Travel and Tourism Board discuss Lodging Tax

During the September Travel and Tourism meeting for September, Matt Hughes, Treasurer reported that he changed the format of the financial reports and reduced redundant work in order to aid efficiency and times saving measures. The board already receives data from their account at Koerwitz et al. and they no longer have to recreate the reports. This saves close to 14 hours of time, and the new format makes the data much easier to understand and digest.

Tourism Director Jackie Dorothy updated the board to show they have budgeted approximately $53,000 of CARES Act money for a variety of planned uses. The funds must meet proper guidelines to be used and the money must be spent by December 20. Dorothy said that she contacted some state officials who understand the CARES guidelines and they said Dorothy’s plans do indeed meet them and they approve. The CARES Act in regard to Tourism all plans must provide COVID health recommendations and communicate safe travel and safe actions such as social distancing. 

Dorothy is creating an asset library of photos from the county public library and from other local photographers that provide a vision of Hot Springs County. Dorothy also wants photos for their Winter Campaign and for the Travel Safe Campaign. Many of these photos will be used for a new website, for print pages, layouts and also the COVID page they plan to do.

Currently, Dorothy is focusing on ideas for the COVID campaign. She eliminated plans for an app as the minimum cost for developing an app is $10,000. They will spend that money elsewhere. The COVID campaign will transition to the winter and then to the spring so they have year-round campaigns.

In old business, Greg Willson attended the board meeting and reported good news. The Lodging Tax is officially on the ballot. The wording is exactly the same as it was four years ago. Willson and Meri Ann Rush, who was attending the meeting via Zoom, talked about the upcoming Meet the Candidates Forum on September 28.

At this forum, the Lodging Tax can be discussed with the public. They continually emphasize the need to educate the public that the Lodging Tax is not a tax on the local citizens. It is a tax collected from outside tourists who book rooms in hotels in the county. This revenue is then gathered and used by the county leadership to help promote tourism to the county.

Also in old business, the board discussed their relationship again with the marketing company Adbay. Board president Carl Leyba and other members had a conference call with Adbay, and Leyba bluntly expressed their disappointment in Adbay’s performance. According to their contract, the board provided a 50% down of the cost for their services. Adbay said they had used 106 hours into that contract. Their work started in January and for many months there was very little correspondence from them to the board despite multiple attempts to reach out to them.  

Of the work they did, they presented some samples of billboard designs and other images. In one sample they were using to promote Hot Springs County were images of monkey’s lounging in hot waters. But it turned out that these monkeys are actually in Northern Japan in their hot springs and not in Wyoming.

The Tourism Board expressed their dissatisfaction with Adbay and decided to suspend all work with them and to form a subcommittee on how to properly decide their next steps.

Dorothy and board member Rachel Moon presented a mock-up of a large brochure for the Travel Safe themes. Dorothy also discussed her work on additional campaigns. They are working with a consultant for the Winter Campaigned and getting the verbiage addressed.  

During some discussion, the board member said that this summer tourists were staying longer than one night at the motels. Some were even staying for five days. They commented that due to COVID tourists were not flying but instead driving and their agenda was not completely nailed down. Tourists were improvising as they traveled. This allowed longer stays. One board member mentioned Dusty Lewis and how his business was booming this year doing outdoor activities. The board expressed it was an exciting time.