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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2024-11-18 - Minutes -Fayetteville Advertising and Promotion Commission Minutes November 18, 2024 Fayetteville Town Center Commissioners Present: Commissioners Absent: Staff: Chrissy Sanderson, Chair, Tourism & Hospitality Representative (virtual) Elvis Moya, Tourism & Hospitality Representative Mike Wiederkehr, City Council Representative Sarah Bunch, City Council Representative Todd Martin, Tourism & Hospitality Representative Katherine Kinney, Tourism & Hospitality Representative Andrew Prysby, At Large Position N/A Molly Rawn, CEO; Jennifer Walker, VP of Finance, Sarah King, VP of Marketing and Communications I. Commissioner Moya, standing in for Chair Sanderson who was attending virtually, called the meeting to order at 2:00 pm and declared a quorum. II. Old Business A. Commissioner Moya presented the September minutes for approval. Commissioner Martin made a motion to approve them with Commissioner Kinney seconding that. The minutes were approved unanimously. III. New Business A. CEO Report Our office renovation is on schedule. Our work with the Coraggio group on our Destination Master Plan is going well and we anticipate the commission will receive a detailed report on the work at the January meeting. FLSA has halted their salary threshold ruling which means we do not have to reclassify some of our positions. We will continue to monitor the situation. Sally Fisher, a longtime employee has left the organization to be the Director of Finance for the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce, we will post that position in January. Rawn listed several of our recent featured coverage including several articles and visits. She congratulated Herman’s, the first Fayetteville restaurant to be named to the AR hall of fame. Rawn congratulated our sales team on two conferences and one state championship we hosted in October and stated that the combined estimated economic impact of them was more than $1,300,400. Occupancy rate for October is up more than 12% from October 2023 and October’s ADR is up over 18% from October 2023. There has been reduced visitation in the Visitors Center which is not surprising with reduced hours. We’ve recently welcomed visitors from England, Canada, Germany, Spain and France. Since the cancelled October meeting, the town center has successfully hosted fifteen events, most notably, a weeklong annual meeting for Harvest Group. The town center now has a charging doc for electric cars. B. Financial Report VP Walker stated that the October financials were in the agenda packets. The targeted percentage for revenue and expenses is 83% and we are at 85% for revenue and 77% for expenses. Net Operating income is $479,879, year to date and our balance sheet shows cash and investments of approximately $5 million and FTC unearned revenue is approximately $120.000 for events remaining in 2024 with several thousand dollars in events booked for next year. With no questions for VP Walker, the agenda moved on. C. Marketing Report VP King opened with introducing Anne Davis with Outright who will give us a brief overview of our campaign and also talked about some earned media. Davis gave a reminder of our strategy – an awareness campaign comprised of high - impact digital media channels, built on the themes of outdoor recreation, food and drink and arts and culture. The campaign is intended to target those with a non-stop flight to Fayetteville and also road trippers. Our heavy investment in this campaign was April – September to capitalize on summer and fall travelers and it is a balance of digital and more regional print publications. She then recapped the target markets: Colorado, Chicago, Dallas/Ft Worth and road trippers in a three-hour drive radius. Performance call outs – this campaign served more than 21 million impressions, which is 8 million more than we projected. We are also seeing an increase in the average length of stay through the Arrivalist data. We’ve also seen a 58% increase in organic traffic to the website. Davis then talked about the strategic shift away from paid search and the positive results from that decision with statistics. Outright has also run some test campaigns including Axios Chicago and Axios Denver and were pleased with overall approach with over 339,000 newsletter opens. She presented some secured regional and national media coverage and showed several examples of both local and national brands we’ve appeared in. More specially, we’ve really focused on bike packing coverage as we just launched our new bike packing brochure. Sarah King talked about how while there were many bike packing routes in the west and a few in the northeast, we are leading the way with a bike packing route in the south/Midwest. Rawn pointed out that the revenue used for this project was from the cyclocross legacy fund, which came from the UCI Cyclocross. King also shared the results of the Hoptober Challenge, which results in 68 finishers, i.e those who completed all 8 Fayetteville brewery stops in the month of October. Commissioner Prysby suggested we do a small test with each new direct flight market we should have in the coming months, i.e. Utah, Delaware and Philadelphia. D. FTC Exterior Refresh VP Wilson shared that we’ve worked with GemStone Design Studio to look at the exterior of the FTC. The architect reviewed the exterior space and gave some suggestions to help elevate the look of the center while keeping in the look of the square. One of the suggestions is to change the teal color that is throughout the exterior and interior of the building. He showed several slides that demonstrated the new look the updated color would give various parts of the center. The purpose of the update was to ensure the commissioners were informed of proposed changes as the center is such an integral part of the square. With no questions, Commissioner Moya thanked Wilson. E. Vote. Contract renewal with the City of Fayetteville for Collection of HMR Taxes. Rawn stated that the contract with the city on the collection of HRM taxes has expired and needs to be renewed. This contract allows for the city to collect the tax and the 2024 budgetary impact is $100,000. This was initially submitted to the commission in August and it was paused. Rawn said that she and VP Walker had discussed this and in addition to this contract, she has asked the city if we can create an MOU to accompany the contract. The purpose of the MOU will be to address procedures we’d like to include such as having the due date be on a business day rather than a weekend so HMR partners would have access to help if needed. Rawn said she felt comfortable moving forward with the existing contract and creating an MOU to address some customer service related issues with the new software. Commissioner Martin stated he would not be able to support this. His restaurants have had several issues with the new software and he’s concerned with the lack of support from the city. Martin said that Fayetteville is lucky to have several small hospitality groups providing excellent dining. He urged that there should be more support from the city to help restaurants with the software system. He urged the A&P Commission to work with the city on this issue. Rawn said she respected Martin’s viewpoints, but this does not change her recommendation for the commission to approve this contract. We have made the city aware of the concerns from the restaurants. Commissioner Moya asked for additional comments and Chair Sanderson said that she agreed with what Commissioner Martin said but that she would vote in favor of the contract. Commissioner Moya asked for a motion to accept the recommendation to authorize Chair Sanderson and CEO Rawn to sign the agreement for the HMR collection contract. Commissioner Kinney made the motion and Wiederkehr seconded the motion. Roll Call vote was 6-1 approving with Commissioner Martin voting no. F. Walker Stone House Lease Renewal Rawn reminded everyone that in March 2023, the Folk School moved into Walker Stone House and their 2 year lease ends February 28, 2025. The Folk School would like to renew the lease for 1 year which is an option in the lease. The right of first refusal still remains in the lease. Rawn is supportive of this additional one year renewal of the lease. Folk School has been a great partner and they have accomplished quite a bit in the last year and a half. She does make this recommendation with the knowledge that a more in-depth conversation about the future of Walker Stone House would need to take place prior to this lease expiring. With no questions, Commissioner Moya asked for a motion to renew the lease and Commissioner Martin made the motion with both Commissioners Bunch and Sanderson seconding it. A roll call vote was approved unanimously. G. With no other business, Commissioner Moya asked if there were any other topics to add to the agenda and Commissioner Martin said he would like to add the agenda item of asking for an update on Welcome signage. Commissioner Martin moved to add this to the agenda and Commissioners Moya and Kinney seconded it. A roll call to add this to the agenda passed unanimously. Commissioner Martin began the discussion by saying that he has noticed that our neighboring cities do have signage and he’d like to also see that in Fayetteville. Rawn said she’d like to call the signage “monument signage” and she said that Commissioner Moya and Rawn did meet with staff at the city to talk about this and she said that she felt like the city should partner with the commission due to cost and logistics She also talked about the obstacles she encountered with looking at the signage to include “Home of the Razorbacks” She said she was including money in the proposed 2025 budget under capital improvements that could be for signage. Commissioner Martin asked about changing AR Department of Highway signs to stop using “Joplin” and “Ft Smith” to another city in NWA and Fayetteville instead of Ft Smith. Rawn said that she thought a good pathway would be to talk with the NWA Council and or a State Representative. Commissioner Moya asked Rawn what a good pathway would be to advance the signage issue. Rawn suggested asking one of our city council members to present this. Commissioner Bunch requested specifics on what the commission wanted her to ask as the budget for 2025 was almost complete. With this news, Commissioner Martin said that perhaps 2025 would be spent defining what we wanted to propose. Rawn said that the 2025 budget would contain funds to help this plan. Commissioner Wiederkehr suggested that we could start with the current sign that needs updating on Cato Springs Road. He also said the A&P could focus on where the signs could go and what they could look like and that we would ask the city to help us with determining where the city had land and how easements would be obtained. Rawn made an announcement that the next meeting would be to review and vote on the budget and it was Monday, December 9th. Other upcoming events are the Lighting of the Square this Friday, November 22 and the Parade on Thursday, December 5th. No further announcements, the meeting was adjourned at 3:16pm with a motion from Commissioner Martin and a second from Commissioner Kinney. Minutes submitted by Amy Stockton, Director of Operations, Experience Fayetteville