Working hard got lots to report on. No, I was running into the same situation when I was being invited to meetings or versus hosting. I don't know if the link that someone else sends you can be loaded when you log into your zoom, you can somehow attach that is right now you're not connected the reason your image isn't coming up is because you're not connected to your Zoom account. Okay. I can see your picture now.
There you go,
was easy. Um, it's interesting because I took, I don't know if you were Yeah you were on those emails from Aaron about this otter app to transcribe. It's only recording me, it's not recording what you're saying so. I'm not sure how that's gonna work.
I'm Mark.
Good.
Julie's here as well, getting down to business. Yes, I'm a little, I'm used to a little more detail. No pressure, but my goal is to make all of you experts,
Brian
evens on my day. And so is Rob. Are you on vacation. If.
Nice.
Actually, we could probably go to the financials before,
that's okay.
Thank you Aaron is going to be running late and Barb is supposed to be checking in, but for everyone else's an Adam is supposed to be on but for I mean Julie if you want to call the meeting to order. Everyone's respective time.
I did not do either of those but I can share them with you. The minutes from July
9.
Then July 16th
It's the, okay.
Shares screen. Okay, can you see those is July or June 9
Okay, hold on.
Sorry about that, I seem that this had been distributed prior. Um, okay, can you see that
now. Okay.
Okay, can you see that now. Okay, these are the June 9 Looks like financial report was given, Executive Director, talking about me and the other candidate. And the next meeting for this was on June 9 with the next meeting, July 14 No, just one person has to say approve and then the second person approves.
Second,
Mark Ryan mark. Okay and we'll go on to the says July 14 here but it says July 16 on the minutes.
It's not voting it's approving just approving minutes. I thought it was one person approved the second person for it like, okay, Okay.
Just say any, any. Okay, here are the minutes from July 16 was discussing my employment contract, And the next meeting was scheduled for today. David Davis, aren't you. Yes, that's all that's on the agenda Yes.
Lee.
Dave,
Robert
Ryan. Burke.
Hey.
Hey, everyone,
no public comments. I'm here. is there. Is there a motion to approve Julie as the new chair of the travel Santa Ana.
Motion to approve Julie as a new chair for travel saniana has been given by Ryan, is there
any opposed,
no opposition.
Mark
herb.
And that's it. Aaron's not on the call. Okay but you seconded do, isn't that.
Okay.
And then Ryan, okay, unanimously, Julie has been appointed chair of Charles Santa Ana. Is there a nomination for Vice Chair. Brian motion for Rob to be vice chair. Second. Okay, and a vote, Julie,
Ryan, if
Mark. Adam
bar
is voted that Rob is now vice chair of travel Santa Ana,
Julie, do you want me to go up. I'm sorry, Julie, you broke up there what. Alright, so all of you should have received the bylaws that had been originally distributed in February, along with newly created
conflict of
interest and non disclosure agreements, are there any questions or comments regarding those documents. Alright, I ask that you please return those to me by August 27. Then I had a question in regards and Dave, you're on the call, I'm looking at the bylaws, Article Six section two regarding the board meetings, it says quarterly or special. Did we want to make an amendment to that to have those monthly meetings be added. I'm asking Dave, what's kind of the history behind having the bylaws only mentioned, quarterly or special board of directors meetings.
Section or Article Six section two. That's what I'm asking. Um, I, I think moving forward. I mean, if, if attendance is good I think monthly is good for us now as we're building, but then perhaps moving to bi monthly as things established with monthly meetings with the executive committee.
That's okay.
Yep.
Okay. Okay,
so we'll keep them monthly. Absolutely. Absolutely. I just wanted to make sure so I'm in full agreement of that
I'm after. I'll put on the agenda for the September meeting that we talked about time and day and what works best for everyone. Um, I just went off of scheduling on September, 8 meeting, off of this being the second Wednesday of the month at 1pm, we may decide that, you know morning works better. That second Wednesday so I'll send out a doodle, so to speak, to get everyone's preference and we can talk about that at the September meeting moving forward. That sounds good. All right, um, any further questions or comments on the topic of Board of Directors roles and responsibilities. Nothing. I'll move on to destination next 2.0 The future study. I really want. Ryan to hear that before he has to jump off. So DestinationNEXT 2.0 The future study, I sent that to you for a little bit of review before this meeting. I'm proposing that we bring in MMG y two. What it is is it's looking at travel Santa Ana, it has nothing to do with the destination and brand. It's about travel Santa Ana and positioning us as a voice in the destination and getting stakeholders and everyone in support of us that community support, and it also is a benchmark it'll provide a cornerstone to our three to five year strategy. It's providing a plan in depth, strategic plan, it also can lead to a destination master plan. It will help us prioritize and strategize, as a destination marketing organization, and it will build and strengthen our community support providing us framework. I think this is really important, as there's a lot of entities involved from Downtown Association downtown Santa Ana to Fourth Street Market to the artists to the city, and getting everyone on board with the value of what travel Santa Ana is going to bring to the community is very important from the start, and what the pandemic has taught the travel and tourism industry destination marketing industry is that our roles have changed, and those destination marketing organizations who had already support from the community as a voice. Are we transitioning into new roles. Now that the pandemic is kind of moving behind us, versus those who are now trying to scramble and get that community support behind them after the fact. This will also help us when we have to go before the city every year, and especially in five years to get refunded and re agreed to for the tourism marketing district, what this entails is travel Santa Ana, or excuse me, I'm Dubai would do an online survey with stakeholders to gain their feedback, and there would be a half day workshop with all of us on the board. Again, that would help us prioritize and provide us a strategic roadmap road map, and also help us navigate our industry's highly fluid future and be that become the voice of tourism in the community. So it's an, what I'd like to do is have Stewart from MMG Why come and talk to all of you at the September meeting to get you more engaged in this, and that would be a kickoff to this but it's a $10,800 investment.
Yes, yes,
yes, it would help all of us come to a strategic plan that would be three to five years, so that as positions change, new general managers come on board, city council members come on, we have a course that we know we're following and renewed general managers at the hotels can't come in and be have this and divert us from our roadmap our plan, and it would get support behind us with all those within the community from the tourism, from our hotels to our attractions, restaurants, behind us and understanding, and understanding the value of travel Santa Ana, so that if there's ever a question about our funding where that money's going that we have ambassadors and advocates behind us to support us, When, when, and if that time comes.
Mmm this is, this is exclusive to MMG why, um, if you look at this study they've done this for a number of destinations across the country they just put out the new study, but this is exclusive to MMG y so there's no comparison as to another company that does this. I think this is an ideal time we're starting with a clean slate and if we can get this information out to the community at the start of tribal Santa Ana versus trying to go forward and push an agenda of whether you know as we move forward with branding which is next on the topic that we already have that community support and we're becoming the voice and advocates for tourism.
Thanks Ryan.
Thank you. MMG Why is very well known within the travel and tourism industry. They're not only a vendor, but they're also a part of the industry they attend the conferences, they're off serve on boards they are fully immersed in the travel and tourism industry from advocacy on down so yes I am 100% Confident in Mg y. And like I said I would love to bring in Stuart Colvin, for our September meeting to talk to all of you and kind of kick that off. Yes, at Discovery Cube know there's a timeframe. They can build be accommodating it's $10,800 Total it's a one time fee. Um, but I'm sure they would be accommodating if we needed to split it into two. But there's nothing get there's nothing like this though for any other company. So, Rob.
Mark, on
or
right, excellent. Um, next on the agenda is, I have MMG buying here but it's just more brand. I'm sorry, sorry Dave. All right, I keep forgetting that I'll remember if you motion, you still have to vote,
got it. I'm
branding, I know that this is a top priority. Mark and I are meeting tomorrow mark I'm very much interested in learning what the city I understand has done, about a year and a half ago in regards to that and what that looks like. To see if there's anything we can glean from that and and utilize in our future efforts, but I just wanted to give everyone an update as that I know that's a priority. And I have, I will be talking with Mark, I will also be reaching out to, as it's a separate part of destination next but MMG Dubai does branding along with a number of other agencies that are specific to destinations, so I'll be reaching out to those for proposals and bringing those to the group in the future. So just wanted to let you know that I'm working on that as it is a priority. Okay. Well, moving forward just so all of we're all on the same page. Branding is not just a logo and a tagline, branding, we want to make sure that our branding, the destination brand is built around the community's goals, values, and creative energy. Because we want everyone to embrace the brand that we present, so that everyone. And when I say everyone I know that there's going to be naysayers and people who, but that we have community support and it's from the artists to the local bands to the restaurant owners to everyone here on this call and our stakeholders that we all embrace what we bring forward from a brand destination so I'm really looking forward to speaking with Mark tomorrow and learning what's been done before and how we can incorporate that into our efforts in the future so I'm great, uncover Santa Ana. Hey,
Adam had to jump off due to a staff emergency. The other two items I have are just to report, there's no I don't believe there's any voting involved because it falls
within the
expense, but Star Report, so those of you who are not hoteliers, the hotels themselves get what's called Star reports it stands for Smith travel research reports, and it provides the hotel with their average daily occupancy rate, or average daily rate occupancy. Then also, they get to choose to search for hotels in their area been helpful in the past and what I've had the experience with with destination Irvine is providing monthly reports from a destination perspective. So this report would include all of it doesn't break out the hotels individually, but it gives us a total for each month, and our Santa Ana hotels, the occupancy, the average daily rate, it breaks them down by full service versus select service but it doesn't break them out by name, but then we also have an opportunity to provide the hotels with a comp set for our surrounding Orange County communities like Forest for Tustin, Irvine Huntington Beach, Newport Beach Anaheim. And so I think those are of great value to the hotels, as they can use utilize that data to do projections for budgets, and their reporting. And then also, I'm requesting so that's the entire year it's 20 $400 for those monthly reports, and also requesting a 66 year report that provides the past six years of Santa Ana hotels, so that moving forward, we have a benchmark of what bowls travel Santa Ana sets for our sales team, and what that looks like from generating increasing occupancy and while we have no direct impact on ADR but occupancy and driving that so I'll be I've requested those reports to be added to our agenda. Any questions. All right, excellent by your silence me thinking you haven't unmuted, or you all approved and like, yay. All right. And then the second item. The next item is visit California Co Op Expedia campaign. So, as we're heading into September, I know, the hotels will agree that September through December of this year is going to be even more of a question because one prior to the variant. We weren't seeing meetings pick up as we had in the past, because we didn't have hotels being able to host meetings until April and we weren't open for business until June.
So any large groups had to go elsewhere to our competitors. And so meetings while they've come back for the latter part of this calendar year, they're tending to be smaller. And while we've seen tremendous growth with leisure travel and unexpected demand that historically has fallen off after Labor Day his kids go back to school. So when I say September through December is going to be very much of a guess is as good as mine as mine. So visit California. If you visit California has a co op with Expedia, and all of you have your own Expedia campaigns running this says, this takes what you're doing, and puts it together as one, Santa Ana campaign, under visit California, so we would be branded as Santa Ana. This is perfect right now because we would use an image of Santa Ana, but a branded visit California template. I'm proposing, it's a $10,000, per month investment with visit California matching 5000 and Expedia throws throwing in 15,000. So we would have $30,000 being spent on promoting Santa Ana hotels
and
based off of all, Expedia can't give any guarantees of return on investment parable campaigns are seeing $27.50 For one, investment, and this is direct hotel revenue. This isn't an economic guesstimate. This is direct hotel revenue back to each hotel, and each month, we're given a report that shows how many room nights were generated and how much hotel revenue was generated by that campaign for the month. And I'm suggesting September through December, to start to see how that goes. And then the campaign concludes June 30 of next year, and if it we are in agreement and everyone feels that this was beneficial, we would continue January through June of next calendar year, but I can tell you from past experience, and we had a individual Irvine campaign which we're not there yet because we don't have the brand, but we had an individual, Irvine campaign that we invested $100,000 for the year in, and at times that campaign was generating $70 to one revenue on return. It generated over, probably close to $6 million in hotel revenue directly in one calendar year in one fiscal year. So, these campaigns work. This is an opportunity to support our hotels in what's an unknown charted area September through December. And so, um, I don't know if we need to vote because $10,000 was my limit, but I'll leave it open to anybody's questions or comments and gave leadership on that. Actually it's $30,000 So yes we do have to vote. Know you keep your race, whatever you are already doing on Expedia, what these reports will show you though is what other the other hotels are doing so you can adjust yours with your individual Expedia rep all of you have the Orange County representative that you work with directly, you can change my understanding is you can change your rate from weekday to weekend, that's all on you. This is aggregating all of the Santa Ana hotels under one umbrella and promoting them as travel Santa Ana, as one through visit California his Co Op