What is the definition of “destination marketing”?
If you had asked the seven members of the Sedona City Council on July 28, you may have received seven different answers.
That is where the city and the Sedona Chamber of Commerce & Tourism Bureau find themselves as they enter a year-long pause on any paid — or perceived — marketing to entice visitors to Sedona.
After nearly three-and-a-half hours of discussion, the council unanimously approved funding to the chamber for Fiscal Year 2021- 22 in the amount of $2,089,720.
In addition, $250,000 will be in a contingency fund to be spent on destination marketing if deemed an emergency to do so. The amount approved does not include any funding for destination marketing.
At the May meeting, by majority consensus but without a vote, council agreed that the budget should come back in July after City Manager Karen Osburn worked with Chamber President and CEO Candace Carr Strauss to recommend and make changes consistent with that discussion, primarily focusing on the marketing pause. The result was the chamber’s Destination Resiliency Plan [click here to read it].
“For Sedona’s tourism economy, the initial economic downturn was dramatic, having occurred in the middle of one of our busiest months of the year,” the plan states. “Yet, it was short-lived and the rebound just as pronounced with the effects of the pandemic driving millions of people to seek refuge in the great outdoors. It remains difficult today to predict the future of travel with continued state-specific imposed restrictions, our country’s borders closed with limited international travel, airports still operating at reduced capacity domestically albeit increasing, and changes in consumer behavior as to where, when and how they wish to travel with the new world of work from vacation.
“Many businesses have been lost forever, and those that remain are dealing with a severe workforce shortage, here directly connected to lack of affordable workforce housing, just as the public is beginning to travel once again. The administration’s goal was to have 70% of the U.S. population vaccinated by mid-June 2021, however, simultaneously we see the rise of variants here and abroad.”
Council’s order to pause is due to the even-increasing number of tourists to the area, which the chamber has put a lot of the blame for on the shoulders of short-term vacation rentals. Council and city staff want to see what impact the lack of destination marketing, which is roughly $500,000 annually, has on tourism.
In May, Mayor Sandy Moriarty said, “I’m in favor of a pause for one year on marketing and we’ll still have to define what that is. I, personally, don’t believe it’s going to change very much but the public believes with every fiber of their being that that’s [marketing] making all the difference. It will prove whether or not it really does and maybe it will give us a chance to catch up.”
City staff predicted a year ago that the city could lose upwards of $10 million due to the pandemic, and while many cities have struggled the past year, Sedona has not. The city has seen the highest amount of sales and bed tax dollars generated this past year than any time in its history.
There was a fair amount of back and forth between both sides when it came to the chamber’s visitsedona.com website, which receives millions of visits a year and can also be found on the city of Sedona’s own homepage. Councilwoman Holli Ploog said she feels the website should be focusing on areas other than promotion.
“I think we talked the last time you were here about changing the messaging, that visitsedona should look completely different and should have all the same messaging about sustainable tourism,” Ploog said.
To that, Strauss said they have more than 700 paying members who expect those funds to be used to help promote their businesses and also pointed to the educational messages on the website.
“If we’re in partnership and in agreement that we’re not promoting Sedona for one year, it’s to be across the board,” Ploog said. “It can’t be that we’re not going to promote Sedona in this place but we are in this place because you’re going to spend the money from the chamber budget.”
Ploog added that she does not feel the website should have a booking link to area hotels that have paid to be on the website.
“I don’t think the membership of the Chamber of Commerce will agree to that,” said Comello, who was recently named the chamber board’s new president. “They would rather live with the consequences of whatever you want to do to the chamber of commerce and tourism bureau if you take such a hard line. I have the ear of a lot of these people. That booking engine goes directly to the hotel and bypasses all the fee services and is a direct benefit to them in lieu of them spending 20% to 30% in commission.”
“Just to let you know, visitsedona.com is one of the more powerful tourism websites in the Southwest. The chamber has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years to develop that website to have messages that represent the community and its membership. The messaging of sustainable tourism is there to address the real needs of the community.”
He went on to say that it’s not the lodging industry that is bringing more people to Sedona, it’s short-term vacation rentals. And, he feels this past year was a bit of an anomaly and that once the dust settles, visitors will resume their normal vacationing habits, which will include other states and countries.
“We’re not trying to bait and switch,” Strauss said. “We just want to have information for people who have found our website — not by any paid media or by us — to be able to book a room, an attraction, store or art gallery and not have someone tell us we have to take it off.”
