AGENDA
February 20, 2025
Meeting Location: Snow Mountain Ranch
Mission Statement: We inspire a sustainable, year-round tourism economy in Grand County with an emphasis on strengthening the vitality of our communities, celebrating our local culture and traditions and respecting our environment and resources.
Board Member Attendance: Kristen Spronz, Joanna Whitemarsh, Gretta Fosha, Rebecca Bierden, Beau Larson, Elizabeth Brumm
Absent: Jeremy Belnap (Board Member)
Attendance by Zoom: Jennifer Brown, Dakota Cordle, Cheryl Spezia, Rebecca Bierden, Dave Huber (Board Members), Kelly Kirkpatrick (Grand Lake Chamber), Megan Dryden (Social Media Contractor), Dave Santucci (Mission2Market), Lesley Rowbal, Curtis T (Madden Media)
Also In Attendance: DiAnn Butler (Grand County Economic Development), Heather Bishop
Call To Order
Joanna called the meeting to order at 3 p.m.
Approvalof Meeting Minutes
Meeting minutes were approved as distributed
Approvalof Invoices
Gaylene reported that the January invoices total of $87,383.74
General Public Comments
Heather Bishop, a business owner from Grand Lake, introduced herself and her interest in joining the tourism board.
Administration Marketing Committee
Elizabeth said there was nothing to report. Madden Media covered everything during their
marketing presentation.
Finance Committee
Gaylene set a meeting with Curtis at the county to discuss the tourism board finances on February 27, 2025 with the Finance Committee.
Executive Director
Madden Media helped Gaylene set up Google Workspace for visitgrandcounty.com. We now have the emails info at visitgrandcounty dot com and Gaylene at visitgrandcouty dot com instead of grand county co tourism board at gmail dot com.
Paula has been manually entering events and listings on the back end of the tourism board website.
Gaylene and Paula have had multiple meetings with Madden Media for the transition from working with Miles Partnership. More meetings are scheduled in the coming weeks.
Gaylene has bi-weekly meetings with Dave from Mission2 Market to work on the strategy and business plan for the tourism board.
She has been working with Megan on Social Media content calendar
Gaylene meets with the Datafy and AirDNA reps regularly to review the reporting.
She has been meeting regularly with board members and recently presented at this month's Grand Lake Town Hall meeting.
Madden Media will be doing a presentation for the BOCC on March 25 at 10:15 a.m., and all board members are invited to attend
Contractors Reports
Public Relations
Gaylene mentioned that a bid for PR contract will be set up in September 2025
She then reviewed the PR results for January 2025 and noted that they were a bit down from last year. This year, many journalists went to Europe and did not make stateside trips.
Gaylene gave an overview of PR results on article placements:
$751K PR Value placed Circulation 81.2 Million
The Tourism Board Newsletters have had a steady 36% open rate
Social Media
Megan reviewed Social Media growth in 2024:
65.4K Total Reach
2.7K profile visits Gained 389 followers
40% increase in profile visits
Showed an increase in reach, engagement, and followers Stats January 2025:
Highest-rated post (video) so far promoting Polar Vortex and Arctic Blast produced 470K views, 5000 likes, 2000 shares
Megan hosted her first social media influencer, Julia Takes A Hike. She toured Grand Lake and aimed to promote off-peak visitation time frame.
Marketing
Lesley from Madden Media did an overview of the projects that the team is currently working on:
Lesley reviewed year-to-date highlights on the website, SEO, and email marketing progress. The team completed the SEO audit and technical layout of the website, which showed where improvements could be made.
She reviewed email goals and recommendations, the ad campaign performance and goals, our markets, travel topics, and channel traffic sources, and finished with strategies from now through March.
Gaylene then discussed working with our current website or having Madden Media build a new one. We have already put aside $20,000.00 in our budget for Madden Media to work on our current website.
Lesley invited board members to review the proposal sent in the board packet.
On the tourism board website, Curtis T showed the board how Userway and Mindtrip would work on our website.
Gaylene stated that the new website would cost $79,670.00 (less $20,000.00) and that we would need to add $59,670.00 to Madden's contract.
Kristen motioned to approve $59,670.00 increase to Madden's contract for a new website, and Gretta seconded. The motion carried unanimously.
Old Business
Approval of Grants and Social Media Contracts Gaylene reviewed the grant process.
Mission2Market and Business Plan Update
Dave gave an update on the business plan and strategy and the possibility of adding a community relations committee.
April Meeting
We will meet early at the Fraser Town Hall and to go over the destination blueprint business plan before our regular board meeting.
New Business
Antero Contract DiAnn Butler
Gaylene reviewed the Antero contract with the board. DiAnn got a bid from Antero at $25K to help maintain the data that Antero collected on Grand County, which includes hotels, businesses, etc. DiAnn is asking if the tourism board would be willing to help cover the
$25,000.00 cost for the bid. The board is already paying $10,000, so it would need to add
$15,000.00
The board requested more information. DiAnn and Gaylene will meet with the county to discuss particulars on request.
Approval of Board Finances
Gaylene asked the board what the guidelines for her budget should be per transaction. The board wanted to research to find out what other boards are setting for board captial expense limits.
Outside Festival
Adventure Travel Trade Association and Outside Festival will be in Denver this spring. These two events bring together travel and outdoor professionals. We can purchase booth space for
$5000.00, allowing us to have three people work the booth..
Gretta motioned to spend $5000.00 for a booth at the Outside festival - Kristen seconded. The motion carried unanimously.
Asset Management
Gaylene reviewed the issues we have had trying to get our assets from Miles Partnership. She is currently meeting with representatives of Digital Asset Management companies to determine which company might be a good fit for our assets. Madden Media had recommended several companies. The board asked Gaylene to present the information to determine the cost, and then they will decide by email vote which company to move forward with.
Flying Heels Arena
The manager/owner is asking for a grant for fireworks. Board members discussed the pros and cons of accepting grant requests for fireworks and agreed that fireworks are not deemed marketing. Marketing is a pre-event to bring people to the event, not the event itself.
New Board Members Discussion
Everyone on the board agreed that Heather Bishop from Grand Lake would be a good board member to replace Ron Ellis.
Beau motioned to adjourn the meeting, and Elizabeth seconded. The motion carried unanimously. Meeting adjourned at 5:06 p.m.