After Juli Vieira, president and CEO of the San Benito County Chamber of Commerce, briefed Hollister City Council members March 21 on what the $100,000, divided between the county and two cities, allocated to the chamber from February 2015 to June 2016 was used for, she said the organization would seek $143,000 to continue its work from July 2016 through June 2017.
Vieira said her report — which was a report and not an action item at this meeting — covered the previous year’s efforts, beginning in February, to advance tourism within the county. She said the majority of the money allocated for the current year was spent on the new website, sanbenitocountychamber.com. The chamber also established a presence on social media, including: a Facebook page, Pinterest, and Instagram pages.
“In January, we had 902 unique visits to the website, which has been up for five months,” she said. “Our Facebook page is up to 400 people following us, and we had one post that had over 2,000 likes or views in the last month.”
Vieira said more than 1,100 visitor bags promoting the county had been supplied to Bolado Park for large functions, as well as the Bar SZ Ranch, Oils of Paicines Ranch, RV and cycling groups. She said 5,000 visitor’s guides were printed and have been placed primarily in the United Airlines terminal and the Hertz counter at San Jose International Airport, at the Pismo Beach and Salinas Visitor Centers, as well as other locations within the county. She said the Central Coast Visitors Map was distributed between 277 Los Angeles and San Francisco hotels and visitor centers. Twelve hundred guides were handed out in Las Vegas during an airport convention.
“We have promotional tours,” she said. “We’ve had three sets of writers come in and we’ve been in the Examiner, on Facebook posts, online magazines and videos. The latest video was released March 8. We have a one-year contract with Big Blend Radio (online radio and TV travel magazine from Yuma, Ariz.) and they’ve interviewed 17 community leaders and members about different things going on in the community. They’ve had more than 45,000 visitors to that magazine.”
She said there was a two-page article published in a Yosemite magazine.
“Thousands of these were printed,” she said, “and they were in Target, Longs (Drugs), and Rally’s throughout California and Oregon. We had it available in print and online. We were also on myyosemite.com, and they have over 75,000 subscribers to their e-newsletter.”
Vieira said the chamber has a 12-month targeted email lead program. Part of that program, she said, was the chamber’s participation in a contest along with the Central California Tourism Council. The prize was a road trip and generated 6,241 emails from people who also asked for more information about the county. Two television ads were placed on KSBW. Each ran 26 times.
“That was your first $50,000,” she said. “Currently in production, is 2016-17 (budgeted PR plan), is our gateway map to the Pinnacles.” She explained that she was able to acquire the rights to the map labeled, “Pinnacles National Park,” from Soledad, which failed to obtain a grant to fund it. “That one is in all the certified folders in the big displays in hotels throughout California. This is going to be in over 300 locations in California. It’s due out May 1.”
The chamber is in the process of developing guided bird-watching tours, scenic tours, a wine trail map, a star gazing map, and a cycling map.
“Someone emailed me today that wants to provide (photos of) all the barns in San Benito County that he has taken and we’re going to develop a barn tour,” Vieira said. She showed the council a photo of the June Sunset magazine with a link to Discover San Benito County logo, which she explained the chamber had to go through legal maneuvers in order to trademark. “Someone was trying to use that, so we had to pay an attorney. Unfortunately, that was a cost we didn’t expect, but we want to protect that logo because we spent a lot of money having it designed and we don’t want anybody else infringing on it.”
Moving forward, Vieira said the chamber wants to design a booth to take to festivals, trade shows and perhaps the state fair. She said there is a desire to have a tourism event teardrop trailer that has advertising promoting the county and Pinnacles on the walls.
“We also want to get on radio and television advertising in southern, central and northern California, and up into Oregon,” she said. “We want to place ads online and in print in hiking, cycling, bird watching, and historical publications. We want to develop a seminar for businesses within our community so they can take advantage of tourism. And we also want to develop a new tourism guide.”
The projected budget of $143,000 to carry the chamber through June 2017, is divided up by a request of $30,000 from the county, which, she said, gave $18,000 last year; and $15,000 from San Juan Bautista, which gave $2,500 last year. The remainder would come from Hollister, along with possible grants.
“If we want to bring people to our community we have to spend the money and get the job done,” she said. “Fifty thousand is only taking us so far. We’ve put in a lot more staff time and administration than I thought we were going to. We only had $12,000 budgeted last year and it’s more like $25,000 in hours that we are putting in.”
After her presentation, Councilman Karson Klauer commented that Santa Valley Wine Trail had a passport weekend and described it as a “pretty awesome event with people going from one place to the next seeing a lot of the county,” and asked Vieira if there was any thought to doing something similar. She responded that the Hollister Downtown Association already does the Wine Stroll. Klauer said it wasn’t the same. He said people drive through Santa Clara County seeing as much as five times more in four hours than people do in San Benito County all year.
“I would want to be careful and not step on the Hollister Downtown Association’s toes because they started the Wine Stroll,” she answered, “but it’s something we can talk to them about, maybe partnering with them.”
Klauer also questioned $100,000 to be spent on online media while only $1,500 was to go to social media. She said that’s possible because most social media is handled in-house.
“I think it will be money well spent to spend a lot more money on social media advertising because when you see a TV commercial you forget about it because you can’t do anything right away,” Klauer said, “but when something scrolls across your feed on Facebook you can click it, research it, and actually book your flight within five minutes. I think there’s something to be said about spending more money on social media and you can reach a lot of people relatively cheap.”
Klauer also asked about the status of a once-proposed marathon. Vieira told him that after various avenues were studied, and because of a lack of money, it was decided not to move forward with it. Klauer commented on the teardrop trailer, saying he wondered since the city was fronting most of the cost for it why there was not any advertising on it promoting the city. She started to explain the $10,000 budget for the trailer covered much more than just the trailer, but Klauer said he didn’t care about the cost, even though the city was carrying almost two thirds of the entire budget, he said he just wanted something on the trailer promoting Hollister.
Councilwoman Mickie Luna told Vieira that she would like to have an opportunity to sit down with her to further discuss the entire report. Luna said she agreed with Klauer on the importance of having an ad promoting Hollister on the trailer. She also wanted to know what the chamber had planned for winter months. Vieira said the chamber’s website included numerous year-round activities.
Mayor Ignacio Velazquez agreed with Klauer about the teardrop trailer, saying that he felt the main issue was the city’s name, which he said a lot of people have heard of, but might not remember where they heard it. He said it’s not counties, but cities that bring tourists, so it’s important to promote Hollister rather than the county. He also agreed with Klauer about the importance of advertising on social media.
“People are all using their phones now and they can respond if something interests them,” Velazquez said. “I also want to start seeing what we can do to promote Airbnb (homeowners rent rooms to tourists) and help people establishing their own residents as bed and breakfasts. That will help bring in more people.”
Vieira reminded him that the city would have to be careful about collecting the appropriate taxes from homeowners who rent out their rooms to tourists. She said the city has several already and it’s difficult to track the taxes.
“I really want to see the ‘Discover Hollister’ and ‘San Benito County,’’ he said, going back to the trailer issue, and then repeated ‘Hollister’ three times to emphasis his opinion that the city needs to be the focal point, more so than the county.
Friend brought up the concept of ‘dinner trucks,’ and asked if there was any news. She said a couple of groups had been contacted and said one responded that it wasn’t interested because “we’re too small.” She said negotiations are being conducted with another company.
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