The Williamsburg Hotel and Motel Association wants every dollar the Historic Triangle localities spend on tourism promotion.
The association’s executive director, Ron Kirkland, sent letters to the three localities late last week asking for the approximately $3.85 million of public funds allocated to market the area to potential visitors.
“We think that the people who have gotten the tourism promotion dollars have tried their best to get people to come here, but it just hasn’t come to fruition and we’ve got to look at doing something different,” Kirkland said in an interview with WYDaily.
The Greater Williamsburg Chamber & Tourism Alliance is the current recipient of much of the funding Kirkland seeks. The Alliance is a combination chamber of commerce and tourism promotion agency that relies on public funding for more than half of its revenue. Kirkland’s request came as a surprise to Alliance President and CEO Karen Riordan.
“We are the respected destination marketing organization,” said Alliance President and CEO Karen Riordan. “It’s surprising to me that the WHMA, that does not have a mandate to be in the business of tourism marketing, would be requesting all the tourism funding.”
Kirkland’s request seeks funding allocations from each of the localities’ next budgets, which will guide spending from July 1 through June 2016 and are currently in the planning stages. He wants about $2 million from the City of Williamsburg, $1.5 million from James City County and $350,000 from York County as part of his plan.
The timing of his letters may prove to be problematic as they all missed the deadlines for funding requests from the localities.
A spokeswoman for York County said Acting County Administrator Mark Carter considered all “timely” requests for information.
In an email chain connected to the submitted letters, Williamsburg Mayor Clyde Haulman said city council would consider the request, while James City County Administrator Bryan Hill asked for more specific plans as to what Kirkland would do with the money.
A James City County spokeswoman later said the plan will not be considered until more information is provided.
Kirkland told WYDaily that were he to receive the money, he would solicit bids from third-party groups from outside the area that could come in and shake up the tourism promotion strategy. Specifically, he wants to move beyond traditional markets like Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia where advertising dollars are spent and send that money to places that have so far been untouched by Historic Triangle advertising.
Promotions would feature specific deals where customers could call in or book trips online using specific codes to allow for tracking the effectiveness of the campaigns. In his letters to the localities, he said he would provide monthly updates to them about revenues and marketing. The new marketing would focus on the summer months, which Kirkland said is key to a healthy Historic Triangle economy.
In an email Kirkland sent to Hill on Wednesday, he also said WHMA would set aside at least 10 percent of the funding to use as incentives for groups that want to come and stay in James City County.
“The group business must exceed the carrying capacity of the hotel requesting the funds. i.e.; if the 100 room ABC hotel needs help bringing the Waxahachie Lions Club to town,” Kirkland wrote. “The Waxahachie Lions Club would need to be of sufficient size to consume more than say 150 rooms per night. Thus benefiting more than 1 hotel.”
Kirkland said his plan would allocate 100 percent of available funds to tourism promotion rather than salaries, benefits or administrative costs incurred by his organization. WHMA is funded by member dues and publications it prints, and those revenues would continue to be used to pay for the association’s operations.
The requests come months after the Alliance’s requests, which were all submitted on time. The Alliance receives the largest amount of discretionary funding from Historic Triangle localities.
This year represents the first full year under Riordan’s leadership, and she is seeking an increase of hundreds of thousands of dollars from James City and York counties compared with the amount it received last year, according to Alliance funding requests provided to WYDaily by the counties.
The City of Williamsburg declined to answer a Freedom of Information Act request for the Alliance request, citing a provision in state law that allows the “working papers” of officials to be shielded from FOIA.
This graph shows how much money Historic Triangle localities spend on tourism-related ventures in their current budgets. It does not include allocations to the Williamsburg Area Destination Marketing Committee, which comprises funds collected from hotel patrons and required by law to go to WADMC.
The Alliance is seeking to have James City County boost its contribution from $775,000 to $900,000 and for York County to boost its contribution from $342,447 to $650,000.
“I believe we’ve earned the right to continue to be able to receive those funds from the three municipalities, and we have specific priorities we want to put the [funds] toward,” Riordan said.
In her applications to the counties, Riordan outlined a lengthy vision of how to grow visitation to the area to remain competitive with other markets like Asheville, N.C., Savannah, Ga., and Charleston, S.C. In the application to James City County, she outlined spending in sports marketing, events and advertising for seasonal events as the three “fastest ways” to grow the area’s tourism economy.
The James City County plan features several strategies that include growing the Alliance’s sports marketing committee, expanding the Spring and Fall Arts initiatives, and creating food and beverage-themed events to leverage the areas breweries, wineries and distilleries.
Space limitations on the York County funding application left less room for details, however the document does mention the same three strategies as major initiatives for the Alliance.
“We are delivering a strong return on the County’s investment,” she wrote in the application.
Riordan declined to release the funding requests or discuss the specifics of what is contained in them, noting the three localities are still working toward producing draft budgets for the upcoming fiscal year and she wants to wait until that process is complete.
She pointed to the March 27 tourism forum hosted by the Alliance as one venue where she will “show everybody precisely what we’re doing with the funding we received last year and how we’re going forward to aggressively market the destination.”
“We’re doing what we said we’re going to do,” she said. “We’re implementing the plan we built in 2014 for 2015.”
The Alliance is the main force behind uniting the area’s disparate arts events under the banner of spring and fall arts. It has helped promote numerous specific events, like the Winter Blues Jazz Festival. The group sponsors a job fair, runs the annual Williamsburg Christmas parade and spearheads the annual Christmas in Williamsburg promotion, which seeks to bring tourists to the area for Christmas-themed events in attractions like Colonial Williamsburg and Busch Gardens.
The Alliance received about $1.76 million in local funding for the current fiscal year, which runs through June. The next largest recipient of local tourism promotion dollars was the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, which received $1.3 million from Williamsburg to use toward its media budget.
Almost all of the remaining money spent on tourism was from James City County and went to groups including the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, Preservation Virginia and the Virginia Arts Festival. Other county funds were spent on initiatives including promoting the annual LPGA event at Kingsmill and adding upgrades to sports fields in the county.
A spokeswoman for Williamsburg declined to identify any of the groups requesting tourism promotion funding for the upcoming fiscal year, noting information would become public when a proposed budget is presented to City Council on March 27.
James City County received requests for tourism money from the Alliance, WHMA, JYF, Preservation Virginia and the Virginia Arts Festival. York County has received requests from the Alliance, WHMA, the Historic Triangle Collaborative, the Williamsburg Area Transit Authority, the Yorktown Foundation and the Virginia Air & Space Center.
The local governments are in the process of determining their recommendations for how much the groups should receive. The York County Board of Supervisors will receive a proposed budget March 17, City Council will receive a proposed budget March 27 and the James City County Board of Supervisors will receive a proposed budget April 2.
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