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TDC Minutes 05/15/2023May 15, 2023 MINUTES OF THE COLLIER COUNTY TOURIST DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL MEETING Naples, Florida, May 15, 2023 LET IT BE REMEMBERED the Collier County Tourist Development Council, in and for the County of Collier, having conducted business herein, met on this date at 9 a.m. in a REGULAR SESSION in Building F of the Government Complex, Naples, Florida, with the following members present: Chairman: Commissioner Bill McDaniel Jr. Vice Chairman: Clark Hill Susan Becker Kathleen Brock Amanda Cox Councilor Jared Grifoni Nancy Kerns Ed "Ski" Olesky Councilwoman Beth Petrunoff (excused) ALSO PRESENT: Paul Beirnes, Collier County Tourism Director Colleen Greene, Assistant County Attorney Buzzy Ford, Tourism Digital & Social Media Coordinator Marissa Baker, Manager, Paradise Coast Sports Complex Amanda Townsend, County Museums Director May 15, 2023 Anyone who needs a verbatim record of fire meeting may request a video recording from the Collier County Communications & Customer Relations Department or view it online. 1. Call to Order Chairman McDaniel called the meeting to order at 9 a.m. 2. Pledge of Allegiance The Pledge of Allegiance was recited. 3. Roll Call Mr. Beirnes said Ms. Petrunoff has an excused absence, a conflict with Naples City Council. A quorum of eight was established by members present in the board room. 4. Agenda and Minutes A. Changes and Approval of Today's Agenda Mr. Beirnes said the only change is Item 713 from Coastal Zoning. This was a late walk- on and was very important due to timeliness. We sent this to you as part of a separate email. Andy Miller will share the details. We also said we'd be going through the Arts & Culture Grants this month, but we wanted to make a few adjustments, so we will do those next month. This will be a short agenda. B. Approval of prior TDC Meeting Minutes Regular Meeting April 17, 2023 Ms. Kerns made a motion to approve the April 17, 2023, meeting minutes. Second by Ms. Becker. The motion passed unanimously, 8-0. 5. Presentations/Public Comment - (3 minutes each) [No public comments] A. Executive Director Update [Paul Beirnes] Mr. Beirnes reported that. • We continue to watch visitation. March had a bit of a wobble. • He's listened to TDC meetings for other counties and hears the same sentiment. It aligns with us, a collection of many things and nothing is really concerning. • They say Florida is in a state of politization. • April stabilized itself. In May, we're running neck and neck with 2019, maybe a bit better. Comparing it to 2022 is a weird anomaly. That was a record -setting year. The last normal year was 2019 and we are exceeding that. • A lot of the numbers you're going to hear from our partners show a tremendous amount of uptick in seasonal traffic to our website that we haven't seen in previous years, so that bodes well for spring and summer. • Mr. Miller will speak about beach renourishment, which is going on now, fast and furious, and it is absolutely spectacular. The whole span from the pier up to Doctors Pass has been completed. If you had the opportunity to see them distribute 2 May 15, 2023 sand 5-feet deep and 55-feet wide, it is a monumental overtaking. Mr. Miller will share how they've progressed, but it looks amazing. • DeInor Wiggins State Park reopens today at 8 a.m., with Parking Lot 1 and Parking Lot 2 only. It doesn't look or feel like it did before. For Parking Lots 3-5, a significant amount of restoration needs to happen. A lot of trees were impacted. • On Saturday, the tourism team (three employees) goes to San Antonio for IPW (International Pow Wow), the largest tourism conference, where the world's travel buyers gather. Air Canada vacations and British Airways vacations and others descend into one spot and every destination, theme park and hotel are there as a seller and we are a destination. This is speed dating on steroids. For about five days, our agenda is packed not only with media interviews, but also one-on-one locking in what destinations these buyers present to the public for the next year to two years, so it's pretty exciting for us. • In fiscal 2023, we had an uphill challenge with the erosion of our tourist development tax due to hotels being impacted. • The Ritz -Carlton beach property will be opening on July btn • The county Tax Collector has secured a relationship with Vrbo as of February 1, so we will be collecting development taxes through Vrbo. • We are deep into our strategy and budget season. This is the time where we're proactively working through our numbers, but simultaneously, the CVB every year, starting in March or April, builds its strategy for fiscal year 2024. We have pretty much completed the first phases. • In July, we'll hold a town hall marketing summit meeting with all our partners to make sure that they are seeing and hearing everything that we are expecting for fiscal 2024 and ensure sure we're not missing anything. The next step is bringing it before the TDC and then the BCC. • A couple of years ago, we secured a relationship with Zartico. This gave us the opportunity to not entirely rely on intercept surveys of just the people who were willing to answer questionnaires, but also to track behavior through digital movement within the destination. We geofenced the location of pickleball and we are able to determine the visitors' dynamics. Are they Iocals? Are they in -state? Are they domestic visitors from the Northeast? We really to try to understand what their impact is when somebody comes into the market and attends an event like the Minto U.S. Open Pickleball Championships. • Chris Evan, Terri Graham and Mike Dee will go through more of the color commentary and the dynamics of what happened at the U.S. Open. • The event took place April 15-22 and it was a spectacular weather week. There was only one night where it rained, on Sunday, which gave them a bit of extra work drying courts in the morning. • [Detailing a PowerPoint presentation.] Zartico determines that will that lives -over 30 miles away is considered a visitor because any less than that we will assume that they come, they consume and they go back home. There are certain parameters we apply. They must spend two hours within that geofence, which is where the East Naples Community Park is, where the U.S. Open took place. • 69% of all attendees were visitors, so he put in parentheses those who resided outside of that bullseye to compare it to last year, which was the first year where things started feeling a little normal. The year prior was still affected by COVID 3 May 15, 2023 and there wasn't a lot of a lot of travel. Of those 69% of attendees, 60% were out- of-state visitors. That compares to 7 1 % the previous year, so looking at that, 85% of those visitors stayed overnight compared with 80% the previous year, so there's some uptick. • Estimated attendance for local residents is 12,120 with an additional eut 0 27,380 total visitors out -of -market. FEW thOSe out of.,. aFket, WWhen you look at those combined numbers, the 39,500 for this year compared to just a little under 34,000 last year, it's not unique individuals. If somebody comes on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, they would count as three. This is attendance at the event. Ms. Kerns asked how visitor spending was compared to the week immediately before that. Mr. Beirnes said Zartico provides a lot of information, but you can't compare apples to apples. If there are no other contributing factors, he'd be focusing on spending, but when you schedule the event the week right after Easter, you have a weird influence of Easter, so we have all the people coming in to spend time with family. Even last year, they were saying the following week was higher and he noted that it was Easter. Then they compared it to two weeks earlier and that was spring break. If this was all in September, it would be like a level playing field. There are too many waves of influence. Mr. Beirnes continued his presentation: • The local number was almost perfectly flat last year and this year had a little more undulation on one day. When we started dissecting that, we realized there was a tremendous amount of volunteers who park cars, who are line judges or they flip hamburgers. Based on what you'll see in some of the fluctuations, we probably attracted more Iocal fans because we saw more waves. • Visitor origin: 61% of the visitors to the event were from out-of-state and visitors who came from out of market totaled 91 %. • Where do they come from? Tampa and Naples, Indianapolis, Topeka. They must have a lot of pickleball players. It's interesting to see these little anomalies happen. • On Thursday, you see a little bit of a dip. People probably came in and were practicing and there were some initial tournaments where they got eliminated. • There's a blip on the weekend of finals. There's a video that's like watching an ant farm and it color codes who is local. You can see visitors going back to the hotel at night or going to Fifth Avenue South for restaurants at night, so they are investing within the community. • You can see they visited points of interest, such as Celebration Park, Mercato Shops, Naples Beach, and the Villlage Shops at Venetian Bay, so they are definitely spending here. • We will have a little more spending data in the next month or two. It takes time for that spend to come back in, but for timeliness, we wanted to make sure that we aligned with Chris and Terri to be able to give a recap. • What the map allows us to do is track spending and travel around the destination. We see where they're going and can have different conversations with those potentially from in -state to try to encourage them to do more, so this is not just data for consumption, it's data for action. • [He detailed portions of the color -coded map showing where visitors went.] • We're already seeing they're spending more money on accommodations_ We saw that last year. Some of the hotels they were staying in were upscale hotels, so we'll 4 May 15, 2023 start seeing a little more of that behavior being a little more actionable in the next couple of months. • The geofence shows they're spending in Naples a little less time than the rest of the North Naples area. In the Everglades, they're taking excursions and going down there when there are breaks to see what's there. • The Naples shoreline shows they're enjoying a bit of R&R and going to Fifth Avenue South. • Chris and Terri will provide more detail. B. Presentation of 2023 Minto U.S. Open Pickleball Recap [Terri Graham and Chris Evon, Spirit Promotions, provided a highlights video and PowerPoint presentation.] Ms. Becker said she was surprised at the statistics that showed how few people patronized food establishments. It was way down, like 3%. Could it be that you're providing so much food at the event? It seemed out of character. Mr. Beirnes said he saw that, but they won't know until we get more articulate information on spending. It's historically higher on Fifth Avenue South after events. More reliable data will come through. Ms. Evon said if you visited the restaurants that week, you couldn't get in. Celebration Park is always there, but the restaurants were just jammed and there were so many people in (pickleball) shirts running around Naples. Ms. Becker said she saw families too, especially a number of families from California, which wasn't listed there, but she saw them. Ms. Graham told the TDC: • You may have heard that she and Chris merged with a company in January. • We were growing so fast and it was just the two of us. We recognized that to keep up with social media and to get the word out, we have strengths, but also a lot of weaknesses and we needed to find somebody, so we merged with Pickleball4America. • Mike Dee and his business partner Bob Bowman came to us last year, a week before the U.S. Open and we were too busy to talk, but she and Chris were intrigued. • They have an extensive professional sports background, which intrigued us. If they can run the Boston Red Sox, they can probably help us out with the U.S. Open Pickleball Championships. • They came on board December 30. After driving through Tennessee, she and Chris signed the papers and they kind of stayed in the rearview mirror this year because we had so much going on. • They helped us with those video walls. They're very expensive video walls and they came on board with that, and we expect some great things out of them in the future. They're also doing a ballpark series. Mike Dee told the TDC: 0 Terri and Chris have done outstanding work. May 15, 2023 • This tournament is the gold standard in the sport of pickleball, which attracted us to wanting to be a part of it. • Naples truly is the mecca of pickleball, which has been around since 1965. In the first 50 years, it was principally a sport played in driveways and casually. In 2015, when Terri and Chris had the great vision to start the U.S. Open here, that really started the second half -century of pickleball. When the book is written on that 50- year period, chapter one will be Collier County, so you should all be proud of that and what collectively and collaboratively has been built. What is a true private -public partnership? We aspire to be one of the premier companies in the sport of pickleball. The U.S. Open is at the core of that. • We are launching a ballpark series this summer. He worked in Major League Baseball for years, as did his co-founder, Bob Bowman. Both of us are Collier County residents. We'll be at Fenway Park, Oracle Park in San Francisco, and four other ballparks with a pickleball festival concept. • We met with Paul on Friday and extended the opportunity for Collier County and the CVB to be a marketing partner to extend the brand of the U.S. Open as we traveled to those cities. Some of those are really good origin markets for Collier County travel. • We're looking forward to the future. We have a conversation coming up with the County Manager and the Board of Commissioners for a continuation of our lease. The current lease expires after the 2024 event. But we're fully committed to making the U.S. Open a fixture in Collier County for many years. It's an honor to be here. Thanks for all you've done, and we look forward to working with you in the future. 6. Consent Agenda A11 matters listed under this agenda item are routine and action will be taken by one motion without separate discussion on each item. If discussion is desired by a member of the TDC, those items will be moved from the Consent Agenda and considered separately under New Business or Old Business. A. Tourism Division Recommendation that the Board approve the early termination of the Interlocal Agreement with the City of Naples for leased office space for the Collier County Film Office at the Norris Center and authorize the County Manager or her designee to sign the written notice of the intent to terminate. Vice Chair Hill made a motion to recommend approving the early termination of the Interlocal Agreement with the City of Naples for leased office spare for the Collier County Film Office at the Norris Center and authorize the County Manager or her designee to sign the written notice of the intent to terminate. Second by Councilor Grifoni. The motion passed unanimously, 8-0. 7. New Business A. Recommendation to approve a proposal from Humiston & Moore Engineers to provide professional engineering services for state -required Annual Monitoring of Collier County Beaches and Inlets for 2023 under Contract No. 18-7432-CZ for time n May 15, 2023 and materials not to exceed $78,532 and make a finding that this item promotes tourism (Fund 195, Project No. 90536). Mr. Miller told the TDC: • We do annual monitoring, surveying beaches, to find out where erosion occurred. • This year, we had some special circumstances, obviously due to the hurricane. We did a post -storm survey in January to get an idea about storm -related erosion and we've had six months between then and now. • We've obviously changed the beaches significantly by putting 400,000 tons of sand on, so probably at the end of this week, we plan to complete post - construction surveys of our engineered beaches — Vanderbilt, Pelican Bay and Naples Beach — to see what we've lost after we put the sand back on the beach. • At the same time, we'll be getting Humiston & Moore to look at that data and make a recommendation for a potential renourishment project here between November and next turtle season. • If you look at last year's effort for the same item, the cost is significantly lower because we're doing the survey as we speak, as we're under construction. Vice Chair Hill made a motion to approve it. Ms. Becker said we were first presented with this last month and the cost was $52,000 and now it's $78,532. Mr. Miller said what happened was that the last proposal before the TDC did not include the annual monitoring for the beaches themselves and included the inlets and South Marco Beach. It didn't include Naples Beach, Vanderbilt and Pelican Bay. When the storm happened and all the emergency orders were flying around, the FDEP told us that the monitoring for the beaches was not going to be required this year due to the special circumstances. We realized after -the -fact that we need to know where we're going to do a renourishment project this fall, so we told Humiston & Moore to go back and revise the proposal to include the monitoring report and the recommendation for the project, so that's the additional cost. Ms. Becker said she'd second the motion. Chairman McDaniel asked if it would be a benefit to our community to have a recommendation from those that are actually doing this physical study of our beaches to solicit the FDEP to explore alternative sand sites for us so that we can move away ultimately from the hopper -dredge process. Mr. Miller said he didn't understand his question because they don't typically do a hopper -dredge project unless it's a major project. Chairman McDaniel said he didn't ask the question properly. One of his largest frustrations after being a beach -sand producer himself is the relegation to these far-off offshore sand sites that require a hopper dredge for us to utilize if we choose and then we don't choose to do that, because it's extraordinarily expensive. Then we go to inland sand sites and inland sand sources and do trucking. That impacts our infrastructure, so would it be beneficial to work with consultants that are actually doing the studies to make recommendations of alternative sand sources? We redid Tigertail Beach and the dredge h May 15, 2023 process for all the sand pumped onto Tigertail Beach came from county beaches. So could we consider trying to get off sand sources that are so far away and require an enormously expensive process to bring it to a beach? Mr. Miller said we've talked about this before. One of our consultants thinks there's a gap in the data between what's offshore with 30 miles on the T1T2 sites and what's closer that's available in the 1,000-foot range offshore, so there's probably at least a five - mile gap in between the source or the data. We've asked the consultant to approach the FDEP, the Army Corps and NOAA, etc., to help us get the resolution of the data in that area completed. We are moving in that direction and yes, your point is well taken. Chairman McDaniel said when we do our hard -bottom study and all the other enormous amounts of studies that we do for our beaches, he's going to come at this again. We can't do anything without doing a study. We hire a consultant to do a study, so he wants to come at this from every angle possible so that someday someone wakes up and realizes there are alternatives and sources that aren't going to negatively impact, and we can more regularly renourish beaches and not be put into the circumstances that we have right now, so thanks for indulging him. Does anyone have questions? Vice Chair Hill asked for clarification. We're putting a lot of sand on the beach right now and that's the berm project. How will that impact the regular renourishment project in terms of the amount of sand that's in the expense that's going to go into the renourishment project? Mr. Miller said we hope that 400,000 tons of sand built as a berm will redistribute itself over time and fill in what we call the engineered beaches and maybe save us some efforts related to renourishment this fall. Our people are working round the clock, getting berms built and trying to complete the project. We would appreciate a break for this fall and winter, so we're going to be doing a post -construction survey to find out where any additional gaps in our beaches are. If we have a renourishment project in the fall -winter, it's more than likely going to be a smaller effort then. Chairman McDaniel noted that they put in 400,000 tons now, so hopefully we won't have to put so much more in later. Vice Chair Hill made a motion to recommend approving a proposal from Humiston & Moore Engineers to provide professional engineering services for state -required Annual Monitoring of Collier County Beaches and Inlets for 2023 under Contract No. 18-7432-CZfor time and material not to exceed 578,532 and made a finding that this item promotes tourism. Second by Ms. Becker. The motion passed unanimously, 8-0. B. Recommendation to approve a proposal from Taylor Engineering Inc. to provide professional engineering services for the 2024 dune planting and exotic vegetation removal project at Barefoot, Vanderbilt, Park Shore, Naples and South Marco Island beaches for time and materials not to exceed $57,007 under Contract No. 18- 7432-CZ and make a finding that this item promotes tourism. Chairman McDaniel said he didn't see any mention of the Botanical Garden as a consultant for the plantings. He understands Taylor is doing the design, but as a county, we regularly consulted with the Botanical Garden to ensure the plantings are good for our environment, ongoing upkeep and maintenance, etc. Did he miss that? 8 May 15, 2023 Mr. Miller said there is some language related to stakeholders. Taylor is working with stakeholders and stakeholders means the Botanical Gardens, the Native Plant Society and some homeowner associations along the beach, so we will have about a dozen stakeholders. Chairman McDaniel said he wanted to ensure that if anyone is listening, they've met with tremendous success consulting with the Botanical Garden on a regular basis to ensure that the plantings that we're doing anywhere — medians or any landscaping, Florida Friendly Fertilizer and irrigation — look pretty. Ms. Kerns said she went to the beach a couple times at different locations and you could set your watch by the trucks going by. It was magical watching them. They have a job to do and did it well. She commended him for that work. Chairman McDaniel said we're doing a lot of management on the inside because these are inland sand sources. Dump trucks are coming from the central area, up in Lee County and Charlotte County and Collier County, at the mining sources that were delineated. He works regularly with the Sheriff s Department. We have ordinances in place to have commercial motor vehicular traffic stay in the right lane, out of the trucks' way, as they go from A to B. But once they come in, they're doing a really good job. They're not banging their tailgates and it's generally been a rather seamless process. Vice Chair Hill asked to clarify whether this is to approve the engineering work on the project. Is there an estimate on the project itself? Mr. Miller said the early estimates were for about 2 million plants, but we won't know until we get the designer on board and we work with various funding agencies, including FDEP, to see what money is available and whether it will be a major project. Vice Chair Hill asked if they lost a lot of mangroves and definitely need to get those replanted. Mr. Miller said he's not positive about the mangroves. We're more concerned about the berm itself. Chairman McDaniel said the mangroves were damaged in certain areas around Pelican Bay. We really didn't lose a lot. Some in Delnor-Wiggins State Park got whacked, but that's because of the lack of a beachhead. Councilor Grifoni made a motion to recommend approving a proposal from Taylor Engineering Inc. to provide professional engineering services for the 2024 dune planting and exotic vegetation removal project at Barefoot, Vanderbilt, Park Shore, Naples, and South Marco Island beaches for time and materials not to exceed $57,007 under Contract No. 18-7432-CZ and made a finding that this item promotes tourism. Second by Ms. Brock. The motion passed unanimously, 8-0. 8. Old Business None 9. Marketing Partner Reports These reports (Marketing Partner Reports - Downs & St. Germain Research; Paradise Advertising & Marketing, Inc.; Lou Hammond Group; Convention & Visitors Bureau PR 0 May 15, 2023 Team; Collier County Tax Collector - tourist tax collections; Miles Partnership - Website Analytics, Digital car Social Media; Paradise Coast Sports Complex, and County Museums) are provided to TDC members on a digital link to the County Website. The Research Data Services report will be presented monthly, and the other reports will be presented at TDC meetings on an -as -needed basis. TDC members may request a presentation by the marketing partner representative or by tourism staff at each TDC meeting. Part 1. Marketing Partner Report A. Downs & St. Germain Research —Joseph St. Germain, president Mr. Beirnes said his favorite report involves research and Joseph has come down from Tallahassee. This is such a passionate project client for him. He's always available 24/7 and we're on the phone all the time. Every time we have him down here, it's a pleasure. [Mr. St. Germain detailed a PowerPoint presentation, April 2023 Monthly Dashboard.] Ms. Becker said when he mentioned the airports, you said RSW as opposed to Fort Myers. What did you mean? Mr. St. Germain said we work with other areas as well. We're at RSW and we pay attention to the answer about where they plan on going. We ask them where they're going. Are they going to Fort Myers or Charlotte County or Sarasota? We see a higher percentage going to the Fort Myers area and Collier County since the hurricane. Of the people flying into RSW, they're effectively more likely to be coming here as opposed to Fort Myers and Lee County, things of that nature. Ms. Becker noted that RSW reported a lessening of service. Mr. St. Germain said yes, it has, but the reason he mentioned that is because your flight numbers are going up whereas there's a lower number of travelers coming through. Because you have a higher percentage of them coming to you as opposed to other areas, that's why we saw a bit of an increase in terms of the percentage. Ms. Becker said she understood and thanked him. Vice Chair Hill said when the hard data becomes available, will you distribute that to us prior to the next meeting, the comparative occupancy STR data and visitation numbers? Mr. St. Germain said yes. Some of those comparative STR reports that come in the monthly report usually come out on the 17th. When we get it, we put it in the report and submit it to Paul. Vice Chair Hill said that would be good. Mr. St. Germain he doesn't have the information due to the timing, but will get it in two days. Ms. Cox said that comparative to 2019 versus 2022, which may be more relevant, is that normalization or is it a decline? When we get that data, if we can also do it, not just relative to last year, but relative to 2019, that would be amazing. Mr. St. Germain said we have overnight visitation back to 2019 in there and we also have hotel metrics in there. We delivered it Saturday. 10 May 15, 2023 Mr. Beirnes said every week, he receives and sends staff a look at the STR Report against last year. He doesn't want to clog anyone's e-mails, but if he sees a collective nod and everybody is interested, he can add them to their staff report email. He sends it every Wednesday, and it's very digestible economic information. [Council members agreed they'd like to be added to the mailing list.] Chairman McDaniel noted that the data comes after the meeting because they moved their meetings up a week earlier, so we can at least make sure we exemplify the full month's data from the previous month. We're always looking at things in arrears anyway and being able to analyze a full set of data would be beneficial. Mr. Beirnes said the report he emails on Wednesdays includes not only what we saw right up until the previous Sunday as a recap, but he tries to add "Paul's crystal ball," what we expect to see next week. When we started going through April, he was able to say he expected to see a bit of erosion in the next couple of weeks because compared to last year, Easter was happening, so it's pretty good, and it can tell you if it's an anomaly that's going on or if there's an event going on. He provides that with an abundant amount of marketing and what we expect in the next couple of weeks. We either eat crow or celebrate together. B. Paradise Advertising — Luisa Laurelli, Account Director, Client Services Mr. Beirnes noted that they expect to see an increase in visitation in the coming weeks. [Ms. Laurelli detailed a PowerPoint presentation.] Ms. Becker asked what streaming service she was using. Ms. Laurelli said right now we're running on Peacock. That's the one that we also ran on Hulu last year but the results were just not what we were expecting, so currently we're running on Peacock. Ms. Cox said the ROA slide had great numbers. Your ADARA data is the observed data. Is that what we're using there? She wanted to call that out to council members because that doesn't include the GDS (global distribution system) data for the hotels. That 92,000 was later enriched to be closer to 800,000, so she doesn't disagree with it being reported this way because it's certainly very conservative, which is what we always want, but it's probably even better than that. Also, since we are newer to the TikTok space and trying to get the 100-plus followers, maybe it's something for Paradise Advertising and LHG to think about partnering with a TikTok influencer. Maybe you're doing that, but it would be a great, quick way to robustly grow that channel. Ms. Laurelli said she's glad she brought that up because at the next TDC meeting, she will be showing an influencer campaign we're going to be launching, the TikTok hits and new platform included in this scope of work. Nowadays, it's one of the places that we want to be, but she appreciates the recommendation and is definitely taking notes. Mr. Beirnes thanked Louisa for pivoting after the abbreviated presentation for the TDC didn't get loaded correctly. That goes to show how much she is living these numbers by the hour. It's flawless. I May 15, 2023 C. Lou Hammond Group — Mackenzie Comerer, VP PR [Ms. Comerer detailed a PowerPoint presentation, "Services Conducted in April 2023. " [No questions were asked.] Mr. Beirnes said Paradise Advertising and the Lou Hammond group are joined at the hip and we've got a significant amount of influencers that we've vetted. We've got a new vetting system, as far as integration, and some of them are extraordinary, so we're really looking forward to seeing that come through. Part 2. Marketing Partner Reports D. Collier County Tourist Tax Collections -- Paul Beirnes, Tourism Director Mr. Beirnes detailed a PowerPoint presentation and told the TDC: • There is a lag in some of these numbers. For instance, what we're seeing and analyzing is consumed rooms. These are heads and beds in February. • At the end of February, the hotels report to the Tax Collector the month following that. You're thinking about April, but there's a lag. • The red line, which is not bad, shows we are ahead of what our forecasted budget was for collections. • That collection nsumption of $7.2- or $7.3 million was pretty solid. If you remember January and February, we were doing pretty well and we started seeing a bit of a wobble in March and we've actually regained that. • What we're seeing is the $7.3 million, which is the second column on the top line, compared with $8.3 million last year at this time, so a 12% decline is not an enormous amount, considering how significant last year was and how we were still dealing with the results of the hurricane. • Our focus and strategy was to push spring and summer significantly. Miles Media will show some web traffic that's setting all-time records. That's an indication that what we're doing, priming the well, is working very well. • We're probably going to start seeing some gathering back of results come spring and summer, so we're pretty excited as we look forward. • Last week, we received some metrics from Canada's Weather Network, which was specifically pushing Canadians toward spring and summer. The network's partner had never seen numbers as high as what they saw and it set a benchmark, so that's a great indication. • As Joseph said, Canada has now reached our No. 1 international market, so we'll monitor that in the coming presentations. E. Miles Partnership — Enriqueta Balandra [Ms. Balandra detailed a PowerPoint presentation, "Paradise. com — April 2023 [There were no questions.] 12 May 15, 2023 Paradise Coast Sports Complex/Sports Facilities Companies J.P. Terrasi, Adrian Moses Mr. Moses detailed the April 2023 TDC Report: • We're reporting April today, but the financials will be from March because of the time lag. • April was a fairly busy month. We had a program in the first week that didn't operate as we wanted it to. It was a 7v7-flag football event but we still operated our regular schedule, which we call local programming. It's our capacity, when we can't take anymore for the fields that we have for the times that people are available to use the fields. • As we move out of the traditional sports soccer season, we're going to see some turnover in those fields with some different sports out there, so we're looking forward to that. • During the second week last month, we had the Grove Church Easter Sunday service followed by the Easter Egg Eggstravaganza. It was an unmitigated success, with 3,500 people in the stadium. • We have for -profit sports tournament groups that come in weekly and operate their tournaments and sports, and then you have someone like a church come in and just blow them out of the water when it comes to how organized they were. The production they put together was a fantastic event and we followed that up with the Eggstravaganza Easter Egg community event, where numbers increased from last year. We increased the size, which is a common theme for the facility. • In weeks three and four, we had a medium- to large -size soccer tournament in ring three. We kicked off soccer. It attracted 92 teams, which required us to use North Collier Regional Park. We could have done the entire tournament at our complex if we had access to the fields that aren't finished. • Our Movies in Paradise that month was canceled due to a thunderstorm at 6:58 p.m.; the movie starts at 7 p.m. • The following week, we had a huge soccer tournament, with 191 teams. The South Florida Soccer Cup & Showcase was operated by Tournament Success Group. They're incredibly successful with us and their tournaments always bring 150 teams or more, which equates to $1.5- to $2 million of economic impact, per our calculations, and they have five tournaments with us each year. They're an extremely important partner for us. Every time we have one of their events, we do extremely well. • April was a strong month but led toward the normalization after the crazy in - season months that we had, December through March, which are atypical. • As we head into the summer months, there is some normalization and that shows in April's financials, but we still went a lot over target, although we didn't go over by 150,000, as we have in other months, but we'll get there. • One of the challenges we face over the summer is that we were given the opportunity to have a revised target that we developed in January, when we thought we were going to have more fields to book and we didn't know last year that we wouldn't have additional fields available to us, so we're still operating with the existing fields. • The challenge is that there are tournaments coming in that are expecting eight or nine fields, so we've opted for Plan B, which is to utilize North Collier Regional 13 May 15, 2023 Park where possible. We're going to be using it for the Top Gun event in July. That increases our costs because we have to pay for North Collier Regional Park and it also damages our food and beverage sales because that increases our costs of having to operate over there. Operationally, it can be a headache, but we'll prevail and get through it. We've had bigger challenges. • For the upcoming events over the summer, it's a bit more of a normalization of what we're looking at for typical events, not the huge events that we've had in terms of the standalone events where we're spending a lot of money to purchase product to sell to large amounts of people. This is consistent business, which is going to be the bread and butter of what we do. • Coming up at the end of May is our Memorial Day Ceremony on Memorial Day morning. We've put that together in conjunction with Commissioner LoCastro and are encouraging everyone to come out and pay their respects. • He was at the Sports ETA Convention, (Sports Events & Tourism Association Convention) in Kansas last week, representing not just Paradise Coast, but the whole area and had extremely positive conversations with event owners and operators. • There may be people whose event doesn't match but it's good to have those conversations to know which events we want to go after or pass on. • One thing that was extremely positive was the enthusiasm from the Diamond Softball event operators to get into this market. It's important to note that the times of the year that these groups want to come into our market is in the summer months, when hoteliers have more ability to provide inventory for us and the rates aren't quite as high as they are in season. • The summer month period, where we see this normalization with the access to baseball and softball facilities, we will be able to have an extremely robust summer calendar. • [He showed images of the Grove Church Easter Sunday event.] As you can see, it is like a rock concert. • [He showed images of the South Florida Cup.] We had 203 soccer teams registered, but there was some erosion. • Our ongoing weekly events include food distribution by St. Matthew's House, which helps the community. • We're going to be having a naming of one of our gardens. We partner with Collier County Public Schools GATE interns, a greater achievement through work program in which we provide work experience to graduate -age students with learning disabilities. The garden will be renamed the Action Club Garden. That's going to be an area tended to by the interns and the Action Club, so we're extremely proud of them and to provide that opportunity. • Traffic is up from April of last year. It was an incredibly high revenue month. After April, we exceeded our annual revenue target with our events in April. [Mr. Terrasi provided a PowerPoint presentation on website traffic.] Ms. Cox said the traffic is obviously so much different. What is the strategy behind the three handles versus driving everyone to just the main Paradise Coast account? Mr. Terrasi said The Factory and The Cove have their own identities and they tried to establish that early on when they were first created. Prior to when our company got 14 May 15, 2023 involved, they'd done that and those social media handles got some initial exposure and we lost contact on those, so they had to recreate them. We had to start from scratch. We've been talking with corporate about setting up a Google My Business account for each, so we can market them separately and specifically, so we can spend a bit more time and effort on those social media handles to make sure that they are entities themselves and people know to go there. Ms. Cox said that seems like you're outside looking in, a little decentralized. If the plan is to market all three as separate venues, it makes sense. If not, it seems a bit like we're competing with one another. But it sounds like you're already talking about that area. Mr. Terrasi said we're not competing with one another. It's part of the overall plan to spend time and effort and a bit of money to market them individually. Mr. Moses told the TDC. • The consistent feedback they got is that people don't know that the complex exists. • But if you talk to people in the sports community, everyone knows we're here, so there's a specific demographic that doesn't know about us and it's not necessarily the sports -playing demographic. • That's why we're going to specifically look at developing our programming into the new fiscal year with the development of the Great Wolf Lodge, to be able to make that a more community -based event facility. • We're not going to try to market everything. We going to shoot with a rifle, rather than a shotgun, when it comes to marketing locally. It will be focused on The Factory and on Paradise Coast. • There's no one in Collier County who will say they want to rent the place for a tournament, so we're going to market The Cove to tell people to come out to The Cove and enjoy the events we have there. Ms. Becker asked if the Legends Concert Series is moving to Paradise Cost. Can you tell us about that? Mr. Moses said we're excited about that. We identified the east lawn space for the Legends Concerts, which allows us to use the stadium for sporting events. They'll be every first Friday of the month as we get into the new season. Ms. Becker noted it wasn't in the stadium. Mr. Moses said no, it will be on the east lawn. That gives us the opportunity to use the stadium for something else. That would have taken the stadium out of play the next day and we need it for sports events and tournaments, so we're Iooking forward to it. [Mr. Terassi continued his PowerPoint presentation.] Councilor Grifoni asked about the status of the fields. What's the hold up and when are they anticipated to go live? Ms. Baker said she currently doesn't have an update on the field status. We were told May, so she doesn't have an official answer. She can find out and contact him. Councilor Grifoni asked, What's preventing access to those fields? 15 May 15, 2023 Mr. Beirnes said whenever you build a major facility, there's a back and forth with the builders and the county. There's a lot of discussion and close out of the books, so they're having that discussion. We believe it will be sooner rather than later. 10. Council Member Discussion Ms. Cox told the TDC. • She saw Lisa's update in the staff member reports. It's interesting. In the past couple of months, she's been in the meeting planner community and has talked to many people who have indicated they've not included Florida on their recent search because they assume particularly beautiful destinations like ours are not going to have availability. • That's because of what we've told them for the last two years, either because we actually didn't have availability for their meeting or event, or we preferred to yield our rooms to higher -rated leisure business. • It's important in our upcoming newsletters or travels to make it clear that we are open for meetings and event business. We're certainly going to need it during the summer months and as we see some of this softening for all the reasons you discussed, so it's just a disappointing sentiment that she wanted to share so we can make sure we're overt in the alternate position. Mr. Beirnes agreed she was right. Over the last couple of years, it was an interesting, yin and yang, whether hotels wanted to take the groups, whether they had the staffing for the groups, whether they were able to get better yields from leisure. It's a dangerous tightrope to walk. You want to be the most profitable, but in the end, people start to shy away. We're hoping word gets out quickly that they can come back, especially when Joseph mentioned the numbers are starting to normalize and retreat and we're not getting the ridiculous 2023 numbers that were coming from leisure visitors. Ms. Brock thanked Amanda Townsend for her great presentation at the Everglades on May 8. That was really inspirational for everybody. She thanked Commissioner McDaniel for being there. Vice Chair Hill asked about the Vrbo agreement. Do you have any details? Mr. Beirnes said he made a phone call at 5 p.m. Thursday and was able to get some information, but he'll dig deeper into the details. Apparently, it's still forthcoming, although it was secured on February 1. Ms. Cox asked whether the hesitation to explore Florida has to do with the aftermath of the hurricane. She's concerned about all the reasons, such as the aftermath of the hurricane, Red Tide, floating seaweed blobs (the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt). She hears they're holding off and we're seeing a potential pending recession. The concern of people who are actively sourcing that is that we're not going to have availability or they're not going to be able to afford this destination. Vice Chair Hill we were a little concerned after Visit Florida didn't include us in their marketing right after the hurricane. Has that changed? They made a commitment to us 16 May 1 S, 2023 that once we were open and ready, they'd focus on that. Does anybody know if it's changed as far as marketing that we're back open after the hurricane? Mr. Beirnes told the TDC. • It was initially a two -tiered approach. • Visit Florida rallied around all those that did not have any hurricane impact and they're saying we're open for business. • Recently, there was the Weather Network investment. They invested in us for that. • Lee and Charlotte counties had initiatives to help get that word out. • Once it's in people's minds, it lingers. • Diversifying is another great example that really adhered to the same line after the pandemic. Initially, there were closed borders. Once that happened, the international visitors, UK and Germany, who are used to a price point, were encountering an irrationally high amount. They decided to sit on the sidelines and curtail a vacation to us, much like a meeting planner might go to another destination. • It gets highly competitive in the international platform. They all suddenly discovered Portugal and Spain. It was an hour -flight away. • It's much like the meetings we're now fighting to get back. We're doing the same thing with international visitation in the UK and Germany. It's going to be very difficult to sway people back from a very affordable vacation, much closer to home. Competition across the world is abundant. It just takes a little bit of that to let your guard down and lose market share, whether it's leisure, group or international. Vice Chair Hill congratulated Paul on his idea about Canada and the return that we're seeing from that. It was pretty insightful and he's glad it's working out. Mr. Beirnes said we've got everything lined up for strategy and now is when they will be booking for the spring -summer. School is about to let out. If we can fill May, June, July into August, Canadians don't go back to school until Labor Day. We will take every bit of that until that time. Ms. Becker thanked the staff for the increased communications in between our meetings. That helps us a lot. She noted they had three Executive Summaries that weren't identified. Mr. Beirnes said they print them out so you have them on your desk, but we didn't have them at the time we printed them. The last couple of times it has been a sprint getting them pushed through for all the approvals. We're up to 10 different desks for approval so we start camping out at people's doorsteps to push them through to get that done. It was Friday afternoon when they were published. 11. Tourism Staff Reports —Amanda Townsend [Ms. Townsend detailed a PowerPoint presentation on April visitation.] [There were no questions.] 17 May 15, 2023 12. Detailed Staff Reports Mr. Beirnes said we planned on having John Melleky detail the Arts & Culture Grants, but he'll be joining us next month. This month, the tourism staff reports are included. We weren't able to pivot anyone else in because we had a lot of traveling going on. 13. Next Scheduled Meeting Date/Location — 9 a.m. Monday, June 19, 2023 Collier County Government Center, Administration Building F, 3rd Floor, 3299 East Tamiami Trail, Naples There being no further business for the good of the County, the meeting was adjourned by order of the chairman at 11:23 a.m. COLLIER These minutes were approved by the Council on z'\-)y\� j � a,p�3 , (choose one) as presented, _(j _ or as amended 18 May 15, 2023 36.A.3 MINUTES OF THE COLLIER COUNTY TOURIST DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL MEETING Naples, Florida, May 15, 2023 LET IT BE REMEMBERED the Collier County Tourist Development Council, in and for the County of Collier, having conducted business herein, met on this date at 9 a.m. in a REGULAR SESSION in Building F of the Government Complex, Naples, Florida, with the following members present: Chairman: Commissioner Bill McDaniel Jr. Vice Chairman: Clark Hill Susan Becker Kathleen Brock Amanda Cox Councilor Jared Grifani Nancy Kerns Ed "Ski" Olesky Councilwoman Beth Petrunoff (excused) ALSO PRESENT: Paul Beirnes, Collier County Tourism Director Colleen Greene, Assistant County Attorney Buzzy Ford, Tourism Digital & Social Media Coordinator Marissa Baker, Manager, Paradise Coast Sports Complex Amanda Townsend, County Museums Director Packet Pg. 1844 May 15, 2023 36.A.3 Anyone who needs a verbatim record of the meeting may request a video recording from the Collier County Communications & Customer Relations Department or view it online. 1. Call to Order Chairman McDaniel called the meeting to order at 9 a.m. 2. Pledge of Allegiance The Pledge of Allegiance was recited. 3. Roll Call Mr. Beirnes said Ms. Petrunoff has an excused absence, a conflict with Naples City Council. A quorum of eight was established by members present in the board room. 4. Agenda and Minutes A. Changes and Approval of Today's Agenda Mr. Beirnes said the only change is Item 7B from Coastal Zoning. This was a late walk- on and was very important due to timeliness. We sent this to you as part of a separate email. Andy Miller will share the details. We also said we'd be going through the Arts & Culture Grants this month, but we wanted to make a few adjustments, so we will do those next month. This will be a short agenda. B. Approval of prior TDC Meeting Minutes Regular Meeting April 17, 2023 Ms. Kerns made a motion to approve the April 17, 2023, meeting minutes. Second by Ms. Becker. The motion passed unanimously, 8-0. 5. Presentations/Public Comment - (3 minutes each) [No public comments] A. Executive Director Update [Paul Beirnes] Mr. Beirnes reported that. • We continue to watch visitation. March had a bit of a wobble. • He's listened to TDC meetings for other counties and hears the same sentiment. It aligns with us, a collection of many things and nothing is really concerning. • They say Florida is in a state of politization. • ApriI stabilized itself. In May, we're running neck and neck with 2019, maybe a bit better. Comparing it to 2022 is a weird anomaly. That was a record -setting year. The last normal year was 2019 and we are exceeding that. • A lot of the numbers you're going to hear from our partners show a tremendous amount of uptick in seasonal traffic to our website that we haven't seen in previous years, so that bodes well for spring and summer. • Mr. Miller will speak about beach renourishment, which is going on now, fast and furious, and it is absolutely spectacular. The whole span from the pier up to Doctors Pass has been completed. If you had the opportunity to see them distribute 2 Packet Pg. 1845 36.A.3 May 15, 2023 sand 6-feet deep and 55-feet wide, it is a monumental overtaking. Mr. Miller will share how they've progressed, but it looks amazing. • DeInor Wiggins State Park reopens today at 8 a.m., with Parking Lot 1 and Parking Lot 2 only. It doesn't look or feel like it did before. For Parking Lots 3-5, a significant amount of restoration needs to happen. A lot of trees were impacted. • On Saturday, the tourism team (three employees) goes to San Antonio for IPW (International Pow Wow), the largest tourism conference, where the world's travel buyers gather. Air Canada vacations and British Airways vacations and others descend into one spot and every destination, theme park and hotel are there as a seller and we are a destination. This is speed dating on steroids. For about five days, our agenda is packed not only with media interviews, but also one-on-one locking in what destinations these buyers present to the public for the next year to two years, so it's pretty exciting for us. • In fiscal 2023, we had an uphill challenge with the erosion of our tourist development tax due to hotels being impacted. • The Ritz -Carlton beach property will be opening on July 6m • The county Tax Collector has secured a relationship with Vrbo as of February 1, so we will be collecting development taxes through Vrbo. • We are deep into our strategy and budget season. This is the time where we're proactively working through our numbers, but simultaneously, the CVB every year, starting in March or April, builds its strategy for fiscal year 2024. We have pretty much completed the first phases. • In July, we'll hold a town hall marketing summit meeting with all our partners to make sure that they are seeing and hearing everything that we are expecting for fiscal 2024 and ensure sure we're not missing anything. The next step is bringing it before the TDC and then the BCC. • A couple of years ago, we secured a relationship with Zartico. This gave us the opportunity to not entirely rely on intercept surveys of just the people who were willing to answer questionnaires, but also to track behavior through digital movement within the destination. We geofenced the location of pickleball and we are able to determine the visitors' dynamics. Are they Iocals? Are they in -state? Are they domestic visitors from the Northeast? We really to try to understand what their impact is when somebody comes into the market and attends an event like the Minto U.S. Open Pickleball Championships. • Chris Evan, Terri Graham and Mike Dee will go through more of the color commentary and the dynamics of what happened at the U.S. Open. • The event took place April 15-22 and it was a spectacular weather week. There was only one night where it rained, on Sunday, which gave them a bit of extra work drying courts in the morning. • [Detailing a PowerPoint presentation.] Zartico determines that will anybody that lives -over 30 miles away is considered a visitor because any less than that we will assume that they come, they consume and they go back home. There are certain parameters we apply. They must spend two hours within that geofence, which is where the East Naples Community Park is, where the U.S. Open took place. • 69% of all attendees were visitors, so he put in parentheses those who resided outside of that bullseye to compare it to last year, which was the first year where things started feeling a little normal. The year prior was still affected by COVID 3 Packet Pg. 1846 May 15, 2023 36.A.3 and there wasn't a lot of a lot of travel. Of those 69% of attendees, 60% were out- of-state visitors. That compares to 7 1 % the previous year, so looking at that, 85% of those visitors stayed overnight compared with 80% the previous year, so there's some uptick. • Estimated attendance for local residents is 12,120 with an additional out e# 27,380 total visitors out -of -market. FEW 410SL' E)Ut Of Fill_ iet, wWhen you look at those combined numbers, the 39,500 for this year compared to just a little under 34,000 last year, it's not unique individuals. If somebody comes on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, they would count as three. This is attendance at the event. Ms. Kerns asked how visitor spending was compared to the week immediately before that. Mr. Beirnes said Zartico provides a lot of information, but you can't compare apples to apples. If there are no other contributing factors, he'd be focusing on spending, but when you schedule the event the week right after Easter, you have a weird influence of Easter, so we have all the people coming in to spend time with family. Even last year, they were saying the following week was higher and he noted that it was Easter. Then they compared it to two weeks earlier and that was spring break. If this was all in September, it would be like a level playing field. There are too many waves of influence. Mr. Beirnes continued his presentation: • The local number was almost perfectly flat last year and this year had a little more undulation on one day. When we started dissecting that, we realized there was a tremendous amount of volunteers who park cars, who are line judges or they flip hamburgers. Based on what you'll see in some of the fluctuations, we probably attracted more local fans because we saw more waves. • Visitor origin: 61% of the visitors to the event were from out-of-state and visitors who came from out of market totaled 91 %. • Where do they come from? Tampa and Naples, Indianapolis, Topeka. They must have a lot of pickleball players. It's interesting to see these little anomalies happen. • On Thursday, you see a little bit of a dip. People probably came in and were practicing and there were some initial tournaments where they got eliminated. • There's a blip on the weekend of finals. There's a video that's like watching an ant farm and it color codes who is local. You can see visitors going back to the hotel at night or going to Fifth Avenue South for restaurants at night, so they are investing within the community. • You can see they visited points of interest, such as Celebration Park, Mercato Shops, Naples Beach, and the Villlage Shops at Venetian Bay, so they are definitely spending here. • We will have a little more spending data in the next month or two. It takes time for that spend to come back in, but for timeliness, we wanted to make sure that we aligned with Chris and Terri to be able to give a recap. • What the map allows us to do is track spending and travel around the destination. We see where they're going and can have different conversations with those potentially from in -state to try to encourage them to do more, so this is not just data for consumption, it's data for action. • [He detailed portions of the color -coded map showing where visitors went.] • We're already seeing they're spending more money on accommodations. We saw that last year. Some of the hotels they were staying in were upscale hotels, so we'll 4 Packet Pg. 1847 May 15, 2023 36.A.3 start seeing a little more of that behavior being a little more actionable in the next couple of months. • The geofence shows they're spending in Naples a little less time than the rest of the North Naples area. In the Everglades, they're taking excursions and going down there when there are breaks to see what's there. • The Naples shoreline shows they're enjoying a bit of R&R and going to Fifth Avenue South. • Chris and Terri will provide more detail. B. Presentation of 2023 Minto U.S. Open Pickleball Recap [Terri Graham and Chris Evon, Spirit Promotions, provided a highlights video and PowerPoint presentation.] Ms. Becker said she was surprised at the statistics that showed how few people patronized food establishments. It was way down, like 3%. Could it be that you're providing so much food at the event? It seemed out of character. Mr. Beirnes said he saw that, but they won't know until we get more articulate information on spending. It's historically higher on Fifth Avenue South after events. More reliable data will come through. Ms. Evon said if you visited the restaurants that week, you couldn't get in. Celebration Park is always there, but the restaurants were just jammed and there were so many people in (pickleball) shirts running around Naples. Ms. Becker said she saw families too, especially a number of families from California, which wasn't listed there, but she saw them. Ms. Graham told the TDC: • You may have heard that she and Chris merged with a company in January. • We were growing so fast and it was just the two of us. We recognized that to keep up with social media and to get the word out, we have strengths, but also a lot of weaknesses and we needed to find somebody, so we merged with Pickleball4America. • Mike Dee and his business partner Bob Bowman came to us last year, a week before the U.S. Open and we were too busy to talk, but she and Chris were intrigued. • They have an extensive professional sports background, which intrigued us. If they can run the Boston Red Sox, they can probably help us out with the U.S. Open Pickleball Championships. • They came on board December 30. After driving through Tennessee, she and Chris signed the papers and they kind of stayed in the rearview mirror this year because we had so much going on. • They helped us with those video walls. They're very expensive video walls and they came on board with that, and we expect some great things out of them in the future. They're also doing a ballpark series. Mike Dee told the TDC: • Terri and Chris have done outstanding work. Packet Pg. 1848 May 15, 2023 36.A.3 • This tournament is the gold standard in the sport of pickleball, which attracted us to wanting to be a part of it. • Naples truly is the mecca of pickleball, which has been around since 1965. In the first 50 years, it was principally a sport played in driveways and casually. In 2015, when Terri and Chris had the great vision to start the U.S. Open here, that really started the second half -century of pickleball. When the book is written on that 50- year period, chapter one will be Collier County, so you should all be proud of that and what collectively and collaboratively has been built. • What is a true private -public partnership? We aspire to be one of the premier companies in the sport of pickleball. The U.S. Open is at the core of that. • We are launching a ballpark series this summer. He worked in Major League Baseball for years, as did his co-founder, Bob Bowman. Both of us are Collier County residents. We'll be at Fenway Park, Oracle Park in San Francisco, and four other ballparks with a pickleball festival concept. • We met with Paul on Friday and extended the opportunity for Collier County and the CVB to be a marketing partner to extend the brand of the U.S. Open as we traveled to those cities. Some of those are really good origin markets for Collier County travel. • We're looking forward to the future. We have a conversation coming up with the County Manager and the Board of Commissioners for a continuation of our lease. The current lease expires after the 2024 event. But we're fully committed to making the U.S. Open a fixture in Collier County for many years. • It's an honor to be here. Thanks for all you've done, and we look forward to working with you in the future. 6. Consent Agenda All matters listed under this agenda item are routine and action will be taken by one motion without separate discussion on each item. If discussion is desired by a member of the TDC, those items will be moved from the Consent Agenda and considered separately under New Business or Old Business. A. Tourism Division Recommendation that the Board approve the early termination of the Interlocal Agreement with the City of Naples for leased office space for the Collier County Film Office at the Norris Center and authorize the County Manager or her designee to sign the written notice of the intent to terminate. Vice Chair Hill made a motion to recommend approving the early termination of the Interlocal Agreement with the City of Naples for leased office spare for the Collier County Film Office at the Norris Center and authorize the County Manager or her designee to sign the written notice of the intent to terminate. Second by Councilor Grifoni. The motion passed unanimously, 8-0. 7. New Business A. Recommendation to approve a proposal from Humiston & Moore Engineers to provide professional engineering services for state -required Annual Monitoring of Collier County Beaches and Inlets for 2023 under Contract No. 18-7432-CZ for time n Packet Pg. 1849 May 15, 2023 36.A.3 and materials not to exceed $78,532 and make a finding that this item promotes tourism (Fund 195, Project No. 90536). Mr. Miller told the TDC: • We do annual monitoring, surveying beaches, to find out where erosion occurred. • This year, we had some special circumstances, obviously due to the hurricane. We did a post -storm survey in January to get an idea about storm -related erosion and we've had six months between then and now. • We've obviously changed the beaches significantly by putting 400,000 tons of sand on, so probably at the end of this week, we plan to complete post - construction surveys of our engineered beaches — Vanderbilt, Pelican Bay and Naples Beach — to see what we've lost after we put the sand back on the beach. • At the same time, we'll be getting Humiston & Moore to look at that data and make a recommendation for a potential renourishment project here between November and next turtle season. • If you look at last year's effort for the same item, the cost is significantly lower because we're doing the survey as we speak, as we're under construction. Vice Chair Hill made a motion to approve it. Ms. Becker said we were first presented with this last month and the cost was $52,000 and now it's $78,532. Mr. Miller said what happened was that the last proposal before the TDC did not include the annual monitoring for the beaches themselves and included the inlets and South Marco Beach. It didn't include Naples Beach, Vanderbilt and Pelican Bay. When the storm happened and all the emergency orders were flying around, the FDEP told us that the monitoring for the beaches was not going to be required this year due to the special circumstances. We realized after -the -fact that we need to know where we're going to do a renourishment project this fall, so we told Humiston & Moore to go back and revise the proposal to include the monitoring report and the recommendation for the project, so that's the additional cost. Ms. Becker said she'd second the motion. Chairman McDaniel asked if it would be a benefit to our community to have a recommendation from those that are actually doing this physical study of our beaches to solicit the FDEP to explore alternative sand sites for us so that we can move away ultimately from the hopper -dredge process. Mr. Miller said he didn't understand his question because they don't typically do a hopper -dredge project unless it's a major project. Chairman McDaniel said he didn't ask the question properly. One of his largest frustrations after being a beach -sand producer himself is the relegation to these far-off offshore sand sites that require a hopper dredge for us to utilize if we choose and then we don't choose to do that, because it's extraordinarily expensive. Then we go to inland sand sites and inland sand sources and do trucking. That impacts our infrastructure, so would it be beneficial to work with consultants that are actually doing the studies to make recommendations of alternative sand sources? We redid Tigertail Beach and the dredge VA Packet Pg. 1850 May 15, 2023 36.A.3 process for all the sand pumped onto Tigertail Beach came from county beaches. So could we consider trying to get off sand sources that are so far away and require an enormously expensive process to bring it to a beach? Mr. Miller said we've talked about this before. One of our consultants thinks there's a gap in the data between what's offshore with 30 miles on the T1T2 sites and what's closer that's available in the 1,000-foot range offshore, so there's probably at least a five - mile gap in between the source or the data. We've asked the consultant to approach the FDEP, the Army Corps and NOAA, etc., to help us get the resolution of the data in that area completed. We are moving in that direction and yes, your point is well taken. Chairman McDaniel said when we do our hard -bottom study and all the other enormous amounts of studies that we do for our beaches, he's going to come at this again. We can't do anything without doing a study. We hire a consultant to do a study, so he wants to come at this from every angle possible so that someday someone wakes up and realizes there are alternatives and sources that aren't going to negatively impact, and we can more regularly renourish beaches and not be put into the circumstances that we have right now, so thanks for indulging him. Does anyone have questions? Vice Chair Hill asked for clarification. We're putting a lot of sand on the beach right now and that's the berm project. How will that impact the regular renourishment project in terms of the amount of sand that's in the expense that's going to go into the renourishment project? Mr. Miller said we hope that 400,000 tons of sand built as a berm will redistribute itself over time and fill in what we call the engineered beaches and maybe save us some efforts related to renourishment this fall. Our people are working round the clock, getting berms built and trying to complete the project. We would appreciate a break for this fall and winter, so we're going to be doing a post -construction survey to find out where any additional gaps in our beaches are. If we have a renourishment project in the fall -winter, it's more than likely going to be a smaller effort then. Chairman McDaniel noted that they put in 400,000 tons now, so hopefully we won't have to put so much more in later. Vice Chair Hill made a motion to recommend approving a proposal from Humiston & Moore Engineers to provide professional engineering services for state -required Annual Monitoring of Collier County Beaches and Inlets for 2023 under Contract No. 18-7432-CZfor time and material not to exceed 578,532 and made a finding that /Iris item promotes tourism. Second by Ms. Becker. The motion passed unanimously, 8-0. B. Recommendation to approve a proposal from Taylor Engineering Inc. to provide professional engineering services for the 2024 dune planting and exotic vegetation removal project at Barefoot, Vanderbilt, Park Shore, Naples and South Marco Island beaches for time and materials not to exceed $57,007 under Contract No. 18- 7432-CZ and make a finding that this item promotes tourism. Chairman McDaniel said he didn't see any mention of the Botanical Garden as a consultant for the plantings. He understands Taylor is doing the design, but as a county, we regularly consulted with the Botanical Garden to ensure the plantings are good for our environment, ongoing upkeep and maintenance, etc. Did he miss that? 8 Packet Pg. 1851 May 15, 2023 36.A.3 Mr. Miller said there is some language related to stakeholders. Taylor is working with stakeholders and stakeholders means the Botanical Gardens, the Native Plant Society and some homeowner associations along the beach, so we will have about a dozen stakeholders. Chairman McDaniel said he wanted to ensure that if anyone is listening, they've met with tremendous success consulting with the Botanical Garden on a regular basis to ensure that the plantings that we're doing anywhere — medians or any landscaping, Florida Friendly Fertilizer and irrigation look pretty. Ms. Kerns said she went to the beach a couple times at different locations and you could set your watch by the trucks going by. It was magical watching them. They have a job to do and did it well. She commended him for that work. Chairman McDaniel said we're doing a lot of management on the inside because these are inland sand sources. Dump trucks are coming from the central area, up in Lee County and Charlotte County and Collier County, at the mining sources that were delineated. He works regularly with the Shcriff's Department. We have ordinances in place to have commercial motor vehicular traffic stay in the right lane, out of the trucks' way, as they go from A to B. But once they come in, they're doing a really good job. They're not banging their tailgates and it's generally been a rather seamless process. Vice Chair Hill asked to clarify whether this is to approve the engineering work on the project. Is there an estimate on the project itself? Mr. Miller said the early estimates were for about 2 million plants, but we won't know until we get the designer on board and we work with various funding agencies, including FDEP, to see what money is available and whether it will be a major project. Vice Chair Hill asked if they lost a lot of mangroves and definitely need to get those replanted. Mr. Miller said he's not positive about the mangroves. We're more concerned about the berm itself. Chairman McDaniel said the mangroves were damaged in certain areas around Pelican Bay. We really didn't lose a lot. Some in Delnor-Wiggins State Park got whacked, but that's because of the lack of a beachhead. Councilor Grifoni made a motion to recommend approving a proposal from Taylor Engineering Inc. to provide professional engineering services for the 2024 dune planting and exotic vegetation removal project at Barefoot, Vanderbilt, Park Shore, Naples, and South Marco Island beaches for time and materials not to exceed $57,007 under Contract No. 18-7432-CZ and made a finding that this item promotes tourism. Second by Ms. Brock. The motion passed unanimously, 8-0. 8. Old Business None 9. Marketing Partner Reports These reports (Marketing Partner Reports - Downs & St. Germain Research; Paradise Advertising & Marketing, Inc.; Lou Hammond Group; Convention & Visitors Bureau PR L9 Packet Pg. 1852 May 15, 2023 36.A.3 Team; Collier County Tax Collector - tourist tax collections; Miles Partnership - Website Analytics, Digital & Social Media; Paradise Coast Sports Complex, and County Museums) are provided to TDC members on a digital link to the County Website. The Research Data Services report will be presented monthly, and the other reports will be presented at TDC meetings on an -as -needed basis. TDC members may request a presentation by the marketing partner representative or by tourism staff at each TDC meeting. Part 1. Marketing Partner Report A. Downs & St. Germain Research —Joseph St. Germain, president Mr. Beirnes said his favorite report involves research and Joseph has come down from Tallahassee. This is such a passionate project client for him. He's always available 24/7 and we're on the phone all the time. Every time we have him down here, it's a pleasure. [Mr. St. Germain detailed a PowerPoint presentation, April 2023 Monthly Dashboard.] Ms. Becker said when he mentioned the airports, you said RSW as opposed to Fort Myers. What did you mean? Mr. St. Germain said we work with other areas as well. We're at RSW and we pay attention to the answer about where they plan on going. We ask them where they're going. Are they going to Fort Myers or Charlotte County or Sarasota? We see a higher percentage going to the Fort Myers area and Collier County since the hurricane. Of the people flying into RSW, they're effectively more likely to be coming here as opposed to Fort Myers and Lee County, things of that nature. Ms. Becker noted that RSW reported a lessening of service. Mr. St. Germain said yes, it has, but the reason he mentioned that is because your flight numbers are going up whereas there's a lower number of travelers coming through. Because you have a higher percentage of them coming to you as opposed to other areas, that's why we saw a bit of an increase in terms of the percentage. Ms. Becker said she understood and thanked him. Vice Chair Hill said when the hard data becomes available, will you distribute that to us prior to the next meeting, the comparative occupancy STR data and visitation numbers? Mr. St. Germain said yes. Some of those comparative STR reports that come in the monthly report usually come out on the 17''. When we get it, we put it in the report and submit it to Paul. Vice Chair Hill said that would be good. Mr. St. Germain he doesn't have the information due to the timing, but will get it in two days. Ms. Cox said that comparative to 2019 versus 2022, which may be more relevant, is that normalization or is it a decline? When we get that data, if we can also do it, not just relative to last year, but relative to 2019, that would be amazing. Mr. St. Germain said we have overnight visitation back to 2019 in there and we also have hotel metrics in there. We delivered it Saturday. 10 Packet Pg. 1853 May 15, 2023 36.A.3 Mr. Beirnes said every week, he receives and sends staff a look at the STR Report against last year. He doesn't want to clog anyone's e-mails, but if he sees a collective nod and everybody is interested, he can add them to their staff report email. He sends it every Wednesday, and it's very digestible economic information. [Council members agreed they'd like to be added to the mailing list.] Chairman McDaniel noted that the data comes after the meeting because they moved their meetings up a week earlier, so we can at least make sure we exemplify the full month's data from the previous month. We're always looking at things in arrears anyway and being able to analyze a full set of data would be beneficial. Mr. Beirnes said the report he emails on Wednesdays includes not only what we saw right up until the previous Sunday as a recap, but he tries to add "Paul's crystal ball," what we expect to see next week. When we started going through April, he was able to say he expected to see a bit of erosion in the next couple of weeks because compared to last year, Easter was happening, so it's pretty good, and it can tell you if it's an anomaly that's going on or if there's an event going on. He provides that with an abundant amount of marketing and what we expect in the next couple of weeks. We either eat crow or celebrate together. B. Paradise Advertising — Luisa Laurelli, Account Director, Client Services Mr. Beirnes noted that they expect to see an increase in visitation in the coming weeks. [Ms. Laurelli detailed a PowerPoint presentation.] Ms. Becker asked what streaming service she was using. Ms. Laurelli said right now we're running on Peacock. That's the one that we also ran on Hulu last year but the results were just not what we were expecting, so currently we're running on Peacock. Ms. Cox said the RQA slide had great numbers. Your ADARA data is the observed data. Is that what we're using there? She wanted to call that out to council members because that doesn't include the GDS (global distribution system) data for the hotels. That 92,000 was later enriched to be closer to 800,000, so she doesn't disagree with it being reported this way because it's certainly very conservative, which is what we always want, but it's probably even better than that. Also, since we are newer to the TikTok space and trying to get the 100-plus followers, maybe it's something for Paradise Advertising and LHG to think about partnering with a TikTok influencer. Maybe you're doing that, but it would be a great, quick way to robustly grow that channel. Ms. Laurelli said she's glad she brought that up because at the next TDC meeting, she will be showing an influencer campaign we're going to be launching, the TikTok hits and new platform included in this scope of work. Nowadays, it's one of places that we want to be, but she appreciates the recommendation and is definitely taking notes. Mr. Beirnes thanked Louisa for pivoting after the abbreviated presentation for the TDC didn't get loaded correctly. That goes to show how much she is living these numbers by the hour. It's flawless. 11 Packet Pg. 1854 May 15, 2023 36.A.3 C. Lou Hammond Group — Mackenzie Comerer, VP PR [Ms. Comerer detailed a PowerPoint presentation, "Services Conducted in April 2023. " [No questions were asked.] Mr. Beirnes said Paradise Advertising and the Lou Hammond group are joined at the hip and we've got a significant amount of influencers that we've vetted. We've got a new vetting system, as far as integration, and some of them are extraordinary, so we're really looking forward to seeing that come through. Part 2. Marketing Partner Reports D. Collier County Tourist Tax Collections -- Paul Beirnes, Tourism Director Mr. Beirnes detailed a PowerPoint presentation and told the TDC: • There is a lag in some of these numbers. For instance, what we're seeing and analyzing is consumed rooms. These are heads and beds in February. • At the end of February, the hotels report to the Tax Collector the month following that. You're thinking about April, but there's a lag. • The red line, which is not bad, shows we are ahead of what our forecasted budget was for collections. • That collection nsumption of $7.2- or $7.3 million was pretty solid. If you remember January and February, we were doing pretty well and we started seeing a bit of a wobble in March and we've actually regained that. • What we're seeing is the $7.3 million, which is the second column on the top line, compared with $8.3 million last year at this time, so a 12% decline is not an enormous amount, considering how significant last year was and how we were still dealing with the results of the hurricane. • Our focus and strategy was to push spring and summer significantly. Miles Media will show some web traffic that's setting all-time records. That's an indication that what we're doing, priming the well, is working very well. • We're probably going to start seeing some gathering back of results come spring and summer, so we're pretty excited as we look forward. • Last week, we received some metrics from Canada's Weather Network, which was specifically pushing Canadians toward spring and summer. The network's partner had never seen numbers as high as what they saw and it set a benchmark, so that's a great indication. • As Joseph said, Canada has now reached our No. 1 international market, so we'll monitor that in the coming presentations. E. Miles Partnership — Enriqueta Balandra [Ms. Balandra detailed a PowerPoint presentation, "Paradise. com April 2023 ' ] [There were no questions.] 12 Packet Pg. 1855 36.A.3 May 15, 2023 Paradise Coast Sports Complex/Sports Facilities Companies J.P. Terrasi, Adrian Moses Mr. Moses detailed the April 2023 TDC Report: • We're reporting April today, but the financials will be from March because of the time lag. • April was a fairly busy month. We had a program in the first week that didn't operate as we wanted it to. It was a 7v7-flag football event but we still operated our regular schedule, which we call local programming. It's our capacity, when we can't take anymore for the fields that we have for the times that people are available to use the fields. • As we move out of the traditional sports soccer season, we're going to see some turnover in those fields with some different sports out there, so we're looking forward to that. z • During the second week last month, we had the Grove Church Easter Sunday c service followed by the Easter Egg Eggstravaganza. It was an unmitigated v success, with 3,500 people in the stadium. • We have for -profit sports tournament groups that come in weekly and operate their tournaments and sports, and then you have someone like a church come in c and just blow them out of the water when it comes to how organized they were. The production they put together was a fantastic event and we followed that up c with the Eggstravaganza Easter Egg community event, where numbers increased n from last year. We increased the size, which is a common theme for the facility. c • In weeks three and four, we had a medium- to large -size soccer tournament in ring three. We kicked off soccer. It attracted 92 teams, which required us to use North Collier Regional Park. We could have done the entire tournament at our N complex if we had access to the fields that aren't finished. • Our Movies in Paradise that month was canceled due to a thunderstorm at 6:58 E p.m.; the movie starts at 7 p.m. E • The following week, we had a huge soccer tournament, with 191 teams. The South Florida Soccer Cup & Showcase was operated by Tournament Success Group. They're incredibly successful with us and their tournaments always bring o 150 teams or more, which equates to $1.5- to $2 million of economic impact, per Z our calculations, and they have five tournaments with us each year. They're an extremely important partner for us. Every time we have one of their events, we do M extremely well. Cli • April was a strong month but led toward the normalization after the crazy in- 7; season months that we had, December through March, which are atypical. o • As we head into the summer months, there is some normalization and that shows ~ in April's financials, but we still went a lot over target, although we didn't go over by 150,000, as we have in other months, but we'll get there. E • One of the challenges we face over the summer is that we were given the a opportunity to have a revised target that we developed in January, when we a thought we were going to have more fields to book and we didn't know last year that we wouldn't have additional fields available to us, so we're still operating with the existing fields. • The challenge is that there are tournaments coming in that are expecting eight or nine fields, so we've opted for Plan B, which is to utilize North Collier Regional 13 Packet Pg. 1856 May 15, 2023 36.A.3 Park where possible. We're going to be using it for the Top Gun event in July. That increases our costs because we have to pay for North Collier Regional Park and it also damages our food and beverage sales because that increases our costs of having to operate over there. Operationally, it can be a headache, but we'll prevail and get through it. We've had bigger challenges. • For the upcoming events over the summer, it's a bit more of a normalization of what we're looking at for typical events, not the huge events that we've had in terms of the standalone events where we're spending a lot of money to purchase product to sell to large amounts of people. This is consistent business, which is going to be the bread and butter of what we do. • Coming up at the end of May is our Memorial Day Ceremony on Memorial Day morning. We've put that together in conjunction with Commissioner LoCastro and are encouraging everyone to come out and pay their respects. • He was at the Sports ETA Convention, (Sports Events & Tourism Association Convention) in Kansas last week, representing not just Paradise Coast, but the whole area and had extremely positive conversations with event owners and operators. • There may be people whose event doesn't match but it's good to have those conversations to know which events we want to go after or pass on. • One thing that was extremely positive was the enthusiasm from the Diamond Softball event operators to get into this market. It's important to note that the times of the year that these groups want to come into our market is in the summer months, when hoteliers have more ability to provide inventory for us and the rates aren't quite as high as they are in season. • The summer month period, where we see this normalization with the access to baseball and softball facilities, we will be able to have an extremely robust summer calendar. • [He showed images of the Grove Church Easter Sunday event.] As you can see, it is like a rock concert. • [He showed images of the South Florida Cup.] We had 203 soccer teams registered, but there was some erosion. • Our ongoing weekly events include food distribution by St. Matthew's House, which helps the community. • We're going to be having a naming of one of our gardens. We partner with Collier County Public Schools GATE interns, a greater achievement through work program in which we provide work experience to graduate -age students with learning disabilities. The garden will be renamed the Action Club Garden. That's going to be an area tended to by the interns and the Action Club, so we're extremely proud of them and to provide that opportunity. • Traffic is up from April of last year. It was an incredibly high revenue month. After April, we exceeded our annual revenue target with our events in April. [Mr. Terrasi provided a PowerPoint presentation on website traffic.] Ms. Cox said the traffic is obviously so much different. What is the strategy behind the three handles versus driving everyone to just the main Paradise Coast account? Mr. Terrasi said The Factory and The Cove have their own identities and they tried to establish that early on when they were first created. Prior to when our company got 14 Packet Pg. 1857 May 15, 2023 36.A.3 involved, they'd done that and those social media handles got some initial exposure and we lost contact on those, so they had to recreate them. We had to start from scratch. We've been talking with corporate about setting up a Google My Business account for each, so we can market them separately and specifically, so we can spend a bit more time and effort on those social media handles to make sure that they are entities themselves and people know to go there. Ms. Cox said that seems like you're outside looking in, a little decentralized. If the plan is to market all three as separate venues, it makes sense. If not, it seems a bit like we're competing with one another. But it sounds like you're already talking about that area. Mr. Terrasi said we're not competing with one another. It's part of the overall plan to spend time and effort and a bit of money to market them individually. Mr. Moses told the TDC. • The consistent feedback they got is that people don't know that the complex exists. • But if you talk to people in the sports community, everyone knows we're here, so there's a specific demographic that doesn't know about us and it's not necessarily the sports -playing demographic. • That's why we're going to specifically look at developing our programming into the new fiscal year with the development of the Great Wolf Lodge, to be able to make that a more community -based event facility. • We're not going to try to market everything. We going to shoot with a rifle, rather than a shotgun, when it comes to marketing locally. It will be focused on The Factory and on Paradise Coast. • There's no one in Collier County who will say they want to rent the place for a tournament, so we're going to market The Cove to tell people to come out to The Cove and enjoy the events we have there. Ms. Becker asked if the Legends Concert Series is moving to Paradise Cost. Can you tell us about that? Mr. Moses said we're excited about that. We identified the east lawn space for the Legends Concerts, which allows us to use the stadium for sporting events. They'll be every first Friday of the month as we get into the new season. Ms. Becker noted it wasn't in the stadium. Mr. Moses said no, it will be on the east lawn. That gives us the opportunity to use the stadium for something else. That would have taken the stadium out of play the next day and we need it for sports events and tournaments, so we're Iooking forward to it. [Mr. Terassi continued his PowerPoint presentation.] Councilor Grifoni asked about the status of the fields. What's the hold up and when are they anticipated to go live? Ms. Baker said she currently doesn't have an update on the field status. We were told May, so she doesn't have an official answer. She can find out and contact him. Councilor Grifoni asked, What's preventing access to those fields? 15 Packet Pg. 1858 May 15, 2023 36.A.3 Mr. Beirnes said whenever you build a major facility, there's a back and forth with the builders and the county. There's a lot of discussion and close out of the books, so they're having that discussion. We believe it will be sooner rather than later. 10. Council Member Discussion Ms. Cox told the TDC. • She saw Lisa's update in the staff member reports. It's interesting. In the past couple of months, she's been in the meeting planner community and has talked to many people who have indicated they've not included Florida on their recent search because they assume particularly beautiful destinations like ours are not going to have availability. • That's because of what we've told them for the last two years, either because we actually didn't have availability for their meeting or event, or we preferred to yield our rooms to higher -rated leisure business. • It's important in our upcoming newsletters or travels to make it clear that we are open for meetings and event business. We're certainly going to need it during the summer months and as we see some of this softening for all the reasons you discussed, so it's just a disappointing sentiment that she wanted to share so we can make sure we're overt in the alternate position. Mr. Beirnes agreed she was right. Over the last couple of years, it was an interesting, yin and yang, whether hotels wanted to take the groups, whether they had the staffing for the groups, whether they were able to get better yields from leisure. It's a dangerous tightrope to walk. You want to be the most profitable, but in the end, people start to shy away. We're hoping word gets out quickly that they can come back, especially when Joseph mentioned the numbers are starting to normalize and retreat and we're not getting the ridiculous 2023 numbers that were coming from leisure visitors. Ms. Brock thanked Amanda Townsend for her great presentation at the Everglades on May 8. That was really inspirational for everybody. She thanked Commissioner McDaniel for being there. Vice Chair Hill asked about the Vrbo agreement. Do you have any details? Mr. Beirnes said he made a phone call at 5 p.m. Thursday and was able to get some information, but he'll dig deeper into the details. Apparently, it's still forthcoming, although it was secured on February 1. Ms. Cox asked whether the hesitation to explore Florida has to do with the aftermath of the hurricane. She's concerned about all the reasons, such as the aftermath of the hurricane, Red Tide, floating seaweed blobs (the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt). She hears they're holding off and we're seeing a potential pending recession. The concern of people who are actively sourcing that is that we're not going to have availability or they're not going to be able to afford this destination. Vice Chair Hill we were a little concerned after Visit Florida didn't include us in their marketing right after the hurricane. Has that changed? They made a commitment to us 16 Packet Pg. 1859 May 15, 2023 36.A.3 that once we were open and ready, they'd focus on that. Does anybody know if it's changed as far as marketing that we're back open after the hurricane? Mr. Beirnes told the TDC. • It was initially a two -tiered approach. • Visit Florida rallied around all those that did not have any hurricane impact and they're saying we're open for business. • Recently, there was the Weather Network investment. They invested in us for that. • Lee and Charlotte counties had initiatives to help get that word out. • Once it's in people's minds, it lingers. • Diversifying is another great example that really adhered to the same line after the pandemic. Initially, there were closed borders. Once that happened, the international visitors, UK and Germany, who are used to a price point, were encountering an irrationally high amount. They decided to sit on the sidelines and curtail a vacation to us, much like a meeting planner might go to another destination. • It gets highly competitive in the international platform. They all suddenly discovered Portugal and Spain. It was an hour -flight away. • It's much like the meetings we're now fighting to get back. We're doing the same thing with international visitation in the UK and Germany. It's going to be very difficult to sway people back from a very affordable vacation, much closer to home. Competition across the world is abundant. It just takes a little bit of that to let your guard down and lose market share, whether it's leisure, group or international. Vice Chair Hill congratulated Paul on his idea about Canada and the return that we're seeing from that. It was pretty insightful and he's glad it's working out. Mr. Beirnes said we've got everything lined up for strategy and now is when they will be booking for the spring -summer. School is about to let out. If we can fill May, June, July into August, Canadians don't go back to school until Labor Day. We will take every bit of that until that time. Ms. Becker thanked the staff for the increased communications in between our meetings. That helps us a lot. She noted they had three Executive Summaries that weren't identified. Mr. Beirnes said they print them out so you have them on your desk, but we didn't have them at the time we printed them. The last couple of times it has been a sprint getting them pushed through for all the approvals. We're up to 10 different desks for approval so we start camping out at people's doorsteps to push them through to get that done. It was Friday afternoon when they were published. 11. Tourism Staff Reports — Amanda Townsend [Ms. Townsend detailed a PowerPoint presentation on April visitation.] [There were no questions.] 17 Packet Pg. 1860 36.A.3 May 15, 2023 12. Detailed Staff Reports Mr. Beirnes said we planned on having John Melleky detail the Arts & CuIture Grants, but he'll be joining us next month. This month, the tourism staff reports are included. We weren't able to pivot anyone else in because we had a lot of traveling going on. 13. Next Scheduled Meeting Date/Location — 9 a.m. Monday, June 19, 2023 Collier County Government Center, Administration Building F, 3rd Floor, 3299 East Tamiami Trail, Naples There being no further business for the good of the County, the meeting was adjourned by order of the chairman at 11:23 a.m. COLLIER These minutes were approved by the Council on ::Y\-)n�- j q, a,p�3 , (choose one) as presented,_ or as amended E a� a� a� E c w z 0 co M N LO r ci G H _ d E s 0 �a Q 18 Packet Pg. 1861