On Tuesday, May 14, the Sedona City Council approved allocating $150,000 for a summer marketing campaign to attract visitors to Sedona, bringing the total that the city has spent on branding and marketing since the Sedona Chamber of Commerce declined to renew its tourism management contract with the city last April to $431,000.

While the contract was approved as a consent item without discussion, the council had previously heard details of the proposed summer campaign and the results of the 2023-24 winter ad campaign from tourism marketing manager Rob MacMullen and city consultants Mary Angelo and Christian Folk, of DVA Advertising, on March 27.

Future Direction

“The tourism program has the potential to create harmony in our community … because we are able to reach them all with our communication, one, and two, because we are under the city auspices,” MacMullen had told the council, outlining the city tourism department’s planned management approach. “I want to keep in our minds this idea of harmony as a possible outcome of the tourism program.”

MacMullen and DVA presented a draft for a brand platform and two proposed summer campaigns. The draft branding statement defined Sedona as both unique and “silent, fragile and vulnerable” and prospective residents and visitors as “stewards of this sanctuary” who must “share our ethos.”

Councilman Brian Fultz and Councilwomen Melissa Dunn and Kathy Kinsella questioned the draft brand’s reference to “ethos” as potentially unwelcoming and repetitive.

“I thought that’s a very Sedona word,” Councilman Pete Furman said. “I wasn’t offended by it in any way.”

“We want to attract the type of person who shares the values around stewardship,” then-City Manager Karen Osburn said. Osburn retired April 5.

Angelo noted that concepts such as “fun” and “quirky” had been omitted from the brand draft because the Tourism Advisory Board had not supported such an identity. “We wanted to have that stewardship, educational stuff going on.”

“What will it take to actually cause a change in behavior?” MacMullen asked, reviewing questions that city staff plan to explore through the tourism program. “What’s the tolerance or the receptivity of our intended travelers? How much of an education and stewardship message can they receive before we start diminishing their desire to actually visit? The only way to explore those concepts is to test.”

“We must use tourism to make Sedona a better place, and therefore make the world a better place,” Furman said.

Angelo then outlined DVA’s two proposed campaigns: “Tell a Different Story” and “In the Moment,” both of which featured nature photography. The former was intended to focus on trying to divert tourists from popular sites, while the latter was designed to stress “softer” out-of-market messaging to attract visitors and more imperative in-market — within 25 miles — messaging to visitors. Angelo described the second option as offering “a little bit stronger of a call” and repeatedly used the words “respectful” and “considerate.”

“It was fairly strong but still, we felt, welcoming,” Angelo said.

Both proposals reiterated “Leave No Trace” concepts.

After discussion of the proposed wording of the campaigns, council reached consensus on proceeding with the second option, including the softer out-of-market messaging recommended by the Tourism Advisory Board, as “Embrace the Moment.”

“We like the more directive [approach],” Dunn said.

“We’re constantly being led by city staff,” Fultz said.

“Thank God,” Councilwoman Jessica Williamson said.

“The [social media] influencers I’ve just been emailing through the course of this meeting right now is every one of them gets a response that says, we don’t compensate you for coming, if you’d like to come, here’s the times we’d like you to come, if you have an audience that’s big enough, and by the way, here are the messages that we want you to share,” city consultant Heather Hermen said.

During comment from the public, resident Alexis Parker described the directive approach of the “In the Moment” campaign proposal as “dictatorship.”

City staff expected the campaign to begin May 15.

Phoenix Visitors

Council members split on the desirability of marketing to Phoenix and Los Angeles, which are currently Sedona’s primary markets. Forty percent of visitors who stay in Sedona lodging properties come from Phoenix and provide 42% of the city’s tourism spending; for Los Angeles, those figures are 8% and 18%. MacMullen pointed out that 60% of Phoenicians plan to visit Sedona in the next 12 months.

“That data’s telling us that that’s a good market … why don’t we take those people and share our message of how to behave here?” Mayor Scott Jablow asked.

“We think that Phoenix is really a key market … we do agree with the [Sedona] Lodging Council in that Phoenix is your best opportunity to grow overnights, so our feeling is that that stewardship message is probably most valuable in Phoenix,” Angelo said.

The chance that the Sedona Lodging Council or the chamber’s Business Improvement District, which is directed by the lodging council, might compete with the city of Sedona in type and quantity of Phoenix-directed advertising was a concern for council members.*

“I just don’t want to give our power away,” Vice Mayor Holli Ploog said. “We just took it and I just can’t even imagine that we would allow the BID to be the face of Sedona.”

Jablow, Ploog and Dunn all favored marketing Sedona’s stewardship message to Phoenix, while Fultz, Williamson and Kinsella opposed it. Furman was opposed to any out-of-area marketing. Williamson then changed her position to support Phoenix marketing to avoid a tie.

Tourists Past

Angelo and Folk outlined the results of the city’s winter marketing campaign, which ran from Nov. 15 to Feb. 1 and, according to the city’s figures, generated 1,043 trips, 1,744 visitor days and 701 room nights. The city’s ad spend was $50,000 and Angelo said it generated approximately $12,000 in city sales tax as a result of the campaign.

“The numbers speak extremely well for themselves,” Fultz said.

MacMullen also revealed that the latest visitor surveys indicated that 12% of respondents said that they would only stay in a vacation rental rather than a hotel.

“Sedona’s the worst resident sentiment [toward tourists] that we’ve seen in any market that we’ve looked at,” Angelo told the council. “That’s not just us saying that, that’s also the survey company that we utilized that does lots and lots of resident sentiment surveys.”

*Editor’s note: The print version of this story did not clarify that the Business Improvement District was set up by the chamber but is directed by the lodging council.