report back to us when they check in. Andrew Hutchison suggested the hoteliers do what they can. Could we send something out saying we just had an event did anyone get any overnight stays from it? Pulliam said we sure could do that. Higgins said what if we set up all the hotels in an email distribution and set out a request after every event? Higgins will send out to the hoteliers and Pulliam will need subtract the information for Lodging Tax. Higgins said we should be doing that. Wolters stated ShoWare is a tourism facility and fits the definition. Tourism, Hotel, Motel dollars can be used to support the operation of the tourism facility. That is what Everett and Snohomish County do. They take $100,000 each year to support the operations of their facilities. That practice has been in place for over 10 years now. Wolters feels the tracking of overnight stays in general will help inform the committee about the natural of the tourism generating business of ShoWare Center not just the specific events we are targeting. That information paired with the broader marketing information of Kent and ShoWare Center will make more sense as an activity to be funded by the Lodging Tax Committee. Jason Bang would be happy to do the best he can but it is hard with leisure guests. He feels we need to be secure in the decisions we are making to drive people to our community. David Kwok asked if ShoWare would be able to send out a flyer 4 weeks out and then 1 week out by email on events coming up we could make sure the front desk people have the information. Then after word send an email requesting the traffic each hotel received for the event. Higgins said he will be happy to do that. Lodging Tax Advisory Committee Minutes of May 21, 2015 Page: 5 Wolters added opportunities to help general repeat customers, and did not come to go to and event, but during their stay went to an event at ShoWare after the fact as part of their stay. Josh Bang replied it would be nice to have a calendar of events that they could suggest to their guests. Most of our stays are more than 7 nights. Standing Chair Keikkala asked if there is other business to cover at this meeting. 2. (d) Proposed ShoWare Marking Ideas Andrew Hutchison stated we have not yet covered addition ideas for Marketing of ShoWare. The idea was what are some marketing ideas and strategies would we support to use the Lodging Tax funds for. What do we want to do with the Lodging Tax monies? Wolters recalled the Committee's Chair request was come with an idea to help foster the conversation. Andrew Hutchison & David Kwok brought his idea and presented it to the committee; Hutchison has an idea of his own as well as reaching out to Mary Kae of Genesis Marketing to say they like the website and working with Genesis. So the question was proposed to Genesis. Is there something that is being done at another city that is similar to Kent that we should be doing here with the Lodging Tax dollars? It was approached and the concept was given; • VisitKent.com To spend some to have some people visit Kent experience what there is to do and visit Seattle and Tacoma while they are here, pay them to write about it, talk about it and put this up on the website. Real life experience, the idea is to market to people who are going to be visit Seattle from another place, you could have even a better experience if you stay in Kent, lodging is less expensive, we have a lot to offer, great restaurants, location. We like this idea of promoting Kent, this is primarily reaching out to leisure traveler and reach out during the months of July and August. We could consider this and vote on it at the next meeting. If the outreach was done in July & August when there are a lot of visitors coming in there is a good opportunity for follow through in the off-season when there are still people coming but are lured into Seattle because the prices are lower. The basic components are: 1. Get on our website these real life experiences from people, cost approx. $4,000. 2. Facebook 3. Radio advertising Wolters asked what was the target market for the radio advertising, Hutchison replies, Portland and Spokane, also some smaller ones Tri-Cities, Yakima, Mosula, and Moses Lake. The general idea is puff up the website with real life experience written and video, get out on Facebook and radio in July and August and come back in November, December, January, February. David Kwok stated we have been in a 5-6 year down turn in the hotel industry, we worry about the short season, and we still have the same expenses to pay. Summer time we don't have to worry we are busy. During the slowdown it does concern us. With that said we want to look at who is the feeder market for this area. It is generally Eastern Washington, Yakima to Spokane, Idaho, some-time Portland and BC. With them coming in the summer months maybe they will Lodging Tax Advisory Committee Minutes of May 21, 2015 Page: 6 comeback in the off system. Ultimately we want to generate traffic for our short seasons, October- February sometimes March. We also want to tie back into the branding site so hopefully it can benefit both. We would like to next time present to the committee. Andrew Hutchison stated the VisitKent.com website is key to this; it will be where Genesis will measure traffic. This seem tractable and it is realistic. Genesis has people lined up to do this and it will tie into the VisitKent.com website. Josh Bang said we can advertise the Sounder Train to all the games in Seattle and stay in Kent. David Kwok said Spokane has a Seahawks club and they always stay on the South end because of the cost. • Hockey Bus Trips Hutchison's second idea; Every WHL team has a small group of really passionate fans who travel to see their team. If we could as a City embrace that opportunity and make it easy for them to come and stay in Kent. 1. Charter bus to bring them to Kent. If the number was $2,000 Hutchison supports paying for the bus to bring the fans to Seattle as long as they stay in Kent to see their team play. Higgins help is needed to talk to the Thunderbirds and find out the fan clubs. Higgins stated that is a great idea and it could also help the T-birds sell more tickets. We will definitely talk to the T-birds. Hutchison would not want to give all the money to Genesis because he would like to use some of the monies for this idea to help the T-birds by bring in the hockey fans and fill the seats at ShoWare. Wolters likes the idea. Hutchison said he would target the ones that are out in the boondocks. Because to them Seattle looks really cool in the winter time. Josh Bang also said he sees the advantage of also targeting the team fans that are a little closer. Portland, Tri-Cities, Spokane, create a fan trip with the hotels also offering something. Hutchison said as one hotel it is hard for him to have his sales person do all the calling, especially starting at ground zero, where someone from the T-Birds could help with that. Higgins said he will get that going and check with the T-Birds. Wolters stated this is a great idea, and the T-birds should be thinking the same. Hutchison said at this point we need to know what the bus costs. If it is $20,000 we could not support that but at $2,000 that amount could be supported. Lodging Tax Advisory Committee Minutes of May 21, 2015 Page: 7 Hutchison asked can we work on this in the next 30 days so maybe we could consider this idea as well as working with Genesis to get the real life experiences on the website, Facebook, and some radio going. Higgins said he will get on it and likes the idea. Andrea Keikkala said to ask about Pandora Radio, because the younger generation doesn't listen to the regular radio stations. Chair asked for other ideas? Higgins said he heard and believes the success of ShoWare is the success of the Region. Hitchison doesn't feel busses and billboards are not the way he would rather see the Lodging Tax dollars pay for more shows. Wolters commented that ShoWare still has the need to market within a 30 mile area as well. If the decision that Lodging Tax is not the place for that but I have seen here some way to market ShoWare to continue to increase overall market awareness. • College Basketball Tournaments Hutchison said maybe we could also help with the College Basketball tournaments. Higgins said they are down in attendance at all the games. • Package Deals Higgins stated we have done package deals in the past. If we own the event we can dot that Good of the order — Nothing Assignments for next meeting (1) Ben Wolters will get back to Mary Kae of Genesis to put together a formal proposal from her conversation with the Hoteliers. (2) Contact T-birds on contacting Fan base (3) Cost of Bus Rental (4) Invite T-Birds to meeting Adiournment — Chair called for the motion to adjourn; David Kwok moved, Josh Bang seconded. Motion Passed. The meeting was adjourned by Andrea Keikkala at 5:45 pm. Submitted by Julie Pulliam, Lodging Tax Secretary