With the Sedona Chamber of Commerce’s April 5 decision to not seek a new contract with the Sedona City Council for Fiscal Year 2023-24, council transformed its April 12 meeting — which was originally scheduled to discuss the details of the upcoming chamber contract renewal — into what boiled down to a 90-minute complaint session.
It felt like drinking with someone who had been dumped but didn’t understand why.
Council members were clearly feeling hurt by the chamber’s actions, even though the chamber’s board was fed up with the back-and-forth negotiating, the political attacks every election cycle and the micromanaging over the years and finally said the song-and-dance wasn’t worth the argument.
Several council members said they respected the chamber’s decision, which is a bit insincere, as “respecting someone’s decision” doesn’t really mean anything substantive. It’s not a synonym for meaning you understand someone else’s viewpoint and agree it was the right decision. It just sounds pretty. In fact, it actually means you disagree with someone but won’t say so. E.g., if I tell my wife I respect her decision, then don’t do the things she told me to do, I wouldn’t really be showing her respect, would I?
A few council members also laid out what they would have told or asked the chamber had the meeting gone on as scheduled. L’esprit de l’escalier doesn’t mend a relationship; it does, however, make for some great novels about lost love .
Then, council’s first official act after losing its marketing partner, after repeatedly rejecting that partner’s efforts at tourism and destination marketing, was to decide to hire a consultant to tell them what they needed to do about tourism.
Sure, that makes sense.
If it seems counter-intuitive to you that for years the more cowardly members of council claimed to fear community blowback for giving bed tax money to the chamber for tourism marketing, yet this same council will now be spending taxpayer money on tourism themselves, you’re not alone.
Adding to the irony, the lowest and best-positioned bidder for dispensing tourism advice about Sedona could very likely be the Sedona Chamber of Commerce. We certainly hope council follows best practices and hires the best bidder, which may be the Sedona Chamber.
Council also took the odd step of declaring itself a destination marketing organization, which doesn’t really grant it any particular powers. The Arizona Office of Tourism will change a name on a state form, but that act certainly doesn’t make the city of Sedona an accredited tourism organization in the same way the Sedona Chamber of Commerce is through national tourism accrediting organizations not affiliated with the AOT. The chamber will still do what it does regardless of the city’s proclamation.
Per the AOT, a DMO is a nonprofit or government unit responsible for the tourism promotion and marketing of a destination on a year-round basis. DMOs must have and present to AOT annual proof of a dedicated tourism marketing budget, a website or microsite and a social media presence. So this means the city will have to launch a tourism website or somehow turn pages on city’s website into a tourism site compliant with state law.
Some council members weren’t quite clear what they wanted to do next, nor was the city manager, who seemed confused by council about where the elected members wanted to go and what they wanted her and her staff to do.
Former Sedona City Councilman Ernie Strauch wisely warned council that forming a tourism branch within the city would quickly create the largest department within the city — save perhaps for the police department — which now appears to be entirely possible.
The Sedona Chamber of Commerce has around a dozen employees whose salaries are funded mainly by membership dues. Only time will tell how a city tourism department with the finances of a $100 million-plus budget to draw on will decide to staff its tourism division.
Given the micromanaging that council members did at every chamber-city meeting, how much micromanaging will they engage in when it comes to the city’s own website and social media? Will the city’s online efforts be intentionally lackluster or overtly terrible in order to implement council members’ wishes that tourists stop coming? How will that be a good use of taxpayer dollars?
The wholly-independent Sedona Chamber of Commerce now plans to refocus on destination marketing to bring tourists to the Sedona area. Will the city also attempt the same, or will it just try to maneuver them around the region to take the heat off Sedona’s complainers?
The chamber was the council’s scapegoat, practically and politically, but now the chamber will no longer be serving as council’s whipping boy.
The seer-like Strauch warned us that a city tourism department will face the full brunt of residents’ anger over traffic and tourism problems, with council taking all the blame.
