Be Bold

As we shared in the Zeitgeist blog last month, the Sedona Chamber & Visitors Bureau has put City leadership on notice that it will not be renewing its contract with the City for Destination Marketing and Management services. In a year in which we’ve been hearing the phrase “be bold” used in many of our client communities, this is about as bold as a Destination Leadership Organization can be.

The decision to walk away comes after years of increasing friction between the City Council and the Chamber over the perception that the Chamber is the root cause behind the destination overcrowding that has some citizens crying “no mas.” The antagonism reached a head last year when the City essentially banned the Chamber from doing anything that even had a whiff of marketing involved. And, they did it again in this year’s budget.

Count me as one who fully expected that visitation levels would continue for another year or so, based on pent up demand and momentum. So, color me surprised when it was recently reported that hotel and sales collections have been in decline for the past seven months, with some merchants reporting their sales are down 25%.

Room Tax is a drug…for both government and DMOs. Governments that have historically retained large percentages of hotel tax revenues for general fund spending have a hard time redirecting the money to what it was intended for in the first place: Increasing the positive aspects of the visitor economy. And, DMOs will do just about anything for another or bigger fix.

That is until the realization that the drug is not worth the pain…and the junkie decides to take their life back. And that’s what, at least from my vantage point, the Sedona Chamber did last month.

Long before Room Tax became such an intoxicating intoxicant, the Sedona Chamber had a purpose and a mission. It was to enable their members to increase business profits, facilitate job growth and generate wealth for owners and their employees. Over time, the City forgot that a large number of their constituents were the very residents that were employed by the visitor economy. Instead, they began to think that the Chamber worked for them.

And, in a way, the Chamber did…as the Room Tax-driven contract for Tourism Marketing grew. The drug had resulted in City Council-driven Mission Creep. The Chamber was no longer able to adhere to its mission; it was a contractor to the City. And, the City Council (which the local paper recently called “a clown show”) was aggressively blocking the Chamber from its mission.

As most recovering addicts will tell you, cold turkey is the only way to shake the habit and rebuild your life. The Sedona Chamber Board came to the realization that the only way to get back to its raison d’etre and fulfill its responsibility to its members was to put down the drug.

Which, as I said at the top, was an incredibly bold move…and one that earned high praise from the Red Rock News that ran an editorial entitled “Chamber 100% Right to Cut Ties with Sedona City Council.”

The Sedona Chamber can now execute its business plan and program of work without interference from a group of City Council members who have no idea how an economy works (but have, in a move beyond parody, announced that they will form their own DMO).

Now comes the hard part…replacing that historically stable stream of revenue. But, I have absolutely no doubt that the Chamber Board and professional staff will come out the other side just fine. The business community that has struggled under the yoke of a contrarian City Council and a handcuffed Chamber will make sure of that, as exemplified by the recent announcement that 71 destination businesses have come together to fund a $122,000 marketing campaign to get top-of-mind awareness back.

Well done, my friends. Well done.