Lodgers' Tax Advisory Board - Regular Meeting

All right. Welcome to what month is it? July's Laundress Tax Advisory Board meeting, everyone. We'll go ahead and call to order. It's 12.01. My name is Connor Tharp. I work at the Bradbury Science Museum, but on this board, I represent the Northern Rio Grande National Heritage Area, which encompasses Espanola, Raribas, Taos, and Santa Fe counties. So I'm vice chair, but Jen is not here today. So I'm covering for her.

Good morning, or afternoon. I'm Dana Even. I am just a person on the board, and I manage the Holiday Inn Express here in Los Alamos.

Sonia, are you online? Yes, I am. Hi, everybody. My name is Sonia, and I manage the Wingate by Wyndham, the hotel.

And then we have a couple of new people, if we want to introduce our new legal.

Good afternoon. My name is Christella Valdez, and I'm an assistant county attorney with Los Alamos County.

Max?

Good morning, everybody. My name is Max Kudiakov. I'm the new economic development administrator. So I'm excited to be working with you all.

Thanks for being here. Anyone? Ellen, would you like to introduce yourself?

Ellen Felton. I work with Los Alamos County, and I'm the liaison to the board.

All right. Let's go ahead and approve today's agenda. If everyone's reviewed it, can I get a motion to approve or not?

I motion to approve the agenda.

Second. I second. Thanks, Sonya. All in favor of approving today's agenda, say aye. Aye. Aye. Sonya? Aye.

Thank you.

Review and approval of meeting minutes. Can I get a motion to approve?

I motion to approve the May 19th minutes. I second.

All right. We have a first and a second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you. Okay. Ellen has graciously... Reminded me that we have public comment. Is there anyone who has public comment for things not on the agenda, items not on the agenda? Seeing none, we'll move on to our presentation from Manhattan National Historical Park. Nick and Jonathan, will you talk in tandem or separately?

Great. Is there a way I can hook up from over here? OK. Go for it.

So yeah, we'll start with that one.

Do I need this for our online people? OK, perfect. All right. Hi, everybody. My name is Nick Murray. I'm the site manager for the Manhattan Project National Historical Park here in Los Alamos. And my colleague here is Jonathan Grewal, Program Manager for the Manhattan Project National Historical Park for Los Alamos National Laboratory. And so we're going to talk a little bit about the park, what we do here, and give you some kind of more information on how the park operates. So let's go ahead and hit the next slide. So what is Manhattan Project National Historical Park? We are a park dedicated to the top secret World War II operation that developed the world's first nuclear weapons. And the park is unique in the fact that we are in three different locations. So here in Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Hanford, Washington. But it's also a co-managed park with the Department of Energy. And so we have the job of interpreting and preserving the historic sites and resources connected to the Manhattan Project in all these different locations. And then how that operates here in Los Alamos is that the lab kind takes care of most of those resources that are within their boundaries. And with that, I might hand it off to the next slide and have Jonathan talk a little bit about the work that they do on the lab side. And then I'll finish up by talking about what we do on kind of the frontward facing aspect of it.

All right. He's much taller than I am. All right, here we go. So like Nick said, we at the laboratory are in charge of preserving the historical sites that are located on DOE property. So if you see, there's sort of four main pillars of what the park does, and you see them here. Basically, to preserve and project, which is preservation of these sites, improve public understanding, which is sort of what you think about like national park tours or wayside exhibits, those kind of things. Enhancing public access, that's also what we take on from the lab side of things and DOE side of the house. So public access to these facilities that are on a working national security laboratory is under our purview. And then also assisting other community members who are interested in the Manhattan Project. So think of Los Alamos Historical Society and those type of things. So we sort of have four main pillars of the park, but on the laboratory side of the house, we're focused on two of these primarily, and that's preserving those historic facilities and enhancing public access. So we'll go to the next slide. So if you look at preservation here, just a few photos, basically what we try to do with the lab side of the house, we work on these preservation projects and we're trying to bring these historic sites back to their period of significance. So without getting into a lot of the technical jargon of historic preservation, we're trying to improve the structures and we take kind of a top-down approach. So this is an example of the Slotin Building. You can see us accepting an award here in the front. We'll talk about that in just a second. But with structures like this that are left over from the Manhattan Project, we have to secure sort of the historic envelope first. So this building was constructed in 1945. It's called the Slotin Building. It's the site of Louis Slotin's infamous criticality accident. And this is actually where we're able to bring members of the public twice a year. So we really focus heavily on making sure the building is safe, making sure that the roofs aren't leaking, those kind of things. So you can see sort of if we walk around this slide, the top right is sort of how we inherited the building. We put a new roof on it and then removed those interior walls because those were added after the Manhattan Project. So then if you go to the bottom left, thank you, Ellen, for the pointer, we removed the non-historic walls and removed it back, you know, to sort of a big empty warehouse space or workshop space, which it was during the Manhattan Project. And then in the middle where we're sort of covering the photo, there's some benches there, we're starting to put back historic items back to what it looked like at the moment of Louis Floten's criticality accident. And so the right is sort of the finished product of the exterior as well. But really we're looking to interpret these spaces, again, bring them back. So we're removing barriers is what I like to say. So like there's a lot of lead paint in the buildings and asbestos and those kind of things. So we're trying to get these buildings safe for people to enter, removing any of those hazards. And then hopefully in the future, allowing that to bring more visitors into these sites. So we celebrated our 10th anniversary of the park this year. We started running tours out to this site in 2018. We've expanded the number of people we're able to get on site. So now we offer two times a year public tours out to this location, and we run two tours a day for three days twice a year. So we're able to get 180 members of the public badged onto the secure site out to Technical Area 18, and we're working on preservation through these whole sites. So this site is one in particular that we had a lot of successes in the last year on, and we're hoping for more even in the future. Oh yeah, and there's a photo in the middle. We were actually awarded the ASM International. We were designated a historic site from all the work that happened actually at Technical Area 18. So Technical Area 18, or Pajarito site in a laboratory, this is recognizing its contributions to essentially material science work throughout its history. And I guess there's even more happening. So this is just one example. So we have other sites across the laboratory that we're working on. This is a spot where we can get the public. We implemented a lottery system actually recently. The last year I think was our first full year of having a lottery system in place. It used to be first come, first serve to get people out to, members of the public out to the site. And we get a lot of complaints that it would fill up like instantly and nobody, could get on the waiting list or those kind of things. So we actually just closed the registration for our October round of tours, and we had almost 3,000 people that put in for the lottery to visit the site. So a lot of interest for people coming to town. And just a few statistics. I don't think these have actually been shared out. So we sent out a survey the last go-around, so in our tours in May, We had, I think, a little over half the amount of people who... Oh, yeah. Thanks, Nick. Had over half the amount of people who responded to the online survey, and we had roughly 66% of people who came to the public tours were outside of the state of New Mexico. 14% lived more than 50 miles away in the state, and 19% were from... either Los Alamos or surrounding communities. So well over half the number of people that we had coming to the public tours are coming from all over the place. And so our informal surveys, when we do these for all of the participants, that roughly tracks with what we've seen since we've implemented this new lottery system, which is pretty fascinating. When we first started these tours, there were a lot of locals that wanted to get on the tours. We actually don't allow LANL employees to sign up for the public tours because they're badged and we can get them to this site a little bit more easily than we can for members of the public. So we have one week of internal tours so lab employees can see the site, and then one week of public tours. back-to-back twice a year. But we have seen a huge increase in the number of people that are actually putting in for the lottery and the number of out-of-towners or out-of-staters that are coming. We actually had a number of folks who just said they flew in for like two days, stayed in Los Alamos, and flew out the next day specifically because they won the lottery to come to these behind-the-fence stores.

So, yeah.

All right. I'll pass it back over to Nick, and I will be here if you have any questions.

And one of the biggest things that we've kind of noticed over the last three years is kind of that uptick in visitation that we were anticipating from the Oppenheimer movie. And so I just kind of wanted to go over some stats over the last couple of years. So, so far this year, we've had about 12,000 visitors. And I should mention, too, when I'm saying visitors, what I'm talking about specifically are individuals that come to our visitor center. So this doesn't count people who are coming before we open our visitor center, after we open our visitor center, or days that our visitor center isn't open. And right now, our visitor center is only open from Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday from about 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. And for the longest time, I've been here for about 17 months now, 18 months, somewhere around there. For the longest time, I was the only staff member that was out here. We were able to get a seasonal employee to help out with summer operations. And one of the other things that has kind of been added to our repertoire is redoing our tours, a walking tour, around Ashley Pond that's available when we have our visitor center open. And so this year we've had just over about 12,000 visitors, like I said, actually coming in physically, going into our visitor center. Last year we had about 20, right over 20,000. And I add that caveat of this is a calendar year. Usually we do a lot of things off our fiscal year, but during calendar year 2025 we had our visitor center shut from October through most of November. October is a very busy month for us with Balloon Fiesta and the tours as well. And as Jonathan mentioned, we get, even just with the stats that he had, anecdotally, I was going to add, when I'm in the Visitor Center, the days leading up to tours, we're having people coming into the Visitor Center, checking things out and saying like, hey, yeah, we're here. We're staying in local hotels. or here because we got selected to go on the behind-the-fence tours. So we did have a little bit of a decrease last year, but with that caveat of being shut down quite a bit of October. In 2024, we had just under 26,000, and this was also the last time that we had a park-wide visitation and economic impact report. And per that report, and this is not just park-wide, this is specific to Los Alamos, it estimated that we had an economic impact of about $1.8 million. It's basing that off the number of staff members that we have, the number of volunteers who are kind of helping fill in for positions that are currently vacant, and kind of the number of visitors that we have. You'll see kind of different numbers from other places like Bias Caldera or Bandelier, places that have like, what's the word I'm looking for, camping grounds or other kind of amenities. Ours are pretty basic in what we offer, so we don't offer campgrounds or anything like that. But what you're going to see is those individuals that are staying here out of state staying in the nearby area. And then Jonathan's already kind of gone over quite a bit of the behind the fence tours. So with that, I was going to have it open for any questions that you might have.

Hey, thank you so much. That's great information. But I did have a question for you to better understand the behind the fence tours. Is that just one day or are there multiple days that you all do it? And is it like a bus thing? Is it about how many people do you take each tour?

Sure. So we do it twice a year.

Right.

And we do three consecutive days, two tours per day. And each tour is roughly four hours long. So we batch it that way because, as you can imagine, there's a lot of security concerns with getting members of the public on site. And then there's a lot of site preparation that goes on to those type of tours. So as I mentioned, we have those internal tours a week before to kind of get the site ready and kind of get us ready for members of the public coming out. And then we actually recently, a good thing to mention that I forgot to say is that we used to, the tours would start to the Bradbury Science Museum so we can accommodate 30 members of the public on each tour. So it's twice a year. two tours a day for three consecutive days. So a total of six full days of tours, essentially, and 30 members of the public can be on that per sort of the requirements of the laboratory. We used to meet at the Bradbury Science Museum and bus them down. We'd have to bus down like through White Rock and up Pajarito Road. We actually just started meeting at the White Rock Visitor Center, which cuts that transportation time significantly. So it allows us to have more sites more time on site. And that's been great. So we have to check people in, check their credentials, all of those things before we get them on a bus and bus them to Pajarito site in technical area 18 for those behind the fence tours.

That's awesome. Thank you. I've always wondered about that. Managing the hotel, I wasn't sure how many people actually got in to see it per day. So that's very interesting. Thank you so much.

Any other questions? Anybody on the online side? We are anticipating a lot of questions. So don't be afraid to ask.

What are the dates in October, Nick?

The 13th, 14th, I think it's 13th, 14th, 15th, but whatever that Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday are.

I can confirm it's the 13th, 14th, 15th.

I do have one other question. I tried one day within like a minute or two, and they were gone. I mean, how quick do all of those spots go within minutes?

They used to, yeah. So we used to do this on that first come, first serve, and that's probably when you put in for it. The last, I think... geez, now it's probably, this is three, this is the third time, uh, that we've done this as a lottery. So now we open it up for like two weeks or so. Um, so anybody in those two weeks can, can enter the lottery. And then if you win, you get you plus one guest that are allowed to come. Um, so then we randomly sort the names, like all of those 3000 people that put in for this next go around in October. Uh, we randomly sort the names, you know, you're, everybody's given a number one through 180. Um, Because we can accommodate 180 total for the tours. And so we just work our way down the list at that point.

That's awesome.

Thank you. And this is exactly why. So now this actually creates a waiting list for us. So if people need to cancel, we can go to the next person on the list and so forth. Previously, when it was first come, first serve, we didn't have that capability yet. Now this allows us to work through the people and make sure that we can fill the tours. We put a lot of work into these. We want to fill them as much as we possibly can. They're a lot of fun for us. It's a lot of payoff, especially when we're doing all this preservation work on site. We really want people to get out there and experience the sites because there's nothing like walking into these historic facilities that really where groundbreaking science happens. We are constantly trying to improve the tours and make them not only safer for people, but more enjoyable and also hopefully allow us to do more in the future.

I'd say too, like if we can go back to the first slide, this features a lot of images from those behind the fence tours. And almost every single one of these, like the area is just not sitting still and nothing being done in between those tours. We do them in May and October, so about six months in between. A lot of work is being done when those tours aren't going on. And so in that bottom right one, I was going to kind of highlight that one. You see one of our experts in that battleship bunker. And this was a photo that was taken, I think, two years ago. In that one, it's just kind of a more generic kind of instrument panel that was in there. Him and another volunteer had found the photo from kind of the main incident that we talked about that happened out of there, the main event. And they reconstructed that panel to make it look like it did during that particular event. And I bet you they probably, I don't want to guess how many hours they put into this, but months and months of work of either researching it or finding the materials and things like that. And so that was one of the things that's been updated. And the other one you can kind of see in that kind of middle photo there in the bottom where the Slotin building kind of had that, what's the word we're looking for, an off-white color to it, which would have, yes, yeah, eggshell. There we go. And you can see at that point in time, too, visitors are outside it. There's a lot of work that needed to be done, and one of those things was just kind of making it more, getting an adequate fire suppression system in there. And so for the first couple of tours that I was part of, we weren't able to have the public go into there. And then finally, these last couple of tours, we were actually finally able to get the public in there and have it kind of reconstructed to look more like the Slotin incident at that point in time. So that's some of the things that are being done when we're not able to offer those tours and why currently it's still just twice a year that we're doing those.

Well, I appreciate y'all putting so much into this. And there's so much that, like, everything still feels so secretive. And that's the one comment I always hear from people when they come to visit. And I just love that you guys provide the opportunity for them to get in and do that. I also promote your walking tours and the – individual tour where they can go by themselves. There's just a lot of really cool information. And I appreciate you guys putting the energy into it. So thank you very much for all that you do. We appreciate it.

Thank you. We appreciate it.

And just, I left booklets also right up here on this table. But you can see what the Battleship Bunker looks like today. And there's a lot of articles in this that are talking about the preservation work that we're doing when we're not doing these tours. So ideally, I think I can say this, Basically, we're trying to get this site ready for, like, we have a full cultural landscape report. We have a plan to get this sort of ready to go, looking like a national park where we don't have to take, like you see the visitors walking through the cones there in the front, where we can sort of let people go and explore on their own. And we're just slowly working our way to that point. So in the interim, we have these guided tours where we're letting people back here, working toward what that can be in the future, definitely with expanded visitation.

So Nick mentioned that you guys work with a lot of volunteers and for a long time, he was the only true kind of staff employee on the external side of things. Can you kind of explain more how those volunteers help and how many volunteers you have at your site and how you work with them?

Yeah. So right now we have about a dozen active volunteers and kind of the main role that they do currently besides kind of either helping with Some things that are going on behind the fence with the research that goes into developing, what's the word I'm looking for, reconstructed artifacts. It's just really kind of keeping the day-to-day operations of the site going. And so coming in here relatively new, I knew a little bit about the Manhattan Project. I've learned the most about the Manhattan Project from our volunteers. A lot of them are former lab employees or some sort of relation to a former lab employee. And so they really have a deep knowledge of not just the history of the Manhattan Project, but also the deep science that kind of goes into a lot of these things. And so that's kind of the way that they've been able to help out with that. And another big factor in that and what has been helping with the recruitment of a lot of those volunteers is our friends group. So they actively help recruit and do some fundraising as well. to help out with some of these, either behind the fence stuff, helping with the day-to-day operations of the site, or with some future planning that we have as well. So hopefully that answered your question.

When I helped with the tours in May, I was really struck by how many people traveled here from outside of the state and how excited they were to be here, which I think really speaks to the culture of our little nerdy town. And so it was just really cool to see how thrilled people were to experience this. So thank you.

And then I guess the only other kind of follow-up question is, can you remind people when you're going to have your peace event this year? Because that is a public external event. Thank you.

Yes. That was on my notes to go over as well. So, yes, if you are able and available on the evening of August 6th around 7 o'clock at Ashley Pond, we're going to set up some luminarias. And so throughout this last month in our visitor center, we've had paper bags out where people can leave a message of peace. And so this is coming from people from all across the nation who have come here and visited and participate either in our ranger-guided tours or seen our visitor center. And so on that day, we'll put those out around Ashley Pond and going up to the Ice House Memorial and they'll be lit up with electronic candles. And so throughout the night, too, we're going to have a bagpiper that's going to play music at kind of different points and times, but it's all to commemorate the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And so if you are available and want to go and check that out, there's no really set time that you need to be there, any time between 7 and 9 o'clock, essentially. And you can stop by and check that out and see the messages that people have left as well.

Great. Thank you both. Appreciate your time. Next, we have Destination IQ.

Kristen? Kirsten? Thank you. Well, it's good to see you guys all again. We are coming in with another team member. So I'm going to actually let her take over going over our website traffic and our ads for you guys before I stepped in and take it over. Lauren, please introduce yourself.

Hi guys, I'm Lauren. I'm the marketing director. It's nice to meet everyone. I've been here since about April and had the pleasure of working with Ellen in the New Mexico Tourism Conference and for the past few months. So really enjoy getting to know your unique, not nerdy town, but working with smart people. So let's get into it. I'm not quite sure who's driving this. Okay, thank you.

It's Ellen. Got it.

Yeah, you can keep going. Okay, so looking at June 26 versus June 25, traffic is following our typical seasonal pattern with May through July being kind of our peak windows. We're up year over year, which we like to see, and that's primarily driven by our search and social campaigns, which are showing really good progress this month.

Can you please go to the next slide? Thank you.

Thanks. Sorry, I'll keep an eye on it. I'm on my own version that's much more zoomed in because I'm blind. There was no recorded UTMs from the actual Grottis ads, but our search and digital campaigns are doing well overall. Next slide, please. Sweet. In Google, we hit record high numbers across every key metric. So yay, go us. That was primarily anchored by the events campaign. So people are very enthusiastic about the summer concert series. It was delivering really, really great click through rates. To expand on that, we will be optimizing and adding a bunch of science fest ads this month. We'll also be adding new events for the Arts and Crafts Fair, which I just submitted today, and the County Fair to hopefully get some of that extra event traffic as people are searching the area for things to do. Over on the Metis side, The events ads are also delivering the lowest cost per click. So we are putting more budget into those in the 50 mile radius range, but also lovingly spreading the love between our different ad sets of Albuquerque and Santa Fe, Dallas and Colorado, which are identified targets. You can see as the ad on the right shows, the concert series was still the best performer there too. So keep doing events. People love them. I forgot something on the last slide. People had asked in the last meeting if traffic was impacted by Los Alamos, California at all. So digging into that, just to answer y'all's question, it is not. Only about 3% of traffic is coming from California. So it is primarily from those different niches that we're targeting in the area. So no worries there. We're not spending money to get confused with California.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Lauren.

Yeah.

I think we can jump down to... Awesome. Thank you, Ellen. So as you can see and hear from Lauren, our ads are in full swing, especially those print ads and the news ads for the gratis. Keeping an eye on the ROI. So moving forward too, we are moving into a new year with our fiscal year. Nevada, sorry, I do that a lot. New Mexico True Co-op management. With that, we're coming to an end or are at an end with the fiscal 26. So we'll be going over that with you guys as well. And also our stakeholders email went out. I'm sure a lot of you guys saw that come through. And we will be moving into looking at doing the management of the organic social. So we will be putting a plan together for the social co-op. So that's something to keep an eye open for and know that we are planning for that. After that, any questions for us just on the main DIQ tourism initiatives? I'm going to blow you guys up so I see you bigger. Oh, you guys are easy today, unless you guys are on mute.

We're not. We're just excited.

Okay. Yeah. Those numbers are doing great. Lauren is, she stepped into the role right around your last meeting with you guys and is really taking it on and is getting those performing ads, especially adding on at Colorado. So great numbers.

As I said, I love working with smart people. So coming from deep South, deep South Texas, it's been a big change. It's very refreshing, but anyway.

Okay. Now I believe if there's no more questions or no questions, we'll be moving on to overviewing last year's New Mexico True. Yeah.

Yeah. So I did just kind of want to start this one for us if, You're okay with me just kind of going for it? So there are two attachments here, and I just kind of wanted to point out, as they had mentioned in their other presentation, that fiscal year 26 is complete at this point, so we do have most of our results for all those campaigns. The full Los Alamos County 360 plan, which is attachment B, provides more in-depth detail regarding any of the data and the numbers, whereas the kind of co-op overview is what we felt were kind of the big highlights with what we did in the program for this year. So there is kind of a difference, and B is really just for reference, and we will be going over attachment A as a part of this. And Lauren and Kirsten are kind of going to take the lead on presenting that to you.

Okay. So the New Mexico co-op is a fantastic opportunity. It's a two to one match through the state. So you put in $1, they put in three. So it's really an amazing way to extend your budget. Looking at the programs year over year, they're slightly similar in cost. We had a little bit of a decrease this year, but actually are getting more elements out of it, which is exciting. So last year, we'll run through some of the assets we saw, but we invested in video production, which gave us some really, really great ads that we can do in 15, 30 second and 60 second spots. We did a micro influencer campaign, which had someone come every quarter to show off the wonderful area and the different seasonal amenities y'all had. We did a Google search campaign. We had a consideration campaign that was different display ads, primarily on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and sponsored content. We had additional digital ads and rich media ads all over online. We are primarily focused on Albuquerque, Dallas, and Denver markets, targeting millennials, Gen Xers, and young boomers with a focus on history, outdoor recreation, and cultural heritage. Our targeting is very similar this year, just slightly expanded to not just Dallas, but Drive Market, Texas, including Oklahoma as another drive market option, and expanding to not just Albuquerque, but southern New Mexico, keeping some of those similar demographics and psychographics that have been really our sweet spot. So this year, our program includes an influencer content refresh. So re-engaging one of those people that visited in the past to recut some of those videos and get longer usage out of it. We will be posting for influencers again throughout the year. We'll be focusing on YouTube now that we have those great video assets. We will still be doing all the consideration ads on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube sponsored content. We will be doing some connected TV ads. So that one's really cool. And we'll also be doing some programmatic out of home in the Oklahoma City market. In addition to a print magazine in Oklahoma City three times a year and some e-newsletters in that specific area. Okay. You want to go to the next slide. These are a few screenshots from those awesome videos that we did. I don't know if we want to play them, but the links are there for your reference in the future. I believe there's three different focuses. So we had this diced man, an overview of the area, and more historical focus. And then our search campaign primarily ran in March. The click-through rate ended up being almost 6%, so great cost per click. The focus was the Bandelier National Monument, Manhattan Project, basically historical words. The most efficient keyword group ended up being the museums with a conversion rate of 8%. in the 80s which is basically unheard of so we took a lot of their learnings and started incorporating those into some of the our own google campaigns to try and maximize um on that learning there and then you can see an example of some of the ads that we did just focusing on really getting the overnight visitors we're not just a day trip destination but we want you to come spend the weekend see all our wonderful attractions and explore all the things we have to offer This slide is a example of all four different influencers that we had through the seasons. So different niches, different focuses. You can see it go basically from fall colors all the way to some of the winter attractions and showing different demographics from Black Girl Hiking to Selma. So trying to show all those different niches, some focused on history, some focused on outdoor recreation. And keeping those things in mind as we spread the love through all the different niches as we've planned for our four who are coming this year. So I believe we're going to try and have one at Science Fest this fall, which will be really exciting to show a different angle. We'll be having a family and I can't remember what else we did. Couples, perhaps, but to show some of those different niches and that Los Alamos is really something for everyone. And just some more examples of our wonderful ad placements. These all came out of the creative from years past and that video shoot. So really kind of capitalizing on different placements around the internet with related articles, best things to do in Los Alamos and some of those high value pubs like afar and really getting the name and brand recognition out there. I think that's all I have for you guys. Any questions?

Hello. I'm Dana Even. I do want to ask just a couple of quick questions. One is, how did Oklahoma City become a focus? Do you find that we're attracting people from that area? I can answer that if you want, Lauren.

Yeah, sure. So when we submitted our list, Oklahoma City actually wasn't one of our top ones. But the state as a whole is leaning more into the Oklahoma market because it is technically a drive market for us. And their data and stats really kind of show that. And because it's kind of the first year that they've had that, the way that it operates is we submit our form. We say, here's what we hope to receive. And then they come back and say, here's our offer to you, either opt in or say no. And really for us, part of it was looking at it and they're within our top 15 or 20 locations people are coming from anyways. And so it was one of those things that especially for a low price to enter, since it is kind of the first year the market has gone there, it was something that we knew it would be different than what kind of Destination IQ has identified for us as our main targets anyway, and part of it was we didn't want to have all the efforts be kind of duplicated. We wanted a little bit of a difference so that way we could spread out further as to where we're marketing to. And that led to the decision when we were offered it to say, you know, let's try it for a year. Let's see if this can really help impact it because I actually know someone who is kind of in my area, my office in the last couple of weeks that has gone to Oklahoma City. And I know people who have previously gone there for concert experiences or on the flip side, you know, people might be coming here to escape kind of the Midwest area and what the landscape looks like there. So for us, we thought it was a good opportunity to kind of test the waters and see if we could expand that drive market. I don't know if there's anything else, Lauren or Kirsten. That's a great question, though.

Well, that's good. And I think that if we show that we're willing to try something new that hasn't – we don't – at the hotel, we don't get a lot of visitors from Oklahoma. And so it's good for us to open up that door and show them that we're willing to try new things. So that's a good thing. I appreciate that. And then my second question was, with some of these videos, I was just wondering, as a different way to maybe spread some of that information, are there any links that local companies that have a lot of maybe people checking the website and things like that, is there any way that local businesses could connect to that for people And I'm just saying just like for the hotel, people are coming from all over. Is there a way that we could incorporate a link that would show some of these things to help further market the city? Mm-hmm.

Yeah. So, um, all of the video assets are on the economic development YouTube page through Los Alamos County. So you are definitely able to embed those to your websites or even share them on your social via a link. Okay. And you said economic, I'm sorry, economic. I think it's Los Alamos County economic development. If you search Los Alamos County outdoors, I think it's like the first one that comes up and it has thousands of hits already because, um, The keywords that we just used on the native YouTube have had a good reach. And then another place you can also find the one that kind of combines the three different videos we did into one is on the visitlosalamos.org homepage. But if you click on the one on the homepage of the visit site, that will take you directly to that YouTube page because it'll let you either view it on the webpage or, you know, in the native platform that it's embedded from. So that would be an easier way for you to find them.

Okay. Thanks. That's great information. I think it's really good for if we can get it out as much as we can, it's even better. So I'll make sure to look on mine and see what I can do in the next couple of weeks. Thank you. Thank you. I feel like I'll share love.

Great. Thank you all. We appreciate your time. We'll see you next round. Melanie. Thank you all.

Hello, everyone. Well, according to the agenda, I have a bunch of reports, January through May. So I don't know. Okay. Okay. Okay. Well, then we'll look over the January report. May. Okay. I thought so. Okay. Let's look at May. Okay.

So just to note, as I'm scrolling here, a lot of these are for reference because we were waiting on some data from the Bradbury, which we have now received. So we just wanted to put all these on the record for anyone interested in what that visitation looked like. Getting there.

Let's see. Well, that's the data report. I went too far. Okay. Here we go. So May we are tracking below previous years, unfortunately. Visitation is low at both visitor centers and especially in White Rock with no shuttles running this summer. And you can just track our visitation there. These are nature center numbers. This is Bandelier. Bandelier is also tracking under two previous years as well. So their visitation is low. History Museum, two years as well, lower than previous years. Bradbury, they're lower than three years, unfortunately. I'm not sure why that is, but they've seen a dip in tourism as well. Manhattan Project, two years. And I will say Valles Caldera is the only one who's actually seen an increase in tourism. When I've done the fiscal year 2025 versus 2026, they're the only one with a 3% increase. So they're seeing a little slight increase over a couple years. And we've just started including the Valles Caldera to our reports now. And so that's something new that you'll see. These are adventure guides mailed. And then our tourism through calendar years. Of course, Bandelier's always got the highest visitation. Okay, so this is 21 to 26, all attractions. And you'll see we're tracking just at about 2024, but we're still under for about two years. These are all the attractions for January through May. Of course, look at Bandelier. Okay. Let's see, this is just my summary. We had in White Rock since Nick and Jonathan were here and this is the May report. We had in our large business display case the behind the fence tour information. That's always a big hit. We did welcome bags for a local bike race and the harvest host program at Bathtub Bro. Let's see. And so these are our survey results. We're having, changing a little bit of the questions. And actually our surveys are a little, they're not working right now. So we don't quite have as much information as we normally do. But we are still tracking where people are coming from, why they're here to visit, how much money they're spending, where they're staying. So we're trying to get all that data from our visitors when they're here for a visit. Go back up a little bit. And so I know they're bringing in Oklahoma City now as a market, which is good because a little bit down, Ellen. Our biggest market has always been Texas, but those are some of the top performing where people are coming from. and visiting Los Alamos, and Texas is usually number one. We've had people from Australia, Iceland, Japan, United Kingdom coming as far as international travel in May. And then our local day trip trips are usually Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Taos. This month they were just coming from Albuquerque. And I don't know, are we not going to have comments on the new survey?

We do not plan to. Okay, okay. To keep it a little more straightforward.

Okay. So we didn't have any comments. And that was May. And this is my data report for 2025. Visitor spending in Los Alamos for 2024 was estimated $41.5 million. 15.2 million in lodging, 9 million in food and beverage, a little over 8 million in retail, 4.2 million transportation, and recreation was 3.9 million. So that was up 2% from 2023. And then there's the taxes part. Let's see. This is where my data comes in. We had almost 21,000 visitors come in. We answered 952 phone calls and 117 internet inquiries. People coming from Texas, California, Colorado, Arizona, Florida, those are the top five states coming to visit Los Alamos. And reasons they're coming, to visit family, friends, work, attend an event or work conference, learn about Manhattan Project, visit Bandelier. Bandelier is number one, our biggest seller. So 88% of people who are coming here to visit Bandelier. 66% to learn about Manhattan Project. 49% to visit Bradbury Science Museum. 50% to visit History Museum. And 15% to visit Nature Center. I would love to grow that Nature Center. I'm sure they would love to have more outreach to visitors versus locals. So that's always something I'm trying to push is checking out the Visitor Center, especially when Families are in town with little ones. They have great things to do for them.

Let's see.

So transportation data from the New Mexico Tourism Department. Obviously, you know, driving here with our own car, almost 71%, 16% in a rental car, almost 12% with a camper RV, bus 8%, and motorcycle 7%. And these are Google Analytics for visitlasolomos.org. It's a little hard to read, but those big spikes, I think those were for events. I can't read that well.

Yeah, it looks like it's May through August, so really the summer months, which makes sense since that's our highest visitation usually. Absolutely.

Okay. And... Active users, New Year's is May through August again. Little spike in October. So you can obviously see when our peak months of tourism and interest in Los Alamos is. I cannot read this.

Yeah, and this one, it really kind of highlights what webpages people are going to. So obviously National Parks and Bandelier are really high on the list along with planning your visit. again manhattan project bradbury um kind of look like the big one and and then looking at brochures and maps as well as oppenheimer and the history museum fantastic and so melanie are these web analytics from 2024 i believe start 2025.

This should be 2025.

Yes, the 2025 report. Okay. But the spending is 2024 numbers. Correct. That is because they come from the state. Okay.

So I'm making sure I'm aligning ears on my head. And the state should be releasing their new numbers pretty soon here. They just haven't put them on their website yet.

Okay. Again, cities, Dallas. Denver, Phoenix, Albuquerque, Fort Worth, and Aurora. That's interesting, so... And so on Visit Los Alamos, we have about 113,000 active users, 114,000 new users. They're spending an average of 37 seconds and 862,000 on, I guess, clicking for events. Is that what I'm looking at?

So event is based on, like, how many times they went to the site and then spent time on the site.

Okay. All right, so a little Adventure Guides statewide. We sent out about 5,000 copies of the new or of the 2025 Adventure Guides. Today, we are going to be mailing. We got the newest edition of the Adventure Guides, and I have... 2,600 copies going out. I have 26 boxes that I need to mail of the new guides going out throughout the whole state, different visitor centers. And so they'll be getting our new guides shortly. Let's see. These are the attraction visitors numbers. So the History Museum saw 35,000 people. The Nature Center saw almost 37,000 people. We don't get information from Pajarito Mountain, unfortunately. Bradbury Science Museum almost got 65,000 people. Manhattan Project, his numbers looked, no, that was his numbers this year, never mind. So last year they had 19,487 people. Valles Caldera almost had 85,000 people. Bandelier National Monument almost had 248,000 people. The aquatic center saw 76,000 people, the ice rink a little over 71,000 people, and the golf course in rounds of golf had over 7,000 people. Let's see. Okay, so this is our discoverlosolomos.com, which is our relocation website. And you can see people from Argentina, UK, Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, Spain, France, Germany, all checking out our relocation guide. Cities in New Mexico where Albuquerque, not in New Mexico, sorry, Albuquerque, New York, Orlando, Santa Fe, Indianapolis, Chicago, and Phoenix also checking out the site. This just tells you about the data that, you know, October is always the highest month as far as visitation. with Balloon Fiesta last year. We had the government shutdown, so that hugely impacted Manhattan Project. Valles Caldera had parts of it that was open and then closed and then open again, so they saw more visitation. There was also confusion as to who could visit and if the park was open. So we got through that, but Balloon Fiesta is always a busy month for us. We still continue to get a bump of visitation from the Oppenheimer film movie. It's not as high as it was, but people have still seen it and want to come visit our town. So this is areas that we can grow with the Jemez Mountain Fire Protection Project. We are hoping that this increases visitation to Pajarito Mountain as other, you know, as well as other winter activities. Let's see, new signage including interpretive signs would be a bonus and put, The ice rink may be on a driving tour for the county. And just some ideas as far as having fun things to do at the caldera, things like that. Ambassador training. We could make a bigger effort to create experiences for non-tourist visitor that would encourage them to visit local attractions and spend more time downtown. promoting the library's newcomer tour, just basically getting our locals to participate more in our downtown and attractions. Let's see. 33% of visitors have come to see the Valles Caldera. Does that need a better coordination between L.A. County and the park to get visitors to see both places? We're working on getting kiosks both in Valles Caldera and Bandelier. Of course, the termination of the Bandelier shuttles has... really impacted our visitation in White Rock. I want to say we're down 73% from previous years. And if we could somehow get that going again or figure out what to do with White Rock, we would love that. I think that's pretty much it. Does anyone have any questions?

I had a question, one of your last points. said something about getting locals more involved. Mm-hmm. Is there any effort to, and maybe this isn't your department, to better advertise the things that are happening? Like Tuesdays on the Square wasn't advertised at all on the website. Even the day of, it was last year's information. Science Fest really hasn't been promoted this year.

On the Main Street website, that is through Jacqueline and her team. They've been... I try to promote their events outside of the concierge calendar. I don't know if she put them on the event calendar.

We've been trying to work to have her add those to the event calendar, but right now it's just basic details because their website doesn't provide more insight than that. So all we can really go off of is what's publicly available to have on the site. But like any event or organization that has something going on in the community, we really put it on them to submit those to the event directory and on the visitor site or the way that we operate now. The county website, now that it kind of got revamped a bit, also highlights all of those events as well. So there's more than one place that they are being highlighted now. But it really is up to the individual organizers to determine if they want to submit their event. Obviously, when we have people reach out on social media to us, we say, hey, that would be great. We recommend you submit it here. We actually had that this morning with an upcoming 5K that's happening because they wanted to get more outreach. But it really is up to them in the same way that our business directory is up to the individual business to promote it. And it's an opt-in process for them, but it is free and available to the public.

And it's super easy. I do tell all of our friends' groups to use it readily.

I was just going to say, Melanie, the Discover Los Alamos one or the Visit Los Alamos one is so easy to use. It's a little redundant now because we're having to do the ones for... Visit Los Alamos, and then we have to repeat it for the Los Alamos County one, but that one always goes really fast when we're able to do it.

It should be the same submission form, Brandy, because our data copies it.

I know, but when we went in yesterday, for some reason, it was much faster to do the Visit Los Alamos one than it was to do, I think maybe it could just be the way they look. So anyway, that is just the feedback I got from staff. They're like, we don't know why, but it took longer to do the one on the county, even though it looks like it's the same drop form, like the same data that goes in. So, yeah, I think that people just don't know that they can. I think they don't know that they can go do it themselves. They don't have to wait for Melanie to do it for them.

I am only one person, so...

And you're doing a great job.

Thank you. Thank you.

I was going to say, like, I don't believe that because I see you everywhere all the time. So I'm convinced there's clones. Thank you.

Any other questions? I do have just a couple. So on the tourism data report where it's talking about reason for visiting, you have work at 9%. Is that because it's going through – more of our social channels because we get a lot more than 9% in people here for LANL.

So this is people who are answering at the visitor center?

Yeah, so it's going to be mostly tourists that are answering that survey. Okay.

Perfect. And then with the – is that going to mean that we'll have more consistency in snow days so people can plan to come instead of having to just come at the last minute when we have snow? Is it going to make it more consistent?

You mean the Jemez fire project? I have –

I can try to answer that one. So the hopeful goal is that, yes, there's at least five or six trails that they've identified. I can't recall exactly their names. They just posted on social media yesterday that will be impacted by this. I want to say it's like five to 10, somewhere in that range of trails that are a part of where that line is. So they will be able to make snow and therefore it should hopefully stay. And I do want to point out there was, I believe it was Colorado that they just had, because of all the fires they're having, they had people just start their snowmaking process. And you could see there was a giant amount of snow that they had just kept on the mountain because they're trying to make sure that the fire will be suppressed should it hit. So it really goes back to that dual purpose. Obviously, the main goal is if we have a fire, we're able to slow it down and stop it. But on the flip side, yes, the anticipated hope and goal is that this will allow for more consistent snow days and snowpack. Because obviously what we see a lot of, especially in this last season, because it wasn't great, it melted off really fast. And even previous, the last couple of years haven't been phenomenal. And so you get a situation where it's noon and it's just slushy up there. And this should help keep those temperatures down and keep it intact for people who come to visit.

That's wonderful news. And then I did have on the, is there a click to visit ratio on any of this stuff or your stuff is just clicking because they've been here?

You mean on the Visit Los Alamos website or... We were talking about the...

I was just wondering with all of the fires, if that will increase our clicks because people are going to be interested and want to know. But it's not necessarily going to increase our visits. So I was just curious if there was a way to know that difference. Probably not though, right?

I don't know because... The project is – it's a county project, right?

With the – I believe the state is involved. Is that correct with some of the funding? Yeah. Yeah, the state has some funding involved as well for the project. Yeah.

I just, year to year, like you were talking about, how last year we had the reduction in government travel, that really affected us. And then this year, we've seen, we're having an incredible month this year. I don't know if everyone in town is noticing that, but it's really been a strong month. And I was just curious to know if... As they're going through this, you know, I would assume that you guys kind of say, well, last year we had a higher number of clicks because maybe of the fires. I didn't know if you tracked that.

But when you say clicks, are you talking about where they're visiting on the website or what are you referring to specifically?

Yeah, because that is going to increase our clicks substantially.

Yeah, we can't tell exactly what they're clicking for. Obviously, we could see, for example, when the road was closed by New Mexico 4, we probably would be able to track the data on people clicking to learn more. and then going to the direct story that talked about the closure and what suppression rate that fire was at with Macaulay Springs. But aside from that, we can't really tell the psychographical of why are they choosing to go to the website. We can see the pages they're on, so then we could maybe provide some insight as to a lot of people are opening the page that says we're in stage two fire restrictions perhaps, and then we could see Okay. That's something people who are visiting, they clearly seem to be interested in that, but, um, unless it's related to a specific webpage that can help us kind of drive some sort of understanding, it's really hard to tell what the exact reason is as to why they're visiting the website.

So if you don't mind, may I ask one more question? So when you go into our property or our areas and you put out your pamphlets and stuff and you have the two things, you know, up usually for the concert series or whatever, is there something on there that we could give people? Because sometimes it is hard to know which one is the best choice. to visit and know the actual information like road closures and things like that. I'm just wondering when there's a situation like that, if we could post somewhere on that backboard, you know, the best place for them to go when we do have a situation like the Macaulay fire, uh, because we had a lot of questions and we don't always know the answer. So just wherever the best places to visit.

So the County also provided me these, um, Where you get the text alerts, the emergency text alerts. So they have collateral if you wanted to give your people that are staying there just this piece of paper that says sign up for these alerts.

We can provide those to your hotel if you're interested in those. There's a lot of newer collaterals since we did just switch to a new system. So especially in the vestibule here in the building, you'll notice a lot of materials have disappeared and that's because they had code red the old program on it. And we don't want to have people trying to sign up for a program that no longer exists. So we're updating a lot of materials right now. But yeah, definitely if your location, you know, whether it is a museum, whether it is a local business and you want to have some of those materials, all you have to do is, you know, reach out to either the community development department or the county manager's office, since they're kind of the one producing those materials with their communications and public relations office, and they can get you those materials for your location.

That is perfect. Thank you, because, you know, we have a lot of questions asked. We would rather put their mind at ease and have them want to venture out more than to make them kind of walk around in a frightened state. Right. Sounds silly, but it happens. Oh, absolutely. Thank you for the information. And Melanie, thank you for all you do. You are really wonderful. I don't know how you do it all, but we sure appreciate you.

Thank you.

Love to see. I love my Mondays when you come in to say hi.

Thank you. And then Ellen was gracious enough to bring the new adventure guide, so be sure to pick up the new copy. If you need any for your hotel, museum, county, just let me know and I can deliver some. All right, but then that's it for me.

Thank you. Thank you.

Ellen, would you like to? I'm seeing is and I didn't say he said he said the gas prices, you know, the tourists aren't coming and stopping like they were last year for me. And so, you know, it goes all the way to not just the big destinations, but I think even our local businesses are kind of going to feel that ripple effect for sure. And so the more we can, you know, promote shopping local and being a tourist in your own town definitely can help a little bit of that. I GUESS ANY OTHER QUESTIONS ABOUT THE DATA HERE?

IT DOESN'T SEEM LIKE IT. CAN WE MOVE ON TO OUR COUNSELOR REPORT? COUNSELOR HERMAN?

GOOD AFTERNOON AND THANK YOU. Our last council meeting was Tuesday, July 14th, last week. And it was a work session, so we had a lot of presentations. Presentation by Patrick Cruz, the chair of the Historic Preservation Advisory Board. They spoke about a number of things, Baker House. But the one thing that kind of jumped out to me was that they only have three people on their board right now. So if you know of anybody that might be interested in volunteering, that's a great opportunity. Another presentation by Robert Gibson, the chair of the Public Utilities Board. These folks work very hard to keep the lights on and the fluids flowing in our pretty reliable but aging system that we have in place. So he went through a lot of different things, but I wanted to just share with you that tomorrow evening there is a meeting and they will be having rate hearings. You can come if you're interested in that. You can also attend it on Zoom or submit comments online. Let's see. And then Dave Kruger, the PIO, gave a demonstration about the community dashboard and the performance metrics, which was really interesting. You can actually go on there and take a look at, Lots of things, but the one that was really interesting to me was the housing. And you can take a look at, You can click on all of the different developments and see how many units there are going to be and what the timeline is and how much money it is. And it's really an interesting resource. And then, let's see, there was also information from Eli Isaacson, the Community Development Director, on the comprehensive plan update. And this is a project that they started about the beginning of the year, and they're going through. This is basically the county's long-term strategic document that guides land use development, community growth. And so they have been working very hard on that. There's actually a survey out there right now that you can take and have your... Excuse me. Thank you. And get your input in there. So that is online on the community, on the county website. And I would encourage you to participate.

Excuse me.

Thank you. And that really is it. Are there any questions? Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there any other announcements, Ellen?

Um, I can add something in, um, it's online and it's, I think been mentioned in this meeting before, but September 19th, we are a part of a three day New Mexico single track race through the trans Rocky series. It's a bike race. Um, but with that, aside from over 200 riders that have signed up to participate in the event, there's going to be a lot of different events at Ashley pond park. Um, and so there'll be, I think. The plan is two different live bands throughout the day in that location, as well as we are having people who are interested, more details coming. But if you're interested in vending, that sort of thing, they are still kind of working out the details. It sounds like there might not be a fee associated to sign up. So especially for the first year, I think if you're a business, that's something enticing for you to consider participating in or even if you're associated with a nonprofit to help get the word out. While we have not only locals that will come to this event and participate, but also visitors to the area on that Saturday. And then the 18th through the 26th of September is Science Fest. Did I say that right, September? Yeah.

I've seen the 18th and the 20th as the start date.

It's my understanding, I believe it's the 18th. Again, that's what's on their website at this point. But the big day will be Discovery Day, which will be on the 26th. And then in addition to the bike race that is on September 19th, it is also Ulerfest up at the Ski Hill. So it'll be a busy weekend for town as far as bigger things coming up. And then the Fair and rodeo is in the beginning of August, and they have added a nighttime rodeo this year, which is kind of exciting. So that's an addition. As far as any other major events, those are kind of the bigger ones. There's a few different 5Ks and triathlons that are coming through the area. All that information, as you talked about, is on the Visit Los Alamos Events webpage for anyone interested in learning more details about what's coming up. But those are ones that the county is directly involved I JUST WANTED TO MENTION THOSE SINCE I KNOW IT'S JULY AND IT WILL BE SEPTEMBER BY THE NEXT TIME WE HAVE OUR MEETING AND SOME OF THESE THINGS WILL HAVE PASSED. AND THEN MEL ALREADY SAID IT, BUT THE ADVENTURE GUIDES ARE AVAILABLE HERE IN PERSON. THEY ARE ALSO IN THE VESTIBUAL OF THE COUNCIL BUILDING. AND THEN IN ADDITION TO THAT, There is also an online version that is on the Visit Los Alamos page in the top bar where you can also request a copy to be sent to you if you're not local and you're interested or if you want to see a digital copy PDF right now. I think those are the big things.

Awesome. Thank you. Our next LTAP meeting is this time, 12 p.m. on September 15th. Dana? Yeah. I look forward to seeing you there. All right. Meeting adjourned.