Agenda March 26th

1. Follow up on prior meeting

Heritage DB Questions?
Bicycle Tour of Colo Questions?
Calendar Questions?
Barb Wade to show San Juan Skyway concept
Barb Wade to show Montrose Press / Plain Dealer insert (VFRs)
Barb Wade to show Historical Walking Tour concept
Other?

2. New Business

Branding Continuation --> Catchy Slogans?
Ralph to discuss his ideas
Karen To show her idea
Others?

Are they platitudes? Do they evoke emotion?

3. Other New Business

PR Professional -- Discussion --> Press Releases and Media Tours

4. Want buy in for local ad campaign -- Montrose Press, Plaindealer, Telluride Watch, Telluride Airport 30 seconds

Meeting Minutes - March 19th

1) Southwest Travel Region Update:
Discussed the meeting and in particular the historical database. We are in need of a champion that will recruit the volunteers necessary to get Ouray's assets into this database.

Karen to send out login info and .pdf copy of pages and latest Quality Standards to group so that we know what is required for each page. We also need to get into contact with Historical Preservation Committee for City.

Will provide Tom Hillhouse, Jim Opdahl and Ralph Huesing to the SW Travel Region so that they can contact them about the 18K in grant money.

SWCTR is coming to Ouray for next get together. Will contact Mel and try to get meeting at Wright Opera House.

Scenic Byway: Must contact Ken Francis to see if he would pay for some signage. We want a Scenic Byway sign AND America Byway signs on both sides of town (North = at the Welcome to Ouray sign and South= at or near the SOA sign). ---- Followup -- I talked with Charlie Berger (Beautification) and he is going to talk to CDOT at meeting on March 28th about getting those signs posted. The signage is free according to Charlie. He thinks there are existing poles where they could be placed...

2) Ralph and Joyce gave a Retail Report.
6 Galleries
4 Jewelery Stores
5 working artisans

He commented about wanting the VG in 2009 to make shopping, ARts & Culture more prominent. All his comments were well received and Ralph will be a member of the VC Committee next year.

3) Feast Update
148 paid admissions, 8 students. 40 people came from out of town. They are coming again next march.

4) VFRs-- Joyce introduced the "Ouray Hosts" program Idea. Discussion around feasibility and implementations... Need more time to discuss / hash out.

Events - We do not do enough to recognize any events. We are going to get someone to work with / contact event organizers. We want the imogenerun.com to link back to ouraycolorado.com, we want banners welcoming runners.

Discussed Bicycle Tour of Colorado logistics. Rick to send out all he knows on topic to group. We will have to make sure that Restaurants know how many people and times to be ready. The Chamber ED might be able to assist in some of this coordination.

Karen to get with Beautification to see where we stand on getting banners across the roads-- they do not have poles going in right now but Charlie will talk to CDOT when they meet in March (3/28) about what it takes. Charlie also offered that they used to have poles and banners but they don't exist now. Mike Kern might be a good person to talk to as there were some issues with banners tearing when Semis went through town and the back draft rustled them.

Plastic Bags - we need to figure out how to get free stuff to put in them & we need to stuff them.

Proposed Packages for Coloradoinfo.com:

Family, Romantic, Adventure, Fall Foliage --> Joyce showed the details of each package and then we agreed that we were going to offer less and do two emails... one in September and one in mid-April.

Ouray Open House: --> Increase awareness in immediate region about shops, restaurants, and lodging, organizations and volunteer opportunities... Didn't discuss much.


Calendar discussion

Categories were agreed upon: Classes & Clinics
Music, Arts & Culture
Community
Social Events
Pool Closings
US Holidays

People that will have access to update events are Weehawken, OCPEG, Elks, Rick & Chambers. Others will funnel items through the Chamber.

Barb to start to meet with others to ensure proper training.

Videophilia

Watch this video. It could be a serious Threat to our success in marketing our destination.



There is a ton of information on this study at this website.

Click on the Media Link.

Byways Information

Link for great information on America's Byways:

http://www.bywaysresourcecenter.org

They have great information on grants, collecting information, marketing. Definitely worth reading at your leisure.

Random thoughts at 3am

Many places have historic buildings. But, the visitor asks:

1) What is worthy of my time?
2) Can I get there and back safely?
3) Will I have fun?

It takes engaging interpretation and quality packaging to turn Ouray's heritage assets into visitor ready experiences. Without such assets heritage assets will remain mute and under appreciated by locals.

Challenges & Opportunities

1) There is increased reliance on new modes of information gathering and decision making including: social networks, personal recommendations, online opinions, independent guidebooks, and amateur travel writers.

2) Conveying themes in a way that makes sense to a visitor



Historic Interpretation

1) buy books online from ocra site (or business member)


Sales Pitches

1) Identify prospective visitors before they make the travel plans and shape communications and information delivery to prompt interest in coming to Ouray first and foremost and then influencing their length of stay



Tracking Visitors

1) Track past visitors and invite their return, especially during shoulder seasons
2) Requested info from Kathy Elmont on Pool Visitation



Benefits

1) Tourism is a low impact form of economic development that delivers quality of life benefits as well as jobs and wages.


Online & Electronic Media

Electronic communication tools offer terrific value: they are cheap and effective
Travelers are using the web as a primary information source
Strategies:

• Take advantage of permission based marketing (marketing that includes obtaining customer consent to receive information from us) via the web. A simple tactic such as sending a gorgeous photo via email without an advertising message can evoke powerful nostalgia and yearning
• ouraycolorado.com --> eye towards thematic --> reduce visual clutter
• Roam internet, track how travel sites are presenting Ouray. Review blogs, shops, photo sites, wikipedia are presenting positive perspective

PR Tactics

• Finding travel writers -- Join organizations like "International Federation of Travel Writers" or other trade organizations to gain access to members contact information and stay abreast of the trade.
• prweb.com

Other

• Hospitality skills training
• Ouray product training
• Local brochure development for Montrose Press
• Leading indicators, lagging indicators???
• Annual surveys of visitors? ways to collect data annually, share data, reporting trends to members --> requires long term commitment to repository.
• How to distinguish from day trippers & overnighters
• http://wrdc.usu.edu -- has downloadable guides on measuring and assessing impacts of tourism on local communities

Infrastructure

Visitors who can easily navigate to their destinations, even in difficult terrain, and who receive polite and enthusiastic service from hospitality workers, remember their trips as pleasant sojourns. Those for whom visitor centers provide all they expect--well organized information on attractions, ticket information, and clean bathrooms--will return in the future, affording Ouray repeat opportunities to guide their activities and extend their stays. Even more importantly, good experiences create strong, happy trip memories and generate positive word-of-mouth referrals to Ouray, just a surely as misleading directions and rude service translate into complaints shared with friends and family.


Training for Front-line Hospitality Workers
Front-desk staff, cashiers, gas station attendants, and others who don't smile or can't answer simple questions about local attractions accurately alienate visitors and prompt them to move on concluding there is nothing to do. Successful hospitality training is fun, paid staff activity and free for businesses. Key actions with this strategy are:

• Free admissions for front-line staff to area attractions
• "Be a tourist in your own town" day
• Trivia contests, treasure hunts to get folks to do homework
• Invite visitors to identify especially helpful people and celebrate their good service

Attraction/Asset Packaging

0) What are the Top Primary Attractions? What are the Top Secondary Attractions?
1) What attractions are unique to your community?
2) How do primary attractions fit together? Do they create a strong unifying theme or does the attraction diversity lack a central focus?
==================================================================


1) What is the primary attraction package for Ouray?
2) Does your attraction package appeal to a particular market niche?
3) Are there any major concerns with increasing visitors to these attractions?

Agenda March 12th

1) Calendar Details -- Barb Wade to discuss progress with groups, answer questions
2) Ralph to share his survey idea with group so that we can start to get that into place to see how effective our Basecamp Ouray email blast has been. We won't send out the questionnaire now, but, will wait a few months. It is going to help us focus our Ouray Introduction to potential visitors.
3) Need someone to coordinate with coloradoinfo.com so that we can get a newsletter out to their list in Late April, Early May.
4) Going back to our asset rankings... need to address timelines where we have ideas or things we need to improve... we also need to package our best assets together.
5) We need to start to look at our Competition and what they offer that we don't. To that end, I am bringing a bunch of collateral materials to the meeting and want folks to take some time to look at it. What we are focusing on here is "What is Ouray's Competitive Edge".

We will hopefully have some lovely prose from Lora that summarizes our chart so far.

Thanks!
Karen

Meeting Minutes March 5th

Attendees: Lora, Barb Wade, Sarah Sharp, Susie Opdahl, Karen Avery, Ralph Huesing.

1) Went over the calendar with some details. There is more to work out, but, the basic elements are there. You can view it on http://www.ouraycolorado.com/Calendar
as it is live. Barb will be in contact with various groups on how to use in the next week or so. She is also working color coding. We are really trying to make it the Community Calendar.

2) Talked about Basecamp Ouray Email. Ralph suggested that we come up with a survey to send to folks after a few months to determine if they ever came to Ouray or Colorado to see how much the leads from colorado.com help find tourists. Ralph is going to take a stab at creating that survey now.

3) We still need someone to coordinate with coloradoinfo.com so that we can get a newsletter out with them in Late April, Early May.

4) We ranked attractions/assets on the worksheet. I have some work to do to get the seasonality loaded. We will go through that list next week, pick the assets we plan to "package", address timelines where we have ideas or things that need to be improved.

Thanks for coming!

Agenda March 5th

Hi,

We have to finish up some work that has been delayed.

1) Competition

We need to complete the map more fully. Right now, we have a list of locations. We need to think about what are the strengths and weaknesses of our competition and get those mapped. In this brainstorming session, we are really trying to help figure out what is our competitive edge. In towns that are like us, how are we unique? In places where we do not look the same, what do they have as weaknesses that we could use as strengths?


2) Classification of Assets:
Primary - Influence a traveler's decision
Secondary - enhance tourist experience but not part of selection process

Few attractions stand alone. Most travelers have limited time so they try to combine as much as possible in to one destination visit. The drawing power tends to be stronger when there are a bunch of attractions that are complementary... "Attractions Package"

For each attraction (Asset), we need to assess :

• Attraction Quality -- Good, visitor friendly condition? How does it rate in areas of appearance, hospitality, operations?
  
• 4=Superior
• 3=Good
• 2=Average
• 1=Poor
• Authenticity - Does the attraction reflect the cultural or economic heritage of the community?
  
• 4=Authentic
• 3=Somewhat Authentic
• 2=Minimally Authentic
• 1=Not Authentic at all
• Uniqueness - Is it unique in a 150 - 300 mile radius?
  
• 4=National/Int'l Significance
• 3=Regional Attraction
• 2=Average
• 1=Lots of similar sites
• Drawing Power - what geographic area do/will the customers come from?
  
• 4=Multi-state
• 3=Metropolitan Area
• 2=Regional
• 1=Local & Adjacent
• Activities - Are there varying and changing set of activities?
  
• 4=Lots of Activities
• 3=Some Activity Options
• 2=A few activity options
• 1=No activity Options
  

I will have a worksheet to use during this process.

We also need to discuss some procedural items:

1) Assignments of writing
2) Research outside of the meeting
3) Calendar Follow-up

Meeting Minutes February 27th

I showed a link to http://www.durango.org. They have a great calendar site I thought and so we talked about how interesting it is to have the filters.

I then demonstrated a way that we can use google calendar. We could filter calendar print outs by group / category. The implementation looked very promising. The group was very positive and thought that this method would really work. There are many details to get worked out in terms of process and we will need some sort of outreach so that we can get all the groups involved. Lora and Barb were to discuss technical details with Caleb.

An aside:
-------------
Many of the technical details have been worked out. Caleb has a working prototype in a development environment but it needs a smidge more work and Barb is writing the "How Tos" so that we can get everyone playing. She is setting up the necessary permissions, etc. to get this done. Within the next week or so, this will be operational is what we think.

Thanks Caleb, Barb, and Lora. Barb will update us at the next meeting in more detail.

We discussed further psychographics and what need we were fulfilling. I will send out the brainstorms shortly.

The Folks from CAC came by and discussed the program they do for us on our behalf. They run coloradoinfo.com, coloradosummerinfo.com, and coloradowinterinfo.com. On a typical day, they have 650 unique site visitors. They send out a newsletter to their email list. This service is free (sort of) and requires time and energy and giveaways to make it happen.

I think we need 2 people to get with Rennie and get one out in late April or Early May. I would be willing to put up some lodging or maybe Lora would too. Perhaps we can get some tickets to the museum, a couple of pool passes and put together a weekend getaway. Who will volunteer to get this done?

CAC also distributes our Ouray Visitor's Guide in DIA, along the I-70, and I-25 corridors, at trade shows. They provided the statistics in a handout.

Meeting adjourned.