Troubling Tourism Trap Agencies, Communities Bump Heads Over Marketing Tourism In North Idaho

The message is simple: North Idaho’s a great place to stay and play.

It’s the messenger - make that messengers - that seem to be complicating the essential process of marketing tourism in our area.

For years, the Coeur d’Alene Convention & Visitors Bureau handled the task of advertising Kootenai County as a tourism destination. It also operated a handy visitor center that stuffed tourists with brochures on area attractions.

No more. The bureau died a quiet death at the beginning of the month. The visitor center, at its prime location on Sherman Avenue, has given way to a car-rental agency.

The visitor bureau’s chores were delegated to a committee of the Coeur d’Alene Area Chamber of Commerce, chaired by Mel Spelde.

But nearly a month later, Spelde, the president of Empire Airlines in Coeur d’Alene, has yet to gavel in a meeting. He won’t speculate on the details of the committee’s role until it meets.

Meanwhile, hoteliers and tourism businesses wait and wonder what the strange new world of Kootenai County marketing will look like next year. Some fear it will pit Post Falls against Coeur d’Alene, creating turf wars and muddying the image presented to potential visitors.

Those fears were fueled by moves made by Post Falls Tourism Inc., an agency that sprouted from the Post Falls Chamber of Commerce years ago.

The agency recently filed for a name change with the state, acquiring the ability to change its working business name to Kootenai County Convention & Visitors Bureau. Executive Director Nancy DiGiammarco said the group will consider using its new name depending on what the chamber does.

“We want to give the chamber a chance to work out what they’re doing,” she said. “We want to work with them.”

Post Falls Tourism will do plenty of work without them. The agency will break ground early next year for a new visitor center at the Factory Outlets mall. With the relatively new visitor center in the Milltown area of Post Falls, that gives the agency two top-notch facilities for tourists, DiGiammarco said. For the moment, Coeur d’Alene has no visitor center.

Post Falls Tourism also plans to hire a part-time staffer to help bring more conventions to the area.

The chamber committee will be led by chamber staffer Stacie Becker, new head of tourism development. The chamber plans to emphasize convention bookings as well, said Pat McGaughey, executive director.

The chamber will use telemarketing to draw small- to medium-sized conventions to Coeur d’Alene. Several thousand square feet of new convention space - both at the Coeur d’Alene Resort and at its sister hotel, the Coeur d’Alene Inn and Conference Center on Appleway - come on-line next year.

But wait. If Post Falls Tourism opts for the name change and begins to present itself as the premier marketing tool of the county, and the chamber committee decides to do the same, two marketing agencies will be selling basically the same product.

“There could be some overlap,” admits Bob Templin, the patriarch behind Post Falls Tourism Inc. and biggest booster of Post Falls as a tourism destination. “That needs to be avoided.”

“Post Falls needs to take care of Post Falls and Coeur d’Alene needs to take care of Coeur d’Alene,” McGaughey said. “You can believe that we’ll use the Factory Outlets in our campaigns because it’s a great draw. But it also makes sense for Post Falls to use the floating green” at the Coeur d’Alene Resort golf course.

Why are two tourism marketing agencies competing for the same money and touting the same area?

Politics.

Interstate politics prevents the most logical merger to make the biggest, most efficient tourism marketing vehicle. An amalgamation of the Spokane, Post Falls and Coeur d’Alene bureaus would seem to give hoteliers, attractions and other tourism businesses the biggest bang for their marketing buck.

The current situation reminds Hartley Kruger, president of the Spokane bureau, of the time when he ran the Seattle Convention & Visitors Bureau years ago.

“Obviously there’s going to be some difficulties with the changes,” he said. “When Bellevue started up its own visitors bureau, they didn’t have much money or product, but today they do. There was initially a lot of unhappiness between the two because they overlapped some.”

Silverwood Theme Park near Athol already considers the area to be one congruous market. President and General Manager Dan Aylward, with years of marketing experience at other theme parks around the country, believes that cultivating the local market means treating Spokane and North Idaho as one unit.

Aylward is a likely member on the chamber tourism committee.

One political advantage for Post Falls is Templin’s position on the Idaho Travel Council, the state agency that distributes state lodging taxes in the form of marketing grants.

With Templin on the board this year, Post Falls Tourism received $44,000 in grant money from ITC, more than twice as much as in the past. Coeur d’Alene, meanwhile, received about $115,000, less than the year before.

Tourism observers say the politics of marketing Kootenai County could cloud the message to visitors and tour operators, to the benefit of no one.

Templin’s interest is Post Falls, where he has developed Templin’s Resort and Convention Center. His rift with Coeur d’Alene tourism magnate Duane Hagadone fuels his want to establish Post Falls as a destination equal to Coeur d’Alene.

Hagadone Hospitality spends considerable dollars marketing its hotels and convention space. Some tour operators, like Vicki St. Martin of the Days Inn in Coeur d’Alene, say it doesn’t make much sense to see representatives from Hagadone, Coeur d’Alene’s bureau, Post Falls’ bureau, Templin’s and the state tourism councils at the same convention selling the same area.

But travel council politics was not the Coeur d’Alene bureau’s undoing. The death knell sounded when the Coeur d’Alene Greyhound Park announced it would end live dog racing.

A portion of the racetrack’s handle - or total bets - went to both Post Falls and Coeur d’Alene. In the early ‘90s it meant more than $150,000 for the bureau, said John Kozma, the former executive director who finds himself jobless and consulting with the Coeur d’Alene chamber.

With that cash flow gone, the bureau’s board of directors looked at different ways of raising money. Kozma’s ideas - including a small lodging tax - were rejected, and the board decided to “merge” the bureau’s functions with the chamber.

Tourism observers say emerging tourism markets usually do the opposite by breaking the convention and visitor side out from the chamber.

The move has some hoteliers a little confused, but eager to find out what the chamber has planned.

“I’m going to sit back and wait,” said Dick Scheets, general manager at the Shilo Inn in Coeur d’Alene. “If we find the chamber is going to handle the CVB functions, then I’m just going to pay the chamber dues. I’m curious to see how things are going to be put together.”

McGaughey said the bureau fee and sponsorship system will end at year’s end, and that the 65 Coeur d’Alene bureau sponsors who are not already chamber members will be asked to join. That likely would cost the former bureau members a little extra money in membership dues.

Running a convention and visitor bureau means a lot more than placing a few magazine ads and wooing a convention or two. Marketing plans need to be developed. Kozma had success traveling to tour operator conventions each year. The grantwriting process is complicated and takes expertise.

McGaughey sees a $50,000 to $60,000 budget for tourism, and has asked chamber members who were also bureau sponsors to contribute more to the chamber to pay for the efforts.

The committee makeup is not yet set and McGaughey doesn’t want to speculate on what direction the committee will take tourism marketing.

The chamber will fulfill the grant money the bureau received from the state, and hoteliers are curious to see just how those dollars have been and will be spent for winter marketing.

“To those who are worried that we’re going to drop the ball with this,” McGaughey said, “just look at what this chamber has done in the last five years. Look at the leadership developed through our committees. We can do this.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo