CHOCVB Board Meeting Minutes 111721

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DocuSign Envelope ID:79E7E065-C620-41EB-8AD8-976C333559A7 The Visitors Bureau currently does not have as much revenue as we do expenses because this industry was hit so hard during this COVID-19 pandemic. We have not been able to roll up our sleeves as a team and go after midweek business. How the Visitors Bureau pursues midweek business is we sell the destination in a three-pronged way. We target meeting planners and corporate decision makers through the major platform, which these days, is social media. We clean out that database because many of those businesses are no longer relevant or open. Therefore,we need a huge commitment to database management. Then labor, our sales person picking up the phone and making sales calls. Travis Myren,the Deputy County Manager, heard the hoteliers and has allocated $150,000 in American Rescue Plan (ARPA)funds to pursue that midweek business. Jessica with our advertising agency, Clean Design, has created a plan for us and we have hired a prospecting firm to clean out that database and give us better leads, and Marlene and I are strategizing on the plan. The reason we have not pulled the trigger with the plans is that ARPA funds are extraordinarily tough with their rules around purchasing, contracting, and documenting what the funds are used for. We have to provide detail on exactly how we are spending the funds and what metrics we will provide to justify the spend. We just submitted that and should be good to go in January. We are getting a lot of input from minority-owned businesses that we do not do enough to support them and much of our tourism marketing is very white. We have a committee of this board that met this month,which include a few of our board members, Sharon Hill, Spring Council and Lili Engelhardt, plus Shanekia Weeks,the Town of Chapel Hill's new Diversity Equity and Inclusion Officer. We had a terrific meeting. We created a four-page publication on black-owned businesses and then decided it was not the broad reach that we wanted; we have to focus on minority-owned businesses and create a web presence and additional marketing materials. We have had great success and I will share with you after this meeting the creative on where we have been. I thank this committee. A lot of work around Orange County and this board gets done through committee. Our move is scheduled for December 191". We are getting very close on moving into the new digs. That is going to be a destination in and of itself with our James Taylor exhibit. I want to just give you a few key learnings I received from the State conference this past weekend in Asheville because I think you will find these interesting. • 1 was surprised at how many hotels have put their staff through how to deescalate today's consumer. What that means is that the consumer is being nasty. • Of the ARPA funds approved at the State level,the part that is going towards Tourism &Travel is $30 million for State tourism marketing over three years. That means, when you are watching television or perusing media,you might see a lot of ads for West Virginia,for South Carolina,for Virginia but you are not seeing many for North Carolina. There is a trickledown effect there,the more they market the better we do. • Also, there is$500 million package was approved for the North Carolina Restaurant and Lodging Association. That is designed to help hotels and restaurants hurt by the COVID-19 pandemic. 2 1 P a g e CHOCVB BOD Meeting November 17 , 2021