The city of Sedona does not plan to renew its contract with the Sedona Chamber of Commerce for management of the Uptown Visitor Center for a second year following discussions among City Council and staff members during the council’s priority retreat on Wednesday, Dec. 13, which means that the visitor center may close in 2024.
The withdrawal of funding is part of the city’s ongoing reorganization and expansion of its communications department as it takes over tourism marketing from the chamber.
“The new department is going to be communications, tourism and economic initiatives,” City Manager Karen Osburn said. “Admittedly, economic initiatives is going to be a smaller piece. In fact, one of the things we’re trying to work with the chamber on is to get them more doing the business development, retention, expansion.”
As part of this expansion, city communications manager Lauren Browne plans to ask for an increase of $200,000 in destination marketing funds in next year’s budget, bringing the city’s annual direct spending on marketing to $350,000.
Browne said that the city communications and tourism department’s achievements so far for fiscal year 2023 include adopting “So much to love. So much to care for” as the theme for the city’s tourism website, posting 33 videos on social media, creating a LinkedIn account and scraping the internet to build a database of 520 Sedona-based tourism businesses after only about 100 of those businesses responded to the city’s outreach efforts and signed up for the database voluntarily.
“We aren’t currently looking to renew the contract” for the visitor center, Browne told the council. “The chamber is still assessing if they can pay their 20% contribution [toward the center’s costs] for next year. Early indications are telling us that we should assume that answer is no. They are reporting slightly behind their Q1 goals for in-person visitors and email and phone assistance, but it doesn’t mean that they can’t make it up in the spring.”
“The sense that I got was that it would be, if they did keep it open, they would be expecting the city to bear 100% of the costs,” Osburn said of her conversations with the chamber.
The city is currently surveying visitors to see how many use the visitor center and expects to have the results of that survey in January.
“I would not increase the amount of funding for the extra 20% that the chamber won’t be able to afford to pay,” Vice Mayor Holli Ploog said. “We said it was going to be for one year as a transition … It’s a lot of money for a very small percentage of the people who are coming as visitors.”
“It doesn’t serve a predominant number of people,” Councilwoman Melissa Dunn said. “It’s not what people use anymore. People use their electronic devices, they do a lot of scoping of what they want to do prior … Visitor centers, as they’re currently conceived, as this one is currently conceived, they’re going by the wayside.”
Dunn suggested installing “cool little kiosks” to provide visitor information at parking lots, trailheads and shuttle stops.
“Quite frankly, this is the kiosk,” Osburn said, holding up her cellphone. “I don’t think there’s any value to trying to place things around town that would have the same information your cellphone would.”
“I was skeptical,” Councilman Brian Fultz said of the visitor center, describing the chamber’s interim funding request earlier in the year as having felt like “we had a gun to our head.”
“Nothing has been provided to us to provide a change of opinion in my mind since then … I think it’s time, absolutely, to move on to technology,” Fultz continued.
“If we’re paying 100% of the fee, renting it from them … it would still be the city of Sedona visitor center. It would no longer be the Chamber of Commerce visitor center,” Mayor Scott Jablow said. “If we were to do it at all … There’s always lines inside … I’m perplexed as to which way to go.”
“I would never, ever, ever support us paying the full tilt,” Councilwoman Jessica Williamson said. “If they can’t afford the 20 [percent], I would pay the 80% and let them figure out how to run it on that … Being tourist-friendly is, I think, really important to me … I really would like us to think of something that is forward-facing to our visitors.”
She proposed the creation of smaller information centers, possibly in the former service station at the Ranger roundabout that the city purchased earlier in the year.
“I couldn’t go for 100%,” Councilwoman Kathy Kinsella said. “We never should be in that position, because there should have been more partnership … I can’t even go for 80%. That’s just, for me, off the table … I could see another year of a partnership, but at this point, as I said, if that was the ask, it’s a flat-out no. I couldn’t go more than a 50% share.”
When Osburn polled the council on their positions, only Jablow and Williamson expressed a willingness to have the city fund the visitor for a second year at the current level of 80% of its operational costs.
Kinsella and Councilman Pete Furman joined them in expressing a willingness to fund 50% of the center’s costs if such an arrangement could be negotiated.
“We, as an organization, are exploring all of our options,” Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Michelle Kostecki said in regard to the potential loss of city funding for the visitor center.
