Tourism Advisory Committee - Regular Meeting

We are unmuted. Charism Advisory Committee meeting, September 16th, 2 o'clock. Introductions.

Keith Chandler.

Lyndon Lees. Josh Haneman.

Ed Heeman.

Bruce Swenson. A review of the minutes.

Approve the minutes of August 19th, 2026.

And I second that.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Anyone yes? Any financial reviews?

This month, we only have expenditures updated. If you don't have any new reports from City Hall, I don't believe there's been a City Council meeting until this week, since we last met. Nothing to point out. We're trending at 15% for totals for personnel services and 17% for materials and services. Everything's looking good for early in the year. I don't have anything to call out right now.

Okay. Any questions about our expenditures?

Nope.

Okay. Staff update.

I just wanted to share in the last week, we have had visitors from Virginia, Maryland, North Dakota, North Carolina, Montana, Wisconsin, Arkansas, Mississippi. Canada, Vietnam, there was a couple from Germany yesterday, or Belgium yesterday. It's been slower, but people are from everywhere, so pretty fun to share that. Greg and I will be leaving tomorrow for Medford to go to our fall Travel Oregon Welcome Center conference. We'll be back Sunday. And then also Travel Oregon, with help from ACWA, have launched the Tourism Industry Partner Survey. There's a link in the turnaround tomorrow. I won't be here, so if anybody can pass that on to your staff or anybody involved in the tourism industry that wants to give some feedback, it takes about 12, 15 minutes, depending on where you're going. I'll let you know. You're going to announce it at Destiny?

I'll announce it because I got it today in my email.

Oh, that'd be great. Thank you.

Yeah. You got it from Travel Room?

That's all I've got at the moment.

You got it today? Okay. Monthly stats.

All right. With stats, visitor center traffic was down 7% in August. 1,100 people visited us in August. Down 7% for the year today, too. So trending about 7% down. Phone volume was up. Well, pretty even with last year. Our leads were up quite a bit. For our visitor guides, 64%. Total distribution was down 14%. That is, let's see around town, sitting at 72,500 guides out the door as of the end of August, including all 20,000 of our Olive Egg mail guides. Those are all out now, so we're stuffing envelopes. Active web users were up 13% in August, almost 40,000. Uh, users and I've finally got a hold on some of the bigger overseas bot traffic. So I've, I've in a sense, lost a little bit of confidence in these numbers over time because it's a constant cat mouse game to be weeding out these bot, this bot traffic. And now that I've taken it out, it's, it's. I have more confidence in this number, but it makes it harder to compare it to things, but it's, it's a strong number. So, I mean, you know, people are getting their information online. That's what they do. But we have almost no traffic from China right now. Almost no traffic from Hong Kong, almost no traffic from Singapore. Still getting some from India or Malaysia time to time, but that was almost all a lot of traffic. Email signups, 543% up. That is our meta campaigns. Those people become subscribers. Our radio campaigns from contests, we get reports like a couple of months after they pass, we take those subscribers, we put them into our email signup. Visitor guide requests were up on the website, 45% over last August. Views per active user down a little bit, 4.3. Views per user, 4.8, but up 88%. We have bed tax additions since we met last time. So now Q4, hotel is up 4.7% over Q4 of the previous fiscal. There was no change to the VRD. And so now the year-end totals are about 4% for both hotels and VRD year over year. All year from that standpoint. My lodging stats for the county in July are strong, 2.3% year-over-year growth, and occupancy at 2.9% growth. Any questions on stats, Doug? Director's report, summer's winding down, advertising is ramping back up. Do I have year-round visitation during fall? I'm going to take training. Campaigns are recurring across every single category, digital, broadcast, radio, environmental, places, and key markets. We have the RGS in-car dashboard back. That started September 1st on Z100 Portland for the first time in three years, so that's exciting. Radio will again also play a significant part in our fall mix with destination-focused 30-second ads running in Seattle, again since September 1st. and KPKS Portland event radio promos are running in support of fall season events on KKRZ and KLTH starting September 21 so that those haven't started yet it will be starting soon and we will also this year have digital music streaming spots and podcast placement spots and some associated kind of display visual bandwidth that will be going out mostly in the fall and spring seasons.

So what type of music is Seafront? Both of these, you know, Seafront is like tongue hits.

Yeah, so we targeted these stations not on their music, but on their listenership and a lot of families. Digital advertising and video also play a really strong role in efforts this year. Our ongoing paid search campaign. Actually, our paid search continues year round, so that's still happening, capturing active keyword interest. And then we have fall native and display ads on Travel Oregon and Visit the Oregon Coast to reach people actively planning trips to Oregon and to the Oregon coast. Our weather camera partnerships, of course, are continuing on Coin, KPTP, and KGW with both broadcast, digital, and streaming components represented in that mix. And then we're also negotiating currently with Little Bird to do another campaign on YouTube. and probably a pretty significant one since we saw such good numbers last year in our spring campaign we did on YouTube. This year we're gonna do our YouTube campaign first in the fall because last year we partnered, well, we did a twin campaign. We did broadcast in the fall and YouTube in the spring. This year broadcast is completely eaten up by election buys. And so it's like a waste of money to try just saturated and doesn't want to pay any attention. So we're going to, we're going to go on YouTube and say, it's just a lot cheaper.

Unless you run for Senator. Here's your campaign. Go to CSUN.

If you vote for Pedro, go to CSUN. There you go. Yeah. That's that same fatigue will exist. I think on YouTube, because there will be a bunch of campaign ads on YouTube as well, but it's just so much more affordable. but I think it still makes sense and then in the spring we'll reevaluate and see if we want to do a broadcast run right you know probably in Seattle and Washington or um or do another YouTube campaign or something else we'll reevaluate and then print obviously also remains part of the strategy as well though this segment isn't really growing over time we're kind of It's not really shrinking. Things are getting more expensive. So it's kind of staying the same. And what we're doing, and this has been going on for multiple years, is just trying to focus on what kind of placements we're getting and making sure that they're very high value, very visible placements. And so we have a full page in the video that's up now. And again, first page, that's what we like to do is on the first page. That's an expense. good for us. And so you're going to see a lot of first page. You're going to see a lot of back cover. We have one inner back cover. But if the only things we can kind of afford with our existing budget are kind of like in the middle from where we just don't buy them anymore and use that money on other stuff. We have also upcoming back cover on October, November 1889, Washington's Magazine. And we have a back cover on November, December, Northwest Travel and Life Magazine. And later this month, we have a writer from VIA Magazine coming to stay at the Seashore Inn and write a story on Seaside as a feature they're going to run in the spring. And is there any updates on that, Ken, as far as who you're trying to?

I just got to send him the info. I was going to let him know that I won't be here when he's here. But here's people you can contact if you want to get a little bit of feedback.

We're trying to give you contacts with different people in town so that you can interview people.

I was going to put Keith or Tiffany.

What year?

The 4th, 5th, 6th of September. It's in September.

When are you meeting? The 25th. So yeah, that's when he's here. I'm coming back the 26th. So Tiffany. Yeah.

This picture on the page, that is the Okva ad on the Okva website for the format.

That's not a very good message, this picture. Not a very good ad. No.

This one is kind of annoying to you because the RDS thing just went live in September, so I don't have a lot of where based on what kind of car you have, you will also see our logo and, and, and you'll see, you might see the whole thing in one, you know, you might see seasides for fun visit seaside or.com in one where it might scroll. Like there's a lot of different ways it is displayed, but this is the only one I've gotten so far just because it's so new. Oh, and then I got stuff on the back here too. We also got ads, uh, back on the Portland streets starting again, September 1st on the beeline urban delivery. These are. These are bikes that deliver basically restaurant supplies and produce and things like that around the Portland Metro, starting from the inner east side and they go all over the place. But they end up being very slow moving billboards with our ads on them. We have eight different side panels and one call to action on the rear panel. um strongest visibility that means like most hours we have booked to be out on the roads is in september through november then again march through may but we'll be we'll be on them here any questions about any of that stuff we have some tourism we have three tourism grants this month we'll start with uh anybody did you bring yep that was still tree for us yeah your desk are on trees from my standpoint this grant was not completed until recently but um My apologies if it has been sitting because Stacey said she sent in the first supporting documents and I didn't get them. And so that's always possible with technology, but it happens now. April 2027 is the tournament. Like it hasn't solid date yet. Asking for $3,000. I got $3,750. It says $2,026, but that must have been $3,500. It could definitely have gone from grants.

Well, it didn't get any after COVID for a few years. This one, is this one public goes to much?

Well, I went through it last year and it was pretty, it was pretty full. I mean, it was pretty a good event.

So that was a lot of the families that came, but does the general public go into it?

think i think it's mostly families that go come here for it so it brings people it created um 11 rooms for me last year for you for me okay that's a pretty high percent yeah because i was very surprised to find that they were staying for that but i asked everybody and it was at a good time of the year where It wasn't overlapping with anything else.

It wasn't during Washington Spring Break. It says April, it doesn't say when in April.

I think they had it, it wasn't, they were really busy making it, but yeah, we had 11 rooms that came for us. Let's jump in. And then we've been other places that they've seen. Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

So we had a lot of choices, but it was good for us. just not just if it was promoted better i'm just wondering if more people come down just to watch it and they're they're they're welcome to watch it right is there seating available for you and so because it's in the gym the new high school yeah so that's a good seating i mean and they sell refreshments and stuff too but i mean i just think it's a good event because it's kind of one of those family ones where it doesn't matter how old your kid is you know you're small with a girl, so it does encourage that. And then, as we know, because she came and spoke at SDA, she's opening up another, just a jump room that would not be competitive. So even more people are part of that.

Yeah, I think so.

I mean, we've worked with it for Dotsies and stuff. The Van Halen tribute band.

That's the only song we played. That is a little hip-hop music for that. Yeah, hip-hop. Jump around. There you go. Criss-cross. Yeah, criss-cross.

How's the pain just a little bit?

Last year's report on the grant to see if there's any information about the public or anything, because it's not really relevant to your question.

Yeah, it just kind of sneaks up on us.

Well, like I said, maybe we can encourage them to do more advertising. Yeah, because, I mean, even in here they say explain how It says, explain how you'll measure success. And they say the more teams, competitors we draw each year, the more entries for the event, which in turn means more rooms, rentals, dining, and shopping. The goal is to have more teams yearly, but they don't really mention a public account.

Yeah, but the team brings the whole family.

Oh, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. But it may be a side of it.

Right. Maybe, like you said, more public advertising. So if you're not staying inside, just come in.

like do we even put it on our website i don't even know what i remember it on our website i was like a public event to go to uh it's not a visitor's guide no but i think it gets listed as you know just this is happening you know it's a good question i mean because that's pretty simple yeah And they are asking for less than they did last time. I am okay. I feel like this is a council request.

I don't know. I would move to approve $3,000 for the risk of birth. And the second half. All in favor? Aye.

You have enough to grant all of these.

The Ukefest. The Ukefest. The Ukefest. Many red people in the welcome center are asking about ukulele groups this week, or maybe last year, or the day before yesterday.

Long haired guy with curly hair and a high voice.

Yeah. He's a man.

She got it.

You have to be of a certain age.

Well, when he's not top of mind, he takes it. He's not always on the top of your mind.

we're asking for 1500 yeah event is november 7th and for my birthday so um this is new to seaside we're doing it in seaside this year yeah sitting on that story last year it's a pretty big deal

And it was neat that they chose to create the CC side. Yeah. We get some of that.

Well, an event in November is wonderful.

Yes. They got money from us before, but I didn't remember that.

They didn't. I think they're misreading it. I think they're saying, yes, we've gotten grant funds.

We've gotten grants.

Not from us.

And I asked about this, actually. So they... They have a, they've only done it for one year. So I was like, how did they get it for three years? Well, if they have a commitment for three years, so they have $2,000 for three years, they've got an influence.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So here's, here's, here's a $64 question. Is this tourism or arts?

The arts grant is not set up to do a programming or events.

It's not for, like, it's not music, even though music is an art. It's a tangible piece of art.

A musical concert or whatever would all be an event. Or programming, like, remember when we did the prom, Chalk Art?

It's a good question.

I love the idea of having something in November. And I love ukuleles, so.

Yeah, me too. They're really popular, right?

They are. When you take lessons, there's now an instructor through the Whistleville He announced this morning that he has to move back to Connecticut.

House of Orange, Art Gallery, and Tuna Beach, they regularly have a home. And of course, there's the Ukulele Orchestra. Yeah. Astoria. So, I mean, people love that.

Maybe they could lobby to get Dwayne Johnson to come play. Yeah. He plays ukulele.

there's things behind the ukulele we haven't found right now it's just one of those things that's come back around you know like it was it's probably easier what was the one of the talent shows big samoan hawaiian guy that did somewhere over the rainbow has become

A huge hit in the last 10 years. Dwayne Johnson did it.

Didn't he do it over the radio?

No, he didn't. He does. He did. He does a Colossal song. It's a Wonderful Life. Oh, yeah. That's right. Yeah. That was in a movie.

Yeah. But, yeah, it's really coming back. But I love the idea that we just are getting something in November 1. And, too, there's the music. We need to see more music events. Yeah.

I don't know if she can as a chair. I did last time.

Okay. I move that we grant the, what did you ask him for?

It's only $1,500. Yeah. $1,500 to . I'll second it. All those in favor? Yes. Those are going to be easy minutes.

So it's not true.

If you're the chair, you can't tell me what I know. I never did. It's true. Yeah, I would entertain emotion.

Yeah, I would feel like that's the more appropriate.

You can entertain emotion.

Maybe to break a tie. Yeah, not in general. Yeah. Halloween.

I still want to do that one time, and I don't think you want to know. There it is. So we have 5,500 left here. We have a very nice lineup here. Yeah. Really? Really, yeah.

I mean, a few years ago, it was four.

Yeah. It took a while to get out. It's good to see more people.

It couldn't be her, obviously, but she told me when she was leaving that she needed to write up her feelings about

I think so, especially if it's not a beater. Yeah.

See where, how much, are you asking?

Yeah.

I have fallen in a weird spot. Right here. Okay.

Yeah.

Oh, there it is.

Do you know how much we get on your board? Just listed all the years. I'll pull up what we did in the last year. Okay.

Did you see the Coast Weekend? It's a big article about care.

I haven't seen it yet.

I heard a car show.

I got like nine copies of my album.

I thought it was great. I love that picture of her washing her old stacks.

It's so cool. You have a bunch of copies. Yeah.

Yeah, I helped them too. What's going to happen today?

Yeah, we never go through our whole stacks. If I don't remember when I recycle them next Tuesday, I'll be sure to.

So those old newspapers, if you just recycle them, I'll take them all, okay? We used the Wrapshells.

Is this the legion of legions?

It's the drugs. It says Karsho and Samson.

I'll come to the caller.

know about before that. Before that, it was more.

So we're looking at adding a wrinkle to it this year, just FYI. I don't know if we need to talk about it here or not, about the parade. The Surrey Parade. The Parade at Surrey Parade.

Oh, that's funny.

So that one's starting on Friday. I'm assuming it's three days. Sounds it.

That's not a wrinkle, that's added programming. Do what? That's not a wrinkle, that's added programming. Yes, it is.

And you get to cruise it around on the weekend.

Yeah, exactly. Leave it decorated around the weekend.

Oh, that's a good idea. So you can add it to your business as you're going.

It kind of reminds me of, say, I was always pushing those, like, cows or whatever. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, you can put your logo on it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, this is so give a little bit of an expansion to Halloween happenings, right?

The official proof approval of the of the surrogate. Yeah, but I'm sure he's on board We just rent all Say there's two options, right?

Yeah, you're prom bike. You're from Patrick's not getting back.

Yeah Yeah, but I'm sure he gave them to us the last we did it. Yeah a couple

next year and then we can you know we drop drop a pumpkin on one of you over that but you did one yet yeah the first year you know sorry we had to kill him it was

And then like, so it's just, I don't know what happened. And then it finally drops and he's like, she starts running his hands, pieces are sliding and he's still I got a whole story if you want to hear it.

It's such a good video. So we wanted, the pumpkin growers were after me to drop a pumpkin. I've never seen one before. So I asked them, well, what happens when you drop it? He goes, it just kind of goes thump. Okay, so we set all this up in the parking lot downtown. And I talked to him in, it's the end of summer. Talked to, who was the guy's name that had the series before? The candy man, did he? No, Jimmy, Jimmy Rogers. Talked to me and given me an old Surrey that couldn't work anymore, so we're gonna drop it. Locals loved it. So we're going to smash this. And the pumpkin growers, they drop them on cars and stuff like that. So talk to the growers. They tell me what happens. I set up the perimeter that was going to be safe, you know, because that's so get it out there. SOPCO brings it all the way up. And Don Larson, he's not young. He goes out there and pulls it. It doesn't go. So they have to slowly lower it all. Now the crowd's just growing, growing in anticipation. So, I mean, they probably had to be there a half hour for it to actually work. So he pulls the thing, it starts to fall. He goes running, this thing hits and the pumpkin explodes and it's going, it's going into the crowd. You know, kids are running, grabbing pumpkin to take home. And I looked at the pumpkin grower and he goes, I've never seen one do that before.

It looks like a scene in the action movie where Don's running towards the camera. Like the explosion behind him.

Going past him into the ground. My blood pressure is boiling. They always drop him in a field where it's absorbed by the earth. not on asphalt so i noticed this is the model you replicate every year now but now we're going to water the water the water goes out that's fine the pumpkin doesn't go yeah the ducks yeah they're they're fine not big old chunks of pumpkin this big and get somebody's head

Our very own whales.

Yes, exactly.

So is this on YouTube?

It was. It's somewhere. I've never seen it. The original, yeah. And dropping it on the Surrey because, you know, that's how the locals feel about Surreys. I thought it'd be great for the end of summer to get a crush on Surrey and everybody's like, didn't I break the Surrey? Yeah, there were kids trying to pull pieces of the Surrey off too. Yeah, it was fun, but we didn't do that again. And poor Don.

Yeah.

He's just the highlight of it. He's like,

Oh, yeah.

Tried to kill the mayor.

Well, I know our PR firm is really interested in pitching the Halloween happiness event, especially the pumpkin draw.

This seems to be the biggest thing. Yeah, it's fine. So, yeah, I would propose that we award the grant of $3,000 to SCDA for how it happens.

Second that.

All those in favor? Aye. Okay. Anybody else?

No? Okay.

That's it for grants. That's it for grants. All right.

You're up to the business. Okay. So tax charter. So I don't have this to go over. So initially, If you remember, last month I said, hey, this month we'll be able to go for the charter. So city council and city manager put together draft charters, and each committee is going to take that worksheet that we submitted in December or something and put it into the draft and then create a charter for this individual committee. I've done that, but there's a step where I have to meet with city corridor and the city manager to make sure that the work i've done meets city council's requirements once i do that i'll take it to this body and then we can discuss it and changes and approve it to send it on its way basically There's been out of office illness and stuff like that, and I haven't been able to get a meeting to do that. So it works out because Sadie's not here, Seth's not here, Chris is not here, so it'll be better to do it next month anyway, even though city council wants to get it moving, but that is something that we will, it's done, I'm just kind of waiting for the formalities. And then, lastly the north welcome sign so um so uh paul stole the was the uh public works director and he left and um what i'm learning is that when tap requested mind to uh improves the north sign at us um it was granted by city council and everything but the plan if you recall kind of shifted to move the sign closer to the well that was all paul's idea and now that paul's gone there's no plan there's nothing there and nobody else at public works agrees that that's the better move and that that's save money and all this stuff they think they're just gonna break the sign around thank you sign where it is and so i'm bringing this back to you just to get a gauge of how you feel about just improving the access with the path. I think that's what we asked for in the first place.

Yeah, right. I think improving the access is a much better way to go. Absolutely not. But they'll create a path.

They'll create a path and a spot so that people are not literally in the traffic, trying to get.

Yeah, it'll be, it'll be, it won't be in the right. I was thinking you could just go right to the highway. Like, yeah, we can call it, we can call it Frogger. But there is, there is like talking with Jeff and Ed about it.

Making, I think the path will be no problem and it'll be wide. It'll be about as wide as our Moby mats.

Yeah.

The wheelchairs can get out there and even maybe multiple wheelchairs at the same time and stuff. However, the one wrinkle that comes up is apparently if you just pave that parking lot, it has implications for the highway as far as like water runoff and all sorts of stuff like that. And so what they're looking at currently is paving a handicap spot or two and then like a loading area and then the whole path, but not the whole parking lot. would stay around. That's the most recent. That's the most recent.

Just fill the holes up.

Apparently you don't have to do water control. So, I mean, one thing about moving the sign that I did like is that it moves it away from the native lands and the signs over there so people won't be walking around doing it without. And then I also like that if you got rid of that grove of trees, you know, you'd have a nice sight line at the water. But also, I agree with you, this was the original proposal, and to me, it's not the end of the world if we have to go back to the original proposal.

At some point, the trees might come down anyway.

They all fall down there.

Yeah. It's there all the time.

Falling down when you're stuck, too. My 610 goes out there with a little spark. About halfway through.

Oh, another one fell. There was one there that had old horseshoes. hanging over a branch that had now grown into the tree. Oh, wow. Okay. And that tree eventually just collapsed, like dried out.

Guess they weren't there for luck then.

So that was the second tree there that I've seen do that, where it just dries up and then just falls.

So if we go with that, Josh, what are we, what's the timeline we're looking at?

Do you know? They, they, um, what is, well, It would happen in the spring, you know, but, and so my kind of like naive assumption was like, okay, well, we don't need to finalize this stuff immediately because you won't be able to work on it until the spring anyway. But these guys are professionals and they're like, no, we need to have

they've already approved the money that carries over. It doesn't go away.

It doesn't go away because we're still on the fiscal year. It's approved for this existing fiscal year.

Through June.

Yeah. Yeah. And so what they've approved is $50,000 to do the work. Doesn't mean that's what it will cost, but they've approved that much. And then an ongoing expense of $1,000, I guess, for upkeep.

So is the other side, is that something that the the tribes are putting out there.

It's a canoe. It is. Yeah. Oh, that's going to be a canoe. Yeah. There's also like a statue deeper in the... Yeah, there's one back there. What's his name?

Weissom?

Yeah.

Weissom?

No, there's a statue for the Native American that donated land.

Oh.

or the Winnebago tribe.

There used to be a snake.

Reuben's snake.

That sculpts your back.

There might have been something out there. It's like an olive. It's like a black. They're not black, but it's a stone. Yeah, that was for Reuben's snake. Yeah, so he was the guy that donated all the land. But it's so far in the back, you can't, you know, you don't see it unless you walk.

Is there something out there for Kathleen Weissong, too?

I think they're used to me.

Yeah, there's nothing else. There's a picnic bench. I mean, you know, that sits there.

It's closer to the highway, like if you're cutting through to go to the softball fields. I remember seeing it, walking through there, but it was years ago.

They should probably do something out there for Sunat Tami.

they do have plans to i think the sign the canoe sign is like the first of three things that they're probably doing out there so they're getting they're having a wrap up they're having canoe on top of it yeah yeah wrap behind somewhere it's good it's going to be on top of the points and luckily it's far enough this way that it doesn't block the sign yeah yeah They were supposed to do a unveiling, I think, last weekend. There's quite a few people there, but I don't know what. They were supposed to do the unveiling, and then at the last minute, they said, oh, thanks, saying that they had a postponement.

Yeah, I saw the campers out there. I mean, once a year, they do a retreat out there. They'll try it.

And usually, there's people kept all the way out to where the trail takes off. I just figured that's what it was.

any committee comments no no no okay no public comments i guess that's it then 2 46.