HomeMy WebLinkAbout2024-06-24 - Minutes -Fayetteville Advertising and Promotion Commission
Minutes June 24, 2024
Fayetteville Town Center
Commissioners
Present:
Commissioners
Absent:
Staff:
Chrissy Sanderson, Chair, Tourism & Hospitality Representative
Elvis Moya, Tourism & Hospitality Representative
Mike Wiederkehr, City Council Representative
Andrew Prysby, Commissioner at-large
Sarah Bunch, City Council Representative
Katherine Kinney, Tourism & Hospitality Representative
Todd Martin, Tourism & Hospitality Representative
Molly Rawn, CEO Jennifer Walker, VP of Finance,
I. Chair Sanderson called the meeting to order at 2:00 pm and declared a quorum.
II. Old Business
A. Chair Sanderson presented the May minutes for approval with Commissioner
Wiederkehr making a motion and Commissioner Moya seconded to approve
the minutes as presented.
III. New Business
A. CEO Report
Rawn began by sharing that our HMR tax is rebounding, we are beginning to
close the gap in between our projected and actual HMR revenue. She shared
that the new online payment system the city made mandatory in April has
caused a delay in some payments being made as users are becoming familiar
with the system. She pointed out that last month we reported a significant
decrease in April collections, this month she was able to show how April
collections has improved greatly as users are making back payments.
Our 2023 financial audit is complete, and commissioners have received the
report. We will be hearing a report later in the meeting.
Hotel occupancy is flat, which is an improvement over last month’s report.
The Visitors Center saw a 46% increase in attendance in May compared to last
year.
Our May 2024 hotel occupancy compared to May 2023 shows an 8% increase
while our YTD hotel occupancy shows an almost flat or .2% growth.
In sales, Tina traveled to an international show, IPW with a cooperative
opportunity with Arkansas Tourism. The team took on over 90 appointments.
The Ragnar Relay has secured dates for 2025 race. It will be held Easter
weekend. Tina continues to represent us with motorcycle events, recently taking
Vanny to the Over and Out MOTO event in Mansfield, MO.
Julie, Eden and Molly surprised 15 hospitality professionals with “Hospitality
Hero” certificates in May during National Tourism week. Our very own Chair,
Chrissy Sanderson, was also included in these awards.
We had 467 events in May on our web calendar. Our website sessions were
down 4% from April 2023, but up 83% compared to May 2023. The Fayetteville
Strawberry Festival and NWA Pride events both made the top 10 most viewed
pages.
Our primary email list has climbed to 10,321 subscribers. Our YOY social media
engagement rates are up by 3 times with overall followers growing by 746
accounts. Our new downtown tear off map is now available and includes an
expanded footprint of downtown and expanded list of attractions and
restaurants/bars. We also have more collateral that will receive an update this
year, including a redesigned street map, bucket list and a new bikepacking
guide.
Since our last meeting, the town center has hosted 12 events. This schedule is
lighter than usual due to the ongoing roof replacement. We’ve used this time for
deep cleaning and other maintenance items. Our solar panel project planning
has begun.
An update on Downtown Fayetteville Coalition – we had a successful inaugural
strawberry festival with an estimated 10,000 in attendance. Lights of the Ozarks
will be two separate events this year – the lighting night will be held the Friday
before Thanksgiving as is tradition. The parade will be held the first Thursday of
December. We had a successful June First Thursday.
May’s First Thursday was cancelled due to a high chance of thunderstorms –
which ended up being mostly clear. Moving forward we will not make weather
calls until the day of the event.
Commissioner Moya asked if we would be communicating the Lights of the
Ozarks change to the media and Sarah King said that yes, we were already
updating sites and connecting with the tourism team at the state about this
change.
B. Financial Report
VP Walker stated that the May financials were in the agenda packets. The target
budget for both expenses and revenue for May is 42%. With total revenue YTD
at $2,358,001 we are 3% below budget. We are also at 39% for expenses.
Total expenses are $1,881,570 or 30%, we are 3% under budget.
YTD HMR tax collections are $1,960,338 which is 5% below the seasonally
adjusted target. We have seen increases in the number of businesses utilizing
the online payment system and we think this will only continue to improve, i.e. at
the time of reporting, approximately 18% of businesses had not yet reported
monthly HMR revenue, which is an improvement of the previous month at 30%.
The balance sheet for April shows $4.8 million dollars in cash and investments
and the unearned revenue for the town center is $318,000 for 2024 events.
Our net income is $14, 204 YTD, the first time this year that number has been a
net gain and not a loss.
C. 2023 Financial Audit Presentation
Cynthia Burns and Abby Smith with Forvis Mazars opened the presentation by
saying the audit report went very well and they were able to issue the audit
report by the end of May. As usual, because we are doing a regulatory basis of
accounting, we receive an adverse opinion on generally accepted accounting
principles, but we received an unmodified opinion on regulatory basis of
accounting, which is the best opinion we can receive on the financial statements.
The opinion is also an unmodified opinion concerning the testing and the work
we did, we noticed no significant deficiencies or material weaknesses in both the
A&P financials and operations. You ended the year with approximately a
500,000 increase in our fund balance, a very good year for the commission.
The other document in the report, aside from the financial statements is the
required communications to the governing board, including standard language
for audits. The only adjustment on the books, one made all the time, is the
adjustment of the commission’s investments to agree with the city of
Fayetteville’s records, which is an adjustment that comes every year.
The only other item we noted was a one-time instance where the accounting
software didn’t automatically back up.
Cynthia Burns shared that they appreciated all the hard work the staff did in
preparing for the audit, it went very smoothly.
Cynthia also addressed a question from Commissioner Wiederkehr concerning
regulatory accounting. With no other questions, she again thanked the staff and
the commission and urged anyone to reach out to her with any other questions.
D. Marketing Report
Sarah King began by reminding commissioners that Outright came on board in
January as our new agency of record. They were able to do a photo and video
shoot in March. She introduced Anne Davis, Director of Marketing with Outright
who gave an overview of the marketing campaign that they began in April along
with some preliminary reporting.
Davis talked about the campaign, built on the themes of outdoor recreation, food
and drink and nightlife/arts and culture. Target geo areas Chicago/ DFW,
Denver and also road trippers, i.e. within a 4-hour distance. This campaign will
run through December with the heavy investment being now through September,
knowing that it can be a 90-day lead time between when someone sees an ad
and they actually travel to that area.
Davis then reviewed some high-level statics from the first 6 weeks of the ads,
showing that there were just over 12 million impressions of the ads and almost
60,000 clicks from the ads with a higher than average click through rate and a
high video completion rate.
Commissioner Prysby had questions and comments about optimizing the cost to
reach our target audience and Davis said she could share some information
about that.
Davis also shared organic traffic increases compared to 2023. They are also
working with the Pixel Perfect team to continue to make some modifications and
improvements to our website.
She ended with sharing a new video link that will debut this week. Also, we have
begun doing some advertisements in the Arkansas Times.
Davis passed it to Stephanie, the media relations manager with Outright.
Starting in February, they began sending two story ideas a month to relevant
publications and also set up introductory conversations with relevant travel
journalists. We’ve had consistently been in 15 articles a month, some are just
mentions and some are features. We had an outdoor freelance journalist in
Fayetteville during the eclipse and those articles are starting to appear. We’ll be
featured in Southern Living in October, and we also had a recent article in the
Knot about where to host your wedding in Fayetteville. She ended with asking if
anyone had questions or story ideas to feel free to send them to Outright.
Commissioner Moya asked if the links where we are mentioned could be sent to
the commission so they could also share them out and review them. Molly and
Sarah said they would do discuss a good way to do that.
The new video was shown with good reactions.
E. Vote. Scissor Lifts purchase at Fayetteville Town Center.
Rawn opened up with background that we currently owned one scissor lift that is
beyond it’s usable life and one we rent. Our intent was to replace the lift we
owned and in seeking quotes, we realized we could purchase two scissor lifts for
the same cost as we planned to purchase one, thus relieving our need to rent
one. The expense would be $33,022.50 and was included in our original budget
and also the revised budget. We asked for a contingency of. Chair Sanderson
asked if the scissor lifts were new and asked about maintenance. Commissioner
Bunch also asked questions. With no other questions, Chair Sanderson asked
for a motion to authorize the CEO to accept a quote for two new scissor lifts from
Hugg & Hall and spend up to $36,300, which is the quoted price with a 10%
contingency for unforeseen costs. The motion was made by Commissioner
Moya and seconded by Commissioner Bunch and was approved unanimously by
a roll call vote.
F. As a closing note, Rawn added that the town center is once again hosting Youth
Zone this coming Saturday as a part of NWA Equality Pride Weekend. The
parade will be held Saturday afternoon at 5pm.
With no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 2:55pm.
Minutes submitted by Amy Stockton, Director of Operations, Experience Fayetteville