Bull City Mutterings

Going Dual!

2010-03-19T11:34:00.001-04:00

I’ve been trying over the last five years to focus home improvements on saving energy and especially water after the drought a few years back.

One I did recently should win the favor of Council Member Diane Catotti, already a friend and someone I admire and appreciate. I already had low flow toilets but working with Ben Franklin Plumbing here in Durham, I had them retrofitted to be “dual-flush.”

This means the handle swings up for a #1 flush and uses half the water that a down flush des for #2. Works just as promised.

It will take a while to recoup the cost. As it has with better high efficiency faucets, shower heads, rain harvesting, drip irrigation and other measures like an on-demand water heater, front loading, high efficiency washer and dual fuel HVAC etc.

I’m just hoping codes are being updated to require these innovations in all new construction.

But I’m listening on talk radio right now to people who insist it is their right to go around without health insurance (or auto insurance I assume) and thus the public (you and me) should pick up the costs when they or their family members have accidents or disease.

I wouldn’t even want to approach such people on their right to use all of the water they want, pollute the air when they want and have the rest of us pick up the tab.

You can tell we’re a pretty “spoiled” society when some of us argue their right to do things that take the rights of the rest of us away…when we have to bail them out. That’s pretty much the value of government. Doing things or requiring things for the good of the whole that aren’t practical for the private sector or volunteers alone.

But the same guy asserting his right not to have health insurance would probably argue that we could do without the road system or create and maintain it with volunteers and donations.

Two Minutes of Advice – Thirty Years Later

2010-03-19T10:28:00.001-04:00

Funny how small acts of kindness can have a significant impact on your life. I’m indebted to a 30 year friendship.

Just out of his teens, Rolf Klug emigrated to Canada from Germany after WWII. He had spent the war in the countryside with relatives watching the sky light up when his home town of Koeln (then aka Cologne) was bombed.

He made his way across Canada to Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory and started a VW dealership just as VW was taking off on this continent and back when VW also carried Porsches.

He sold that and moved across the border to Anchorage, Alaska to build an AVIS car rental franchise and that’s where I met him. He was a decade older and vice chairman of the board of the Anchorage Convention & Visitors Bureau and on the interview team when I was recruited just as I was turning 30, to go there in 1978 from Spokane WA.

My early years in Anchorage were times of nationwide double digit inflation, double digit mortgage rates and back then, at least in Alaska, salaries were trying to keep pace. One of the cool things about natural resource-rich Alaska, at least then, was the the even greater value placed on people and ideas as a resource.

Rolf volunteered an idea to me a year or two later that 30 years later is impacting each and every day of my life. He advised me to take every annual increase in compensation and to begin deferring it for retirement. Equally remarkable I immediately acted on that advice.

All through my 20’s I had spent everything I earned with the exception of buying a modest life insurance policy every other year or so. Rolf’s advice seemed painless. If I never saw the raises, I wouldn’t spend them.

Later in that decade, deferred options like that were standardized into 457 plans. I kept on deferring right up to the maximum permitted. I’d kid with the accountant each year that no matter what increases were earned, my take-home never budged for decades.

Of course, I also contributed to the state retirement system when I came to Durham so I was saving maybe 25% or more of my compensation overall for quite a few years.

Another friend gave me sage advice a few years ago to put half of the deferred savings into a guaranteed annuity. I did and thank goodness. Even though my deferred savings have recovered fully with the market, half of those funds weren’t touched and will remain stable as the remainder continues to grow but with ups and downs.

So when I read how few people are preparing for retirement. I don’t feel smug. With great empathy, I am grateful for the sage advice of some good friends.

And it probably wasn’t easy, even though he he is a decade older than I was, for Rolf to give me advice, especially personal financial advice. But he did and if he hadn’t I’m not sure where I’d be but I sure wouldn’t be reinventing myself for the next phase of life.

Sooooo… if you’re in your 20’s and 30’s, you may want to take Rolf’s advice too. Believe me, if you start deferring any raises, no matter how modest, you won’t miss it.

And Rolf?

We’ve remained friends and keep in touch. He went on to build a cruise business in Hawaii and initiated Holland America’s extremely successful international marketing. Also retired, Rolf has lived in Bellevue WA for many years now so we connect either via email or in person when I’m in the Puget Sound area visiting my Mom and Sisters.

I’m obviously very indebted to him.

The Secret To Changing “Litter” Behavior!

2010-03-18T20:51:00.001-04:00

People litter but they litter a whole lot more where litter is tolerated, where it appears no one is caring for public spaces.

All of the education, public service spots, community jaw boning and “should” talk won’t curb the tendency to litter or be careless unless…local and state agencies demonstrate a relentless commitment to well kept medians and right-aways and a zero tolerance for littering.

It is human nature. People are automatically more careful and sensitive when they enter an area that is very clean and well maintained, whether at work, in a home or on the street.

But if people enter an area that isn’t well cared for, it is a fact that they are less careful. If people drive down a street where litter is obviously tolerated, they’re more likely to litter. If medians and right of ways are shaggy and seedy, they are more likely to become driven over, rutted and littered.

So we can sit back and tell people how they should behave. Or local and state governments can set a compelling example with zero tolerance for litter, ordinance and code enforcement, green, well kept medians and right of ways and otherwise demonstrating as much care for public space as we all want people to treat it.

There will be a few that try to trash it but they will be much easier to spot…and for the majority, they will automatically become more sensitive and concerned.

If our local and state agencies lead out and treat the community as though it were for sale…the curb appeal will be contagious.

Visitors Generate Property Taxes Too!

2010-03-18T15:24:00.002-04:00

Durham’s community marketing agency does an incredible job of benchmarking the impact and relevance of visitors to the community, thanks to partners like DK Shifflet & Associates (DKSA) and the company now known as IHS Global Insights.

That includes documenting “all” tax revenue yielded for federal, state and especially local governments. And this includes local property taxes, not just sales and use taxes.

Why property taxes? Because visitors impact property taxes big time. Tourism is “demand-side” economic development.

DCVB spearheads community marketing to draw and optimize visitor demand which in turn both makes existing visitor related businesses sustainable and generates interest in the marketplace to make new businesses feasible.

The more hotels, restaurants, entertainment centers, nightclubs, taxi cabs/limos, malls and retail stores thrive, the more the value of property increases and the more demand there is for property.

Thanks to the analysis, it is clear 100% of lodging properties, a third of restaurants and a half to a third of retail stores, sports teams and entertainment venues would not exist without visitors.

And the property taxes in the tally are just those paid directly by visitor related businesses and only those supported by the proportion of each companies business reliant on visitors. It could be argued that compression created in and around these businesses by non-visitor related businesses should be

And with visitors there is no such thing as a guaranteed base. Each and every traveler has an open decision at the beginning of the year and Durham has to earn their return.

So “all” visitor generated and visitor reliant tax revenues count, including property taxes, just the same way as local government would use additional property taxes to evaluate or justify a relocating business or adaptive reuse of historic properties.

Forever Redwood – Forever Toady

2010-03-17T11:58:00.001-04:00

Durham is widely known for social innovation and enterprise. Historically it can go back to George Watts Hill innovating employer health insurance for employees and today it is Burt’s Bees, TROSA, SEEDs and many more.

So when my older English Bulldog passed earlier this year I thought of Forever Redwood for a memorial. Forever Redwood makes furniture and I’m just getting a nice little, stepping stool, engraved for Toady seen below in a glamour shot:)

But Forever Redwood’s mission is reforestation and conservation of these spectacular trees found mostly in Northern California. The parent company is OAG or Old-Growth Again Forestry and the furniture is just how they fund the reforestation and forest management to restore more of these forests and this greatest of trees.

The furniture is made from logs left on the forest floor where logging took place in the past century.

Forever Toady, Toadetta, Toadalicous, Toadster – Mugs and I still miss you!

I’m Counted

2010-03-17T10:27:00.001-04:00

My census form came via mail yesterday and I returned it by mail this morning. Very simple to complete and oh so important.

Genealogy is one my many interests (right up there with my weather station, motorcycle, landscape, books, movies, Blue Devil basketball and of course my bulldog Mugs.

I use several sites but Ancestry.com in particular has permitted me to find census records not only in the US but other countries going way, way, way back. In fact, I have some relatives like Mohun (his son and I share the same first name) and Montgomery who were knights with William and listed in his 1085-86 Domesday Survey.

US Census records aren’t public until after 70+ years but that means I’ve found some for my parents too.

I catch a fair amount of talk radio and I just don’t get the folks in our country who claim to be patriots but resist everything including the Census except my Dad when he was alive could sound that way.

He was always saying FDR and the Supreme Court sold us down the river…everybody he didn’t agree with was tagged a socialist or communist ….and he was a little racist…

Fortunately, I had equal numbers of strong Democrats and strong Republicans on both sides going way back to my Great, Great Grandfather Charles Harper who in one of the first wagon trains across the plains and in his 90’s was very clear in a news article about being a Democrat.

But from my earliest memories of relatives feeling strongly about politics, they were always proud to be citizens of this country, grateful the government did things only the government could do and always willing to stand up and be counted…even my Dad.

Regardless of your politics, your ethnicity, even your citizenship…completing the Census form is one of the most important things you can do…

And if you choose not too, don’t give me a bunch of crap about how important freedom and this country are to you…

Historic Service Stations

2010-03-16T14:16:00.001-04:00

Bob Chapman’s plans to restore a second, historic service station is so “Durham.” This time its the cool, old Gulf Station that sits diagonally across the corner of Geer and Foster (click photo for background on the building on the blog “Endangered Durham.”

This cross roads at the north edge of Downtown’s Central Park District is also home to:

Stone Bros. & Byrd, a cool retro, country store and garden center
Historic Durham Athletic Park where the movie “Bull Durham” was filmed,
King’s Sandwich Stand (under renovation) still Hollywood producer Thom Mount’s favorite,
Durham County Cooperative Extension Office
… a charter school, some cool condos, a park and a historic grade school now used by TROSA.

The area has what experts call optimal serendipity…and a term that sums up much of Durham’s unique sense of place…more on that later.

The Question That Never Goes Away!

2010-03-16T14:08:00.001-04:00

Funny how you still hear some very smart people scoff at “tourism” as “economic development.” Tourism is so much the epitome of economic development that it is always a bit touchy to drill down and seek to understand a comment like that.

Veteran community developer and planner Nancy Thompson in Missouri writes and collaborates on a series of blogs at www.useful-community-development.org and she gets at the essence of economic development…"the definition of economic development should be those activities that cause a net gain of money flow into the community…”

Maybe the source of the comments is a preoccupation with only one type of economic development that dominated the first part of the last century…it is more “supply-side” focusing on attracting relocating businesses.

Tourism is “demand-side” economic development. A community launches marketing activities centered hopefully around its distinct brand or character to draw the interest of visitors and they bring in money from outside the community to:

Sustain and retain local businesses and facilities,
Make new businesses and facilities feasible,
Absorb excess capacity ensuring quality of life for residents
Create and sustain jobs and personal income,
Sustain “place-based assets” and “sense of place” and,
Generate local tax revenue and tax base.

In essence tourism “adds value” to the local economy and that is the essence of economic development.

We heard a good deal this week on the growing importance of exports to GDP and “tourism” is in essence an export. Visitors consume goods and services above and beyond those needed by locals.

Index Tells Me We’re Losing the Litter Battle

2010-03-15T17:25:00.001-04:00

I’m not a spokesperson for Keep Durham Beautiful but the results of this year’s litter canvas tell me this is one area the City (and the County) have lost some ground and this is only one aspect of overall community appears.

We we don’t have any “extremely littered” areas (guess I need to look again at the freeway exits) and the volunteers are probably getting better and better at conducting this annual snapshot.

What would be even more telling but probably a little scary would be a similar index on overall care of landscape, rights of ways, medians and….parks.

I hope officials are cognizant that appearance is one of the strategic ways to impact many areas…e.g. property values, community pride, economic development, crime reduction and much more.

Updated Nielsen Info on Asian, African American and Hispanic Consumers

2010-03-13T14:40:00.001-05:00

Tom Pirovano at Nielsen just posted some updated information and projections through 2050 showing the rapidly changing diversity American consumers. It is a must read for marketers.

Pay Your Share Internet!

2010-03-12T13:03:00.001-05:00

Click to enlarge this chart below that appears on FastCompany.com today depicting new Forrester Research on the continued, spectacular growth of online shopping.

Even during the recession this area has continued to explode with 154 million people buying something online this year. It is time to have these companies all pay sales tax…we need to level the playing field for small, locally based businesses and help offset the tax burden on residents who will ultimately shoulder the burden this causes local and state governments.

I’m tired of hearing these giant companies whine…pay your share. Or let me put it another way, collect your share. Only a small part of sales tax is shouldered by the business anyway…even more reason they should stop whining!

Expedia, Amazon etc…take leadership and do the right thing.

Credit the late Jack Bond for Innovating the Longevity Incentive

2010-03-12T10:11:00.001-05:00

It seems some folks around the country have been intrigued about how the Tourism Development Authority in Durham came up with the idea of making what amounted to 8% of my compensation over the years a longevity incentive. So here is how it happened.

When I came to Durham, even though by that time I had nearly two decades of destination marketing management under my belt, I worked without a customary letter of agreement for the first few years until I had proven myself.

During the discussion of the initial agreement, the TDA employed a best practice formula from a national association of one month of pay for each year served should the agreement end, up to a certain limit. It is considered fair because community marketing can be very political and mined with special interests.

I was blessed in Durham in jumpstarting DCVB to team with both an excellent City and County manager, Orville Powell who is now a professor in the Midwest and the late Jack Bond who passed away in 2001 and in shown in the photo above. They really grasped the potential for DCVB’s mission to generate non-resident revenue for the City and County and each bent over backwards to make us successful.

When Jack retired as County Manager in 1991, he served terms on the Tourism Development Authority (DCVB’s governing board) while in private business and during stint as Deputy Chief Auditor for the State.

It was Jack, quickly endorsed by other Authority members, who suggested that the severance be re-articulated into an earned longevity incentive instead of just the typical parachute for when an executive is fired. Actually I've learned since that severance covers a lot of meanings like this, not just when you "get" severed.

Jack and other Authority members saw that I was a good fit for Durham and while they knew how much I love this community they also didn't believe it was fair or smart to take take that for granted.

So they installed the longevity incentive in my employment agreement predicated of course on my meeting some stiff performance requirements and forgoing any employment with competitors. It worked and I worked hard to earn it, just completing a supercharged 20.5 year relationship.

It wasn’t the TDA’s only innovation. Working with an HR expert, they implemented a performance based compensation plan 10 years ago. Under that plan up to another third of the CEO's compensation is put at risk each year and calibrated to performance. The CEO then employs this with all other staff but the percentage at risk varies.

DCVB owes its remarkable marketing success to two pillars…research and innovation. And the TDA has also been not only innovative but thoughtful and conservative and fair when it came to matters of compensation. The longevity incentive was just part of that.

Even though the longevity was earned over two decades, it made good sense for DCVB and for me at the end of my tenure to pay it out over five or more years. I would have argued for that regardless of the current short term budgetary impacts.

And anyone who knows how intense destination marketing can be and that I practiced it at an even higher level of intensity, knows I probably made $8 an hour when all was said and done and loved every minute of it.

Watching The Flowers Grow

2010-03-11T14:11:00.001-05:00

Retirement is definitely not boring. And I’m getting to see life at a different pace and with time to read, walk Mugs, blog etc. But also some thing I’ve missed over the years. While I only live a mile from Downtown, I’m fortunate to be surrounded by a stand of about 70 trees, some 50+ feet tall, Virginia and loblolly pines, ash, elm, maple, oak, red bud etc. and nearly 100 shrubs. But this year I also planted 100 bulbs and the first one flowered today.

When Big Never Seems Big Enough

2010-03-11T11:12:00.001-05:00

There are a lot of reports that seemingly exaggerate cultural-heritage as tourism activities, usually by not using all traveler as the base so the percentages look higher.

If it is on purpose, it is understandable in a way. It takes a lot to get through the thick skulls of many tourism officials who are stuck back in 1896 and obsess with conventions and meetings to the exclusion of the bigger picture.

Thus I’m anticipating some questions about the chart above (click to enlarge) during a national joint task force I’m chairing of destination marketing and cultural-heritage officials.

But when you click to enlarge the next chart of all visitor activities regardless of “main” purpose for the trip, you’ll see that cultural-heritage activities taken collectively are every bit as significant as conventions and meetings and individually hold their own with spectator sports/Olympics.

The issue isn’t bragging rights nor to enable a sense of entitlement. Destination marketing organizations must shape each individual community’s story to appeal to its strengths and to optimize spending and visitation while balancing special interests.

Online/Digital Overtakes Print in 2010

2010-03-10T09:55:00.001-05:00

Bill Geist, a friend and college for many years pens a very informative and witty blog called, you guess it, Bill Geist’s Zeitgeist.

Today he notes research that predicts 2010 will be the first time advertisers will spend more online/digital than on print. I won’t be surprised but as he notes advertising is really only one marketing tactic among many and decisions are about blend and going where your customers are.

And even drilling down to just advertising, it is all about blend, not either/or.

And to know where your customers are you need research. And unfortunately, all to many marketers have yet to include research as the foundation of marketing.

Malls and Sense of Place

2010-03-09T12:20:00.001-05:00

Greg Lindsay’s blog for Fast Company recently was an excellent overview of how and why malls became so standardized and the impact on the sense of place in some communities.

Durham is fortunate that when the company formerly know as Urban developed The Streets at Southpoint here, it took a very innovative approach and tried its best to tie the mall in to Durham’s look through extensive brickwork, chimney’s and faux retro outdoor signs.

Durham is also fortunate that its first mall of this type, Northgate, is still owned and continually updated by a local family that remains dedicated to the community. They are often handicapped by a mall or two in a community to the east and south that has routinely required leases forbidding a store in Durham and greatly misleading national tenants with misperceptions that the region is centric when it is very polycentric with no dominant center, requiring two if not three or four stores of a type.

Northgate has also been handicapped by demo maps that show nearby Duke University as a black hole, when in reality it is one of the largest employers in North Carolina. Kudos to Northgate for fighting through this BS. When Durhamites assert that there is simply no such place as Raleigh-Durham (the truncated name of a co-owned airport,) remember you’re being loyal to local families like the one that owns Northgate.

Durham is also a leader in urban gardening and enthusiasts might be interested in a Fast Company blog today about adaptive reuse of part of a Cleveland mall for that purpose.

United Breaks Guitars Song 3 - "United We Stand" on the Right Side of Right

2010-03-07T16:11:00.001-05:00

Dave Carroll has completed his trilogy that began with “United Breaks Guitars,” which has crested 8 million viewers.

One Laptop Per Child

2010-03-07T15:33:00.001-05:00

People didn’t believe me but when I retired from DCVB 60+ days ago, my goal was to decompress and get back in touch with some other aspects of my life after nearly 40 incredible intense years in destination marketing, more than half at DCVB.

My goal, based on some sage advice is to wait on firming up any plans including where I volunteer, for at least a year. But of course, with my penchant for reading, things catch my eye including the article in Rotary magazine this month about a global education program called One Laptop Per Child.

The image above is a $75 tablet third generation version due out in 2012 that Andy Greenberg reviewed just as I retired. This is a fascinating project to fuel education in remote areas, where virtually indestructible laptops can readily network with low or self power, empower teachers and open the world to kids 6 to 12 years old.

Toady Passed

2010-01-23T11:46:00.002-05:00

Sorry I've been incommunicado. For those who took such kind interest in my older, female English Bull Dog, Toady passed away this morning during a routine visit to the vet. The folks at North Paw Animal Hospital did all they could to revive her but her heart had just given out.

I was just outside the door and got to say goodbye. I've had to take her in the back door at the vet for years now because of the Alzheimers.

She's been a great companion for more than a decade and I miss her deeply. But I'm glad she went quickly and without pain. I'm also grateful for the last several months. She's been happy and affectionate, even frisky (as frisky as an English Bull Dog can be) and pracing and running like a pup. She had also regained that Bull Dog sense of humor.

She even took off and raced me to the door last night. I'm just glad she could wait until I got back from the Pacific Northwest.

Goodbye Sweet Girl. RIP

Kudos on Cultural Industries Analysis

2010-01-05T14:16:00.000-05:00

Kudos to the NC Departure of Cultural Resources for teaming with the Department of Commerce and its Policy Research & Strategic Planning Division and adopting very credible techniques for measuring the economic impact of what the report terms the “creative” industries (note the plural which is another kudo.)

For far too many years, enthusiasts and advocacy organizations around the nation have deployed impressive but flawed techniques to document the impact of culture and the arts that weren’t defensible.

But this report uses ImPlan methodology, an input-output analysis with factors specific to this state including various economic codes to generate not just the typical “gross” spending but the actual net “value added” to the state’s economy.

Balancing Special Interests

2010-01-04T15:46:00.000-05:00

A key element of community destination marketing is balancing or some say “resisting" special interests. Special interests range from the very subtle to bullying.

Far too many DMO’s though get cornered into pandering to special interests. It starts with giving preferential treatment based on “who’s asking.” The “who” in “who’s asking” might be based on power and money or politics or even friendship.

In many communities, pandering to special interests is too embedded in the culture for the DMO exec to resist or change or the communities only select DMO’s they know will play along and give special treatment to a particular part of town or a theater, festival, hotel, sports event or restaurant, golf course or meeting facility.

And if the DMO exec in these cultures tries to resist the pressure, they are likely to hear a comment like “I think the organization needs a change in direction” and the person or group uttering the statement typically means that the change needs to be in “their” direction.

In reality, few people think of themselves as a special interest. They just see the world through a lens that puts their interests at the center or they get hammered by owners or headquarter offices operating with the premise that the only way to leverage the benefits of a DMO is to have it in your pocket.

In Durham, I’ve benefited from the strong egalitarian value inherent in Durham’s overall character or personality.

In almost every case, the people who demand special treatment don’t grasp that any one element of a community’s visitor product, at best, will involve 4% to 10% of visitors or that blending elements into an overall community story is far more effective than stereotyping it around one element or another...

Fortunately, the governing boards under which I’ve served have each had strong policies and in fact evaluated my performance in part on the ability to resist special interests. They’ve also displayed the collective and individual courage to stand firm. when “the boat is being rocked” by a special interest.

At DCVB, the key I’ve found to balancing special interests here is that the governing board right at the start, embedded several elements central to the organization’s culture including these six:

Ensure decisions are always data or information driven vs. by anecdotes, opinions, emulation, so-called conventional wisdom or “who’s asking.”

Shepard “place based” assets. These are assets that are unique to Durham or home grown and distinguish it from other communities.

Make decisions on what “segments” to pursue based on optimizing fair market share, exploiting the community’s overall potential and diversification.
Calibrate decisions based on the percentage of visitors interested in an activity and the percentage who use that activity as the main purpose for a trip.
Develop platforms from which any and all local businesses and organizations can harvest a fair share of visitors drawn to the community.

Find ways to celebrate those entities that earn a national or regional reputation but make sure every entity is listed.

Vetting Mega Sports Events Is No Slam Dunk

2009-12-30T16:15:00.002-05:00

I’m a lifelong sports fan so I understand that decisions about sports, like other components of culture, often are emotional not logical, thus the term “fanatic,” I guess.

But when groups or communities go “big game hunting” as one Mayor termed it, in search of mega-sports events, the costs and benefits have to be weighted carefully by a destination marketing organization.

Unfortunately too many destination execs get caught up in the hype or they make or are cornered into making decisions based on “who’s asking” and “to go along to get along.” But that isn’t the role of a DMO. Our job is to provide communities, regardless of who’s asking, good, solid factual cost/benefit information.

Of course, this is much harder than it sounds. Many sports fanatics can’t take any scrutiny as this is thought to be criticism, so they typically form opinions without hard information. And the pushing and shoving often begins before any thoughtful analysis can be done. More than a few community officials and news outlets, for which sports can be big business, often become co-dependent with the hype.

There can be a lot of reasons for communities to host mega-sports events but two of the reasons most often cited, creating or rehabilitating community image and driving economic impact, are not guaranteed. Here are a handful of resources that any DMO with a destination contemplating mega-events should make sure are in the mix or resources used to vet the decision.

The first research I read was done by the researchers analyzing the impact on Göteborg, Sweden following a decade when that community hosted one mega-sports event after another to promote, shape and rehabilitate image. Any impact quickly dissipated.

The second was the book Major League Losers by an economist analyzing the realities behind the claims used to justify building major sports complexes for team owners. I guess the title gives away the findings. There is also one called Sports, Jobs and Taxes.

The third was an analysis by an economist at a Florida University looking at the impact of the a mega-sports-event on cities by comparing sales tax collections on the exact dates, the year prior, year of and year after hosting the mega-event. There was hardly a blip. The event displaced as much as it generated.

The fourth was a study of the Calgary Olympics which also found that any impact rapidly dissipated unless followed by mega-events within a year to 18 months.

Now comes an evaluation by the European Tour Operators Association that hosting the Olympics can hurt rather than help a country’s tourism economy in the long run for a variety of reasons.

There are many reasons to host a sports event but the decisions on behalf of a community are complicated. Regardless of who it might upset, a destination marketing organization executive must deliver the facts and probe behind the hyperbole.

Top 10 Reasons DMO’s Aren’t Accredited

2009-12-29T15:01:00.000-05:00

Hats off to the 100 Destination Marketing Organizations (DMO’s) that have earned accreditation. But it is hard to fathom why some haven’t pursued this distinction. Here are 10 reasons that come to mind:

Too “old school” to update to best practices.
Misperceiving it as only for very small or very large DMO's.
Disorganized and haven’t assigned someone to manage the project.
Fearful of rejection rather than view it as a diagnostic to inform improvement.
Too proud to ask for help or worried about revealing secrets.
Overestimate the work involved or failure to view it as a process.
Failure to grasp the importance as a signal of credibility.
Cronies aren’t accredited either.
Hoping to get in through the back door via who they know.
Resistant to change…the old way has worked fine all these years.

Which Use Ultimately Yields More In Local Tax Revenue? Community Marketing or “Build It And They Will Come?

2009-12-22T14:12:00.005-05:00

The logic was clear when the “room occupancy and tourism development tax” was pioneered as a special tax by the NC General Assembly in 1982 specifically to self-fund local community destination visitor promotion as a pump to in turn fuel 13 times that amount in sales tax revenues alone to help fund local governments.

But from the minute the ink dried on the Governor’s signature, local officials have tried to divert it to other uses. Some egged on by individuals or organizations not original enough to propose a self-funded tax of their own or just plan envious. Others were hoodwinked by businesses that often didn’t collect or generate local sales taxes themselves but all too willing to push officials to divert revenues from this one as a subsidy for pet projects or to fund the public portion of a so-called partnership.

Actually many officials didn’t need encouragement to try to raid or end-run the fundamental purpose of the special tourism development tax. Some resent the strings attached to special taxes or refuse to accept how unfair it is to deploy them the same way as general tax revenues.

The concept of using a tax to generate an increase in overall tax revenues is lost on those who believe that the only way tax revenues can be generated or increased is by politically increasing the tax rate or levying a new tax.

Many don’t grasp or have flip flopped the law of supply and demand, failing to understand that only by generating “demand” as in “more visitors” can existing or new facilities be justified or made sustainable over the long-term.

Others are just too far left-brained to grasp the more right-brain notions of managing perceptions or overcoming objections to get on the list for consideration by visitors falling under the spell of “build it and they will come” so often used as a developer mantra…but as the New York Times revealed, “not for long.”

Below is a tale of three communities, taking three different approaches to deployment of the special tourism development tax:

The first uses 100% of the room occupancy and tourism development tax as intended. What it reaps in visitor generated tax revenue per 1,000 residents is used as the benchmark.
The second is Durham which expends half the State House Finance guideline for what should be designated for marketing alone and as a result reaps 36% less than the benchmark.
The third is a community that spends lavishly on brick and mortar facilities and less on marketing and reaps 50% less than the benchmark.

This is only one of many sources of evidence that communities with the discipline to follow the State’s guidelines are the winners. Those who siphon the special tax off for other purposes do so at a tremendous, hidden cost to their constituents and communities. It is also clear that “build it and they will come” ultimately results in far less overall revenue.

Politicians like the late Senator Swain and former Representative George Miller were farsighted when they pioneered the room occupancy and tourism development tax and established guidelines for its use. Present-day elected officials with that same grasp should be celebrated. Those who don’t need to be motivated to come up with similar win/win self-funding solutions.

Web 3.0 in 3-D

2009-12-14T13:25:00.004-05:00

Web 3.0 will revolutionize search and surf (and television too) according to a blog on Friday by Fast Company writer Kit Eaton. The potential for marketing destination communities is huge.